Nature revealed details of Dias's falsification of room-temperature superconductivity or was dismissed from the University of Rochester

In March 2023, Ranga Dias, an assistant professor at the University of Rochester in the United States, rose to fame for claiming to have discovered room-temperature superconductivity.

图丨兰加·迪亚斯(Ranga Dias)(来源:资料图)

However, the good times were short-lived, and after several scientific teams around the world found that the results of his published experiments could not be reproduced, an investigation into whether Dias had academic misconduct gradually began.

It is understood that the University of Rochester has commissioned a team of independent scientists to investigate 16 allegations involving Dias over the past 10 months.

To be clear, the agency that announced the survey was the National Science Foundation, a major funder of academic research in the United States, which has provided financial support to more than 300,000 researchers, entrepreneurs, students, and faculty in all 50 states and territories of the United States.

After the conclusion of the investigation on February 8, 2024, the team wrote a lengthy report detailing Diaz's academic misconduct in falsifying, falsifying, and plagiarizing data, and recommending that he should no longer be allowed to continue teaching or conduct research funded by the public or private sector.

In March 2024, a news team from Nature revealed how two of the condensed matter physicist's papers published in the journal distorted the data to claim the specifics of the discovery of room-temperature superconductivity, and revealed how Dias manipulated his students so that they could not detect the falsity of the data.

It is reported that shortly thereafter, there were media reports that in an investigation commissioned by the University of Rochester, evidence of academic fraud by Dias was found.

日前，Nature 在发布的题为《独家报道：官方调查揭露超导物理学家如何伪造重磅结果》（Exclusive: official investigation reveals how superconductivity physicist faked blockbuster results）的文章中[1]，对该调查的相关细节做出了进一步透露。

Specifically, the report analyzes data falsification in at least four academic papers published by Dias and his co-authors, including the two published in Nature as mentioned above, and two papers published in Chemical Communications and Physical Review Letters, respectively (Editor's note: all four papers have been retracted).

Among them, he published two papers in Nature, which obtained the results of room-temperature superconductivity in carbon-sulfide hydrides and lutetium-nitrogen hydrocarbons, respectively.

According to reports, the report makes a comprehensive analysis of the academic misconduct accusations against Dias in the academic community in recent years, and sorts out how he deliberately misled his co-authors, journal editors, and even the entire scientific community.

In response, Dias, although not publicly commented, stated in the documents recommended by his lawyer to Nature that accompanied the lawsuit that "in the criticisms and accusations, the fundamental integrity and scientific validity of our work must be reaffirmed".

In fact, the survey is not the first review of Diaz's academic achievements at the University of Rochester. Two years ago, the university conducted three preliminary investigations into his Nature paper on the discovery of room-temperature superconductivity in hydrocarbons.

The first was initiated after Jorge Eduardo Hirsch, a professor at the University of California, San Diego, complained about the university, the second was facilitated by Dirk van der Marel, editor-in-chief of the Physica C journal, and the third after Nature said it would retract Dias's paper.

However, despite the paper's skepticism, and even accusations of falsification of the magnetic susceptibility data that led to the results of room-temperature superconductivity, the University of Rochester's conclusion after the three investigations remains that "there is no credible evidence that further investigation is needed."

Going back to the investigation that was commissioned by the National Science Foundation, many of the allegations of academic misconduct against Dias could have been dispelled if he had been able to provide authentic and original information, such as data taken directly from the lab and containing details such as specific times.

Regrettably, in the face of the above findings, he not only wrote: "The absence of certain raw data files does not indicate that they do not exist, nor does it imply any wrongdoing on my part." At the same time, he has never fulfilled his repeated promises to publicly provide raw data.

In addition to this, Dias has repeatedly misled lab members and other collaborators about the source of the data, and has lied to journals such as Physical Review Letters.

As a result, according to Nature, the commission of inquiry noted that "the evidence found in this investigation suggests that [Dias] is not credible".

At the same time, the University of Rochester is also planning to take the next personnel action against Dias, possibly by terminating his previous tenure as a tenured professor at the end of the 2024-2025 academic year.

Resources:

1. D., Garisto, Exclusive: official investigation reveals how superconductivity physicist faked blockbuster results. Nature （2024）.https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-00976-y

https://science.slashdot.org/story/24/03/21/1443224/superconductor-scientist-engaged-in-research-misconduct-probe-finds

https://interestingengineering.com/energy/room-temperature-superconductor-claims-discredited-by-official-investigation

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-022-05294-9

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-023-06774-2

https://www.theverge.com/2024/3/20/24106779/lk-99-superconductor-researcher-ranga-dias-misconduct

https://www.hajim.rochester.edu/me/people/faculty/dias-ranga/index.html

https://www.nsf.gov/

Support: Zou Mingzhi

Operation/Typesetting: He Chenlong