On October 14, 2020, physicist Ranga Dias published a paper in Nature, claiming that he had constructed the first room-temperature superconducting material in human history. From the moment the paper was published, he and his research were embroiled in a huge academic scandal. On February 8, 2024, an independent investigation into Dias by the University of Rochester, where he works, concluded that all 16 allegations of academic misconduct against him could be established. The 124-page report, which was recently revealed, details the "shocking history of the fraud." At this point, Dias's outrageous lies and academic misconduct have been decided, and the superconducting turmoil that has lasted for more than three years and has gone through several twists and turns has finally come to an end.
Reply to the keyword "superconductivity survey" in the background of this official account to obtain the original investigation report.
The 10-month survey was completed by a team of independent scientists recruited by the university. The sensational investigative report was revealed in court filings. The report relates to four retracted papers by Dias, two of which were published in Nature on room-temperature superconductivity, and two were published in Chemical Communications [1] and Physical Review Letters [2]. In the report, investigators reviewed 16 allegations against Dias and found that in each of them, Diaz's academic misconduct was established. Dias himself did plagiarize, fabricate, and tamper with research data.
The report said that the evidence found in the investigation showed that [Dias] was not credible and that Dias should be barred from pursuing any further teaching or research career. Currently, the University of Rochester is seeking to fire Dias before the end of the current academic year. This is despite the fact that Dias was already a tenured professor at the university.
On October 14, 2020, the Dias team released the first room-temperature superconductivity study (C-S-H materials), and the paper was retracted on September 26, 2022, after nearly two years of controversy. On March 9, 2023, Dias went one step further and published the second study of room-temperature atmospheric pressure superconductivity (Lu-N-H material), and then retracted it again on November 7, 2023. After some operation, the research with the title of "the greatest scientific research achievement of the 21st century" has turned into "the biggest academic scandal of the 21st century".
Three self-examinations, no progress
It is such an ironic and absurd farce, but the process of investigating the truth in the academic community is so difficult that it is "intriguing". Prior to the start of this final full-scale investigation, the University of Rochester conducted at least three "self-examinations" of Dias's CSH room-temperature superconductivity paper in 2021-2022.
The first self-examination came because Jorge Hirsch, a condensed matter theorist at the University of California, San Diego, filed a complaint with the University of Rochester about the study. Hirsch claims that there are problems with the paper's magnetic susceptibility data, which is critical to whether CSH is a room-temperature superconductor. Subsequently, the University of Rochester hired three internal examiners, and Dias found an external examiner, forming a "self-inspection team" to investigate Hirsch's complaint. The investigation concluded on January 19, 2022, that "there is no credible evidence warranting further investigation". Information indicates that the external examiner contacted by Dias was Maddury Somayazulu, a physicist at Argonne National Laboratory. However, Somayazulu has co-authored a number of papers with Dias, including one on the properties of CSH materials.
On January 20, 2022, the day after the first self-examination was announced, Dirk van der Marel, editor-in-chief of the superconductivity research journal Physica C, reiterated his concerns about the CSH data to the University of Rochester, urging the university to open a second investigation. On April 6, 2022, an investigator accepted the request for an investigation and ruled that "no formal investigation is necessary." This judgment was reviewed by a second investigator, who also did not support a formal investigation, but considered the paper "misleading due to the omission of details" and recommended errata to the article. According to Nature, based on identifying information such as footnotes in the report, the first investigator may be Maddury Somayazulu, and the second investigator may be Russell Hemley, a physicist at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Somayazulu was suspected of having a lot of protection in the first investigation, and Hemley, like Somayazulu, also had a number of co-authored papers with Dias, making it difficult to clarify the relationship of interest.
Hemley did not formally respond to whether he served as an investigator for the second investigation. But a spokesman for Argonne National Laboratory denied that Somayazulu had ever served as an investigator. However, when asked why the footnotes in the investigation report included the words "Somayazulu_Review of NSF 2020 (CSH) Paper", the spokesperson did not respond further.
The University of Rochester's two unsuccessful self-examinations were a big disappointment to the outside world. Dias's data problems have never been clearly explained. Instead of waiting, Nature commissioned an independent reviewer to investigate Dias's CSH paper, and two reviewers on the research team found that the magnetic susceptibility data may be fabricated evidence. When Nature said it would retract the CSH paper and responded to a challenge from Hirsch, the University of Rochester conducted a third self-examination. Although the results of Nature's survey can be used, this self-examination still concluded that there is no need for a formal investigation. The investigators believe that any oddities in the data can be attributed to the way the data is processed, so there is no need for investigation. It is worth noting that the anonymous investigator in this survey is one of the investigators of the second self-examination.
