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Ununoctium Wrapup

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the just-like-using-ununoctium-in-headlines dept.

rkowen writes "Finding superheavy element 118 would have been a giant step in the quest for the conjectured island of nuclear stability. But now the claimed discovery is thought to have been part of a pattern of deception by one physicist that goes back to 1994." We've done several previous stories: the discovery, hints of trouble, possible fraud. Between this and the Schon case one might think the physics community was full of frauds.

1 of 179 comments (clear)

  1. Misunderstood science.... by Alomex · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Science has never guaranteed 100% infallibility. What it guarantees is an unrelentless pursuit of the truth, even if takes decades to discover the answer to a problem or uncover a mistake, as the case might be. It also promises a ready acceptance of the new evidence, at least as compared to the readiness of all other human endeavours to accept fault.

    This is exactly what we saw in these few sad cases of fraud. There was no coverup, no meetings in the middle of the night, no deep throat.