Superconductivity debunker: this physicist exposed flaws in a blockbuster claim 超导性揭秘者：这位物理学家揭示了一个轰动性声明中的缺陷

This story is part of Nature’s 10, an annual list compiled by Nature’s editors exploring key developments in science and the individuals who contributed to them.
这个故事是《自然》杂志年度十大科学进展名单的一部分,该名单由《自然》杂志的编辑们编制,旨在探索科学领域的关键发展及其贡献者。

James Hamlin remembers the first time an experiment deceived him. As a graduate student, Hamlin saw signs of superconductivity — electrons flowing without resistance — in an unexpected material. Excited, Hamlin shared the news with his adviser, who was unfazed. “He asked me lots of questions and suggested lots of additional measurements,” Hamlin says. On further inspection, the superconductivity signal disappeared. The lesson he imbibed was straightforward: “Don’t assume you’ve discovered something,” Hamlin says.
詹姆斯·哈姆林记得第一次实验欺骗了他。作为一名研究生,哈姆林在一种意料之外的材料中看到了超导性的迹象——电子无阻力地流动。哈姆林兴奋地与他的导师分享了这一消息,但导师并没有被惊动。“他问了我很多问题,并建议做更多的额外测量,”哈姆林说。经过进一步检查,超导性信号消失了。他吸取的教训很简单:“不要假设你发现了什么,”哈姆林说。

That lesson played out on an international stage this year when Ranga Dias, a physicist at the University of Rochester, New York, reported in Nature in March that he had achieved the long-sought goal of room-temperature superconductivity, in a material held under moderate pressure.
今年,纽约罗切斯特大学的物理学家兰加·迪亚斯在《自然》杂志上报告称,他在三月份实现了长期追求的室温超导目标,这一成就是在中等压力下对一种材料进行的。这一课程在国际舞台上得到了展示。

Amid a furore of hype and criticism, Hamlin, a physicist who conducts high-pressure experiments at the University of Florida in Gainesville, and Brad Ramshaw, a superconductivity researcher at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, sent Nature their concerns about the research. (Nature’s news team is independent from its journals team.) The paper was retracted in November, generating headlines: it was Dias’s third retraction in little more than a year.
在一片炒作和批评的喧嚣中,佛罗里达大学盖恩斯维尔分校进行高压实验的物理学家哈姆林和纽约伊萨卡康奈尔大学的超导电性研究员布拉德·拉姆肖向《自然》杂志表达了他们对这项研究的担忧。(《自然》的新闻团队独立于其期刊团队。)这篇论文在11月被撤回,引发了头条新闻:这是迪亚斯在一年多的时间里第三篇被撤回的论文。

This wasn’t the first or even the second time that Hamlin had exposed problems with Dias’s work. In 2020, Dias had published a paper in Nature that also claimed to have discovered the first room-temperature superconductor, albeit at much higher pressure. All known superconductors must be kept either extremely cold or at high pressures to function. One that works at ambient temperature and pressure might permit applications such as magnets for magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) that wouldn’t need expensive cooling equipment, and highly efficient computer chips — tantalizing possibilities that have led to hype around speculative claims of room-temperature superconductivity.
这并不是汉姆林第一次或第二次揭露迪亚斯工作中的问题。2020年,迪亚斯在《自然》杂志上发表了一篇论文,同样声称发现了第一个室温超导体,尽管需要在更高的压力下。所有已知的超导体要么需要极低的温度,要么需要高压才能工作。一个能在常温常压下工作的超导体可能会允许应用,比如磁共振成像(MRI)的磁铁,这些磁铁不需要昂贵的冷却设备,以及高效的计算机芯片——这些诱人的可能性导致了围绕室温超导性的炒作和推测性声明。

After Dias’s 2020 paper came out, Jorge Hirsch, a physicist at the University of California, San Diego, thought a measurement in that study looked iffy — and had similarities to a measurement in a 2009 paper that Hamlin had co-authored. Pushed by Hirsch, Hamlin investigated his own work and found evidence that another co-author, Matthew Debessai, had manipulated those data. (Debessai, who no longer works in research, didn’t respond to a request for comment.) That paper was retracted in 2021, but Hamlin wondered whether there were problems with Dias’s 2020 study as well.
在Dias的2020年论文发表后,加州大学圣地亚哥分校的物理学家Jorge Hirsch认为该研究中的一个测量结果看起来可疑,并且与Hamlin在2009年共同撰写的一篇论文中的一个测量结果有相似之处。在Hirsch的推动下,Hamlin调查了自己的工作,并发现另一位合著者Matthew Debessai操纵了那些数据。(已不再从事研究工作的Debessai没有回应置评请求。)那篇论文在2021年被撤回,但Hamlin想知道Dias的2020年研究是否也存在问题。