In any of the three University of Rochester self-examinations, a comprehensive misconduct investigation could have been decided against Dias, but none of the three had done so. As a result, Dias was barely dealt with by the university during the first room-temperature superconductivity retraction turmoil.
The fund exerted pressure, and the water came out
In October 2022, James Hamlin, a physicist at the University of Florida at Gainesville, submitted concerns about Dias' work to the National Science Foundation (NSF). NSF sent a March 16, 2023, letter to Stephen Dewhurst, interim associate dean for research at the University of Rochester, regarding these data issues "data discrepancies that cannot be attributed to data processing."
With pressure from the NSF, within weeks, Dewhurst was in a hurry to assemble an independent investigative committee of three physicists: Marius Millot and Peter Celliers from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and Marcus Knudison from Albuquerque Sandia National Laboratory.
The three investigators put in considerable effort and conducted a thorough and productive investigation. The Board of Inquiry obtained as many records as possible, including information on computer hard drives, e-mail records and handwritten data from notebooks. They also visited 10 persons concerned and conducted no fewer than 50 interviews. Paul Canfield, a physicist at Iowa State University Ames, said: "There should be a good German word that is 50 letters long and has both the meaning of 'impressive' and 'frustrating' to give a proper assessment of the level of this report." ”
The investigators first confirmed the doubts of van der Marel, Hirsch, Hamlin, Ramshaw, and others, conclusively pointing out the academic misconduct in the study: first, Dias falsified the data for the CSH paper and published it, and then when people asked to review its raw data, Dias and his co-author, Ashkan Salamat, a physicist at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, released a set of fabricated raw data. As for the inconsistencies between the raw data and the data in the paper, Dias devised explanations, claiming that it was because of a complex data processing method used on the raw data.
If Díaz is able to provide authentic raw data, many of his doubts can be clarified immediately. Dias himself responded in a nutshell: "The fact that some of the raw data files are not published does not mean that they do not exist, nor does it indicate that I have any wrongdoing. But the raw data he promised to provide many times was never delivered, except for the set of fabricated raw data.
During their visit, investigators also found that Dias had deliberately misled his team members and collaborators about the source of the data. For example, Dias had told his partners at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, that the measurements were taken in Rochester, but he turned around and told the researchers in Rochester that the measurements were taken at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.
Dias also has a lot of lies about journals. For example, in response to another paper that PRL had retracted, PRL found that the paper was clearly data fabricated after its own investigation. And the raw data provided by Díaz at the time of the investigation is also not real. The dissertation's research was on manganese disulfide, but the raw data that Dias provided to the journal was copied from his own doctoral dissertation on the resistance of germanium tetraselenide.
The investigators' findings on the Lu-N-H paper clearly show how Dias distorted and tampered with the data. By comparing the raw data on the hard drive in the lab, the investigators found that Dias often selectively "missed" some data to cover up the resistance data that was not conducive to confirming the superconductivity of the material. On August 27, 2022, Dias's co-author, Sachith Dissanayake, reminded Dias that there was improper manipulation in the interpretation of the data. But this warning was ignored by Dias. Dias later responded that it was Dissanayake who misunderstood the data. Nature argues that the manipulated data is key to the acceptance of the Lu-N-H paper.
The coffin is closed, and the alarm bell rings for a long time
The commission sent a draft of the investigative report to Dias on December 22 last year. In a response, Dias criticized the investigators' expertise and academic integrity. He said investigators' investigative methods showed "features that are often seen in conspiracy theories" and "lacked a strong logical basis." Dias also claimed that he had been framed by universities and colleagues. These justifications can be seen in Dias's open letter translated by Zhisha in the past.
But in any case, this academic scandal has entered the stage of closing the coffin. Such serious academic misconduct, more than three years of outrageous lies, has buried his career.
But beyond that, the scandal should give the academic community more of a wake-up call. Why can a high-profile study be active on the table for three years despite serious data controversies and suspicions of academic misconduct? Why is it so difficult to investigate Dias? Nature has reported the most on Dias and has worked hardest, but the two most core papers on room temperature superconductivity were published in Nature, and the peer review and publication review issues in them are not worth studying? Even if Nature lashes out at Dias for his poor academic character, The University of Rochester's inaction will not excuse Nature's negative role in this scandal. More broadly, the fact that this scandal has been able to carry such a huge amount of energy to ferment to this day is also closely related to the huge benefits behind the golden sign of room-temperature superconductivity. How to coordinate the relationship between academics and interests, and give scientific purity to the academic community behind the complex game of interests, may be a question that we should think about further.
Bibliography:
[1] Smith, G. A. et al. Chem. Commun. 58, 9064–9067 (2022); Retraction 60, 1047 (2024).
[2] Durkee, D. et al. Phys. Rev. Lett. 127, 016401 (2021); Retraction 131, 079902 (2023).
[3] https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-00976-y