tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13869903.post7781862281441900001..comments2024-03-28T04:15:44.459-05:00Comments on nanoscale views: Hype, BICEP2, and all that.Douglas Natelsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13340091255404229559noreply@blogger.comBlogger5125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13869903.post-22160336147272983632015-02-03T01:19:30.474-06:002015-02-03T01:19:30.474-06:00Now the BICEP2 interpretation is officially dead:
...Now the BICEP2 interpretation is officially dead:<br /><br />http://www.nature.com/news/gravitational-waves-discovery-now-officially-dead-1.16830<br /><br />Lack of thorough screening by the leading authors, and lack of proper exerimental physics behavior, in my humble opinion. The lead authors should be stigmatized in the future for this, and not be lauded as in "oh, at least they tried".Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13869903.post-52353893403007553152014-10-02T04:03:01.550-05:002014-10-02T04:03:01.550-05:00When I first heard the news, I looked at the CVs o...When I first heard the news, I looked at the CVs of the guys, and also at the paper and author list. I found that they were exclusively American, not a single European coauthor (except for one low-Temp Grenoble guy). I find that this is a RECENT hallmark of SOME American Science, that young, aspiring postdocs and assistant professors step forward, cross all scientific integrity boundaries, and push papers through, either into the media before being peer-reviewed, or launching them into high-impact journals. Those groups often have some Science or NATURE publications, but would hardly make it into PRL, where no editor pushes in the background, but bare peer reviewing takes place. The fact that the BICEP-2 paper appeared in PRL was an exception, as stated in the editorial by PRL. In the past, the PRL staff rejected even Nobel prize worthy stuff, e.g., the quantum hall effect paper of Klitzing, Dorda, Pepper, was first rejected. Now they seem to crave so much for publishing apparently Nobel prize worthy stuff that they throw overboard all rules and foundations of peer review AND good science.<br /><br />You wonder, Doug, why some of the research topics you mentioned are mostly home to Europe? Because those are fields that will probably not cause that kind of hype as the US research causes. Everything has to be Nobel prize worthy or has to have an immediate application or an impact on society. Research for the gain of knowledge seems to be outdate. With that attitude, someone who would want to develop machines to attach the retina to the back of the eye after it had become detached would never have funded fundamental microwave research, which led to the MASER, which led to the LASER, which is now the tool of choice for doing just that.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13869903.post-83597102306950010782014-09-24T09:19:30.286-05:002014-09-24T09:19:30.286-05:00Sure, but how do we know who is out of their depth...Sure, but how do we know who is out of their depth when they bypass peer review and go straight to the press? The next gatekeepers are the science journalists, but although several stories included expert comments like "If this result is confirmed..." the journalists still couldn't resist the tantalizing spin that the authors put on it. I suspect that is the message that the vast majority of readers took away.<br /><br />In the end, as you say, the episode has damaged the credibility of <i>all</i> science in the eyes of the public. And why? So the BICEP2 folks could scoop their competitors at Planck? Shame on them.<br /><br />Their backdoor use of Planck data that they did not understand is another unseemly aspect of this. Not that behavior like that is new, of course. It recalls Watson and Crick's unauthorized use of Rosalind Franklin's data to deduce the double helix. Except they were right.Don Monroehttp://www.donmonroe.infonoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13869903.post-11627230260870908812014-09-23T19:37:58.216-05:002014-09-23T19:37:58.216-05:00Don, well, that's a bit harsh to the BICEP2 fo...Don, well, that's a <i>bit</i> harsh to the BICEP2 folks. Pons and Fleischmann were clearly out of their depth (e.g., electrochemists trying to make claims about difficult calorimetry). The BICEP2 folks didn't screw up the measurement - they just took the most optimistic possible interpretation. Douglas Natelsonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13340091255404229559noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13869903.post-58775773879359203622014-09-23T18:22:56.087-05:002014-09-23T18:22:56.087-05:00Quite so.
The cold-fusion folks got a lot of grie...Quite so.<br /><br />The cold-fusion folks got a lot of grief for "publication by press conference." I'm not sure I see any meaningful difference here (except that those guys were (shudder) chemists.Don Monroehttp://www.donmonroe.infonoreply@blogger.com