Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

August 16 news, in March this year, the University of Rochester physicist Ranga Dias (Ranga Diaz) claimed to have developed a room temperature superconducting material, which attracted strong attention in the industry. KuaiBao, a leading physics magazine, withdrew a materials science paper written by Diaz on Tuesday local time, citing falsification or falsification of data.

The withdrawn paper, which deals with manganese sulphide compounds, does not involve superconducting materials, but adds to allegations of misconduct in Diaz's research, such as falsifying data. Although the University of Rochester denied the earlier allegations, a university spokeswoman said this week that the University of Rochester had begun allowing outside experts to conduct a full investigation into Diaz's research.

Of the 10 co-authors of the withdrawn paper, nine agreed to withdraw. Diaz, the only author who opposed the withdrawal, insisted that the paper accurately described the findings. But Diaz also admitted on Tuesday that collaborators who worked in the lab at the University of Nevada in Las Vegas made a mistake in using Adobe Illustrator to chart the data. Adobe Illustrator is a vector graphics design software that is not usually used to make scientific charts.

In response to a question about the withdrawal, Diaz said: "all data differences caused by the use of Adobe Illustrator software are not intentional and are not intended to mislead or hinder the peer review process." He also admitted that there was something wrong with the resistance measurements he carried out in the laboratory at the University of Rochester.

In March, Diaz and his collaborators said in a paper published in the journal Nature that they had found a material that could conduct superconductors at 21 degrees Celsius but required 9892 times atmospheric pressure.

Many scientists are skeptical of the news because Diaz's earlier paper in the journal Nature describing another less practical superconducting material has been withdrawn.

Superconductor is a kind of material that can conduct electric current efficiently. If the substance can work at room temperature, it can be used in transmission lines, magnetic resonance imagers and almost any electrical device. At present, superconductors must be cooled to extremely low temperatures in order to work.

Over the past few weeks, reports about LK-99 have swept social media. South Korean scientists say LK-99 is superconducting at room temperature. However, other scientists are unable to reproduce the observation of the superconductivity of this material and propose a reasonable alternative explanation.

However, the basic laws of physics do not prohibit the possibility of room temperature superconductivity, and the exploration of this material will continue.

Questions have long been raised about Diaz's recently withdrawn paper. James Hamlin, a professor of physics at the University of Florida (University of Florida), told the magazine editor that the graph curve in the paper describing the change in the resistance of manganese sulphide compounds is similar to the curve in Diaz's paper describing the properties of another material.

Physical Review KuaiBao hired outside experts who wrote three independent reports to review the indicators and basic data. "these findings do confirm allegations of data falsification or falsification," the magazine editor wrote in an email sent to the author on July 10. "

One of the reviewers said Diaz's latest response was "inadequate and disappointing".

During the months of communication between the author, Hamlin and the editor of the physical Review KuaiBao, no one mentioned Adobe Illustrator or Diaz's claim that his own laboratory generated better charts in December 2019, the reviewer said.

Reviewers said that both the University of Rochester and the University of Nevada at Las Vegas should conduct open and transparent investigations into "possible malfeasance".

Other co-authors of the paper did not respond to requests for comment.

A spokeswoman for the University of Rochester said in an email that the university was "conducting a comprehensive investigation into all data integrity issues involved in this and other studies".

The school had previously conducted three preliminary investigations into Diaz's research and decided that no further review was needed. This time, the university decided to launch a comprehensive investigation, which is the next step in the policy on misconduct in the investigation.

The spokesman said the school did not intend to release the results of the investigation.

Hamlin said on Tuesday that he was glad that the Physics Review KuaiBao took his questions seriously. He said there were two other obvious data duplications in Diaz's study, which he hoped could also be reviewed. One of them related to another paper published in the journal Nature, and the other related to the withdrawn paper.

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