It took more than a year for Dias and a co-author, Ashkan Salamat, a physicist at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, to post the data Hirsch wanted. Analyses by Hirsch, Hamlin and others found evidence of manipulation. In September 2022, Nature retracted the work; the retraction statement did not mention misconduct, and Dias denied wrongdoing.
迪亚斯和合著者、内华达大学拉斯维加斯分校的物理学家阿什坎·萨拉马特花了一年多的时间发布赫希所需的数据。赫希、哈姆林和其他人的分析发现了操纵的证据。2022年9月,《自然》撤回了这项工作;撤回声明中没有提及不当行为,迪亚斯否认有任何不当行为。

Hamlin also found that his own and others’ work had been plagiarized in Dias’s thesis — and that Dias had reused some of the thesis data in a later paper in Physical Review Letters. That paper was retracted this August. (Dias disagreed with the retraction, although he acknowledged not providing “explicit attribution” for some of his thesis.)
哈姆林还发现,他自己和其他人的工作在迪亚斯的论文中被剽窃了——迪亚斯在后来发表在《物理评论快报》上的一篇论文中重复使用了一些论文数据。那篇论文在今年八月被撤回。(尽管迪亚斯承认没有为他的论文中的一些内容提供“明确的归属”,但他对撤稿表示不同意。)

When Hamlin laid out his evidence at a virtual workshop this March, some observers were “stunned” at the work he’d put in, says Brian Skinner, a physicist at Ohio State University in Columbus and an organizer of the conference. At one point, unable to access raw electrical-resistance data, Hamlin created a tool to extract data directly from Dias’s graphs. “It was pretty heroic,” Skinner says.
当汉姆林在今年三月的一个虚拟研讨会上展示了他的证据时,一些观察者对他所做的工作感到“震惊”,俄亥俄州立大学哥伦布分校的物理学家、会议组织者布莱恩·斯金纳说。有一次,由于无法访问原始的电阻数据,汉姆林创建了一个工具,直接从迪亚斯的图表中提取数据。“这非常英勇,”斯金纳说。

This background of controversy was why many researchers were surprised that Nature published a second Dias paper in March, with another room-temperature superconductor claim, albeit in a different material.
这场争议的背景是为什么许多研究人员对《自然》杂志在三月份发表了第二篇迪亚斯的论文感到惊讶,尽管是在不同的材料中,但他再次声称发现了室温超导体。

This time, a lot of the raw data was public and questions quickly emerged online. Ramshaw and Hamlin focused on a few central concerns, including whether Dias had actually measured the electrical resistance going to zero.
这一次,大量原始数据是公开的,网上很快就出现了一些问题。Ramshaw和Hamlin关注了一些核心问题,包括Dias是否真的测量到电阻降至零。

In a subsequent back-and-forth involving Ramshaw, Hamlin and editors at Nature, Dias and his co-author Salamat did not explain how they had obtained this measurement. “We couldn’t get a square, straight answer on this very simple question,” Hamlin says. Nature’s news team reached out to Dias and Salamat for comment but did not receive any reply.
在随后涉及Ramshaw、Hamlin以及《自然》杂志编辑的来回交流中,Dias及其合著者Salamat没有解释他们是如何获得这个测量结果的。“我们无法得到这个非常简单问题的明确答案,”Hamlin说。《自然》杂志的新闻团队联系了Dias和Salamat征求评论,但没有收到任何回复。

Then, in September, 8 of the paper’s 11 co-authors (including Salamat but not Dias) requested a retraction, corroborating concerns raised by Hamlin and Ramshaw. Nature retracted the paper on 7 November, citing concerns about data integrity.
然后,在九月份,该论文11名合著者中的8人(包括萨拉马特但不包括迪亚斯)要求撤回论文,支持哈姆林和拉姆肖提出的担忧。《自然》杂志在11月7日撤回了这篇论文,理由是对数据完整性的担忧。

Hamlin and Ramshaw say data availability made the latest retraction easier: it took only half a year, rather than two years.
哈姆林和拉姆肖表示,数据的可用性使得最近的撤稿更加容易:这只花了半年时间,而不是两年。

Shanti Deemyad, a high-pressure experimentalist now at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City, supervised Hamlin in the laboratory when he was an undergraduate. She’s not surprised by his dedication. “He was very ambitious and very excited,” she says. “And he wanted to know all the details.” Even when she showed up to the lab as early as 6.30 a.m., Hamlin was there too, eager to learn.
山蒂·迪米亚德,现在是犹他大学盐湖城分校的高压实验专家,她在汉林本科时期指导过他的实验室工作。她对他的敬业精神并不感到惊讶。“他非常有雄心壮志,而且非常兴奋,”她说。“他想要知道所有的细节。”即使她早上6点半就来到实验室,汉林也在那里,急切地学习。

Hamlin isn’t a full-time sleuth and is keen to spend more time on his own superconductivity research. “It’s still really the topic in physics that I find most exciting,” he says. “The BS of human beings is much less interesting to discover than the mysteries of nature.”
汉姆林并不是一个全职侦探,他渴望花更多时间在自己的超导性研究上。“这仍然是我认为物理学中最令人兴奋的话题,”他说。“与大自然的奥秘相比,人类的废话要没那么有趣。”

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-023-03926-2

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