A Korean superconductivity academic body invalidated the research results from a team of Korean researchers claiming to have developed a room-temperature superconductor in its preliminary assessment.
That’s not how science generally works. It’s not up to others to disprove your results. It’s up to you to prove results to them.
You generally do this by very carefully explaining what you did and what the results where. Then others can follow your instructions and get the same results.
If they don’t get the same results you haven’t proven anything.
If the claim can’t be replicated. it lacks evidence/proof.
Without evidence the claim is baseless. It does not have to be disproved to be considered baseless.
Ergo lack of poof is consequentially the same as being disproved in the long run. The claim is considered false.
This happens all the time, for instance the cold fusion claim in 1989, was never disproved, but it couldn’t be replicated. So it is now considered false, ergo the result is similar to being disproved, because there is no evidence it is considered false.
As I said, at this point nothing has been proven or disproven, so you’re agreeing with me that the claim is baseless.
However, lack of proof is not the same thing as being disproven at all. Disproven means it has been proven to not be true.
If I make a claim and say that it’s possible to combine flour, eggs, and milk and bake for some period of time to get a cake, that is true. At this point it has not been proven or disproven by anyone.
If you try to replicate my result and use 5 lbs of buckwheat flour, 1 egg, and 2 gallons of milk, it will not result in a cake. That does not mean you have disproven my claim. It means your replication failed. There are countless ways mess up baking a cake. We’re talking about quantum mechanics here and the precision of an oven.
If one other person tries it and succeeds in a cake being created, that does prove my claim to be true.
The issue here is that the process for making LK-99 is not deterministic at this point. Disproven means proof that it’s wrong. Lack of proof means, well… lack of proof.
lack of proof is not the same thing as being disproven at all.
Yes it is, lack of proof makes the claim baseless, the default for a baseless claim is to consider it false. Ergo the result is the same as if it actually was disproved.
But that’s not the problem here, you are reversing the burden of proof. The burden of proof is always with the one who has the claim. If he is not able to describe a process where the results can be replicated, it will ultimately after enough trials, be considered a false claim.
There is nothing in that process about actively disproving the claim.
One way in which one would attempt to shift the burden of proof is by committing a logical fallacy known as the argument from ignorance. It occurs when either a proposition is assumed to be true because it has not yet been proven false or a proposition is assumed to be false because it has not yet been proven true.
what may be asserted without evidence, may be dismissed without evidence
That’s the same as considering a baseless claim false because it has no evidence.
You are committing this logical fallacy.
No you are making the mistake of comparing a “proposition” with a scientific claim that has been examined. Also you are making the mistake of using semantics to discard the scientific method. What you are arguing would in science be the same as claiming a hypothesis false without examination. That would be an argument from ignorance.
Not all claims are equal, there’s a difference between a scientific claim and saying I had cereal for breakfast. Questioning an everyday personal experience is very different from questioning a scientific claim without evidence.
Basically, repeat the experiment under a wide range of conditions, and show that the conditions for success, if any, are far beyond the original claim. I always loved the ‘mythbusters’ approach: if one bible can’t stop a bullet, how about two bibles? ten? where is the cutoff between true and false?
We have seen a bunch of samples float, and we have seen papers detect no superconductivity on samples that don’t float. The missing damning evidence would be a paper that manages to produce samples that do float but aren’t superconducting. Instead we are getting a slow trickle of reasons why other causes for the material to float are less and less likely, while superconductivit in lk99 is still perfectly plausible. Not to mention the various theoretical papers that also seem to indicate very high temperature superconductivity is plausible to expected in lk99.
On top of all that there is a second group that has a prepub paper showing high temperature superconductivity.
For this to turn into a nothing burger either all the various observed cases of levitation would all have to be wrong somehow, or despite all theoretical expectations this material would have to be diamagnetic, while also being a high temperature superconductor (which is a pretty rare combination of properties on top), or the paper measuring high temperature superconductivity would have to be wrong and still despite all theoretical expectations this material would have to be diamagnetic not superconducting even though our (admitedly flawed) models indicate the reverse.
Well there are this one and this one who both seem to be unable to replicate the results.
Inability to replicate results does not disprove anything. Ability to replicate results does prove something.
The production of LK-99 is not so refined to be consistent, so results will vary.
That’s not how science generally works. It’s not up to others to disprove your results. It’s up to you to prove results to them.
You generally do this by very carefully explaining what you did and what the results where. Then others can follow your instructions and get the same results.
If they don’t get the same results you haven’t proven anything.
Nobody said these researchers have proven anything. It is how science works because it’s how logic works.
Inability to prove something doesn’t mean it has been disproven. All it means is that it has not been proven.
You are turning things on their head.
If the claim can’t be replicated. it lacks evidence/proof.
Without evidence the claim is baseless. It does not have to be disproved to be considered baseless.
Ergo lack of poof is consequentially the same as being disproved in the long run. The claim is considered false.
This happens all the time, for instance the cold fusion claim in 1989, was never disproved, but it couldn’t be replicated. So it is now considered false, ergo the result is similar to being disproved, because there is no evidence it is considered false.
As I said, at this point nothing has been proven or disproven, so you’re agreeing with me that the claim is baseless.
However, lack of proof is not the same thing as being disproven at all. Disproven means it has been proven to not be true.
If I make a claim and say that it’s possible to combine flour, eggs, and milk and bake for some period of time to get a cake, that is true. At this point it has not been proven or disproven by anyone.
If you try to replicate my result and use 5 lbs of buckwheat flour, 1 egg, and 2 gallons of milk, it will not result in a cake. That does not mean you have disproven my claim. It means your replication failed. There are countless ways mess up baking a cake. We’re talking about quantum mechanics here and the precision of an oven.
If one other person tries it and succeeds in a cake being created, that does prove my claim to be true.
The issue here is that the process for making LK-99 is not deterministic at this point. Disproven means proof that it’s wrong. Lack of proof means, well… lack of proof.
Yes it is, lack of proof makes the claim baseless, the default for a baseless claim is to consider it false. Ergo the result is the same as if it actually was disproved.
But that’s not the problem here, you are reversing the burden of proof. The burden of proof is always with the one who has the claim. If he is not able to describe a process where the results can be replicated, it will ultimately after enough trials, be considered a false claim.
There is nothing in that process about actively disproving the claim.
This is not correct.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burden_of_proof_(philosophy)
You are committing this logical fallacy.
That’s the same as considering a baseless claim false because it has no evidence.
No you are making the mistake of comparing a “proposition” with a scientific claim that has been examined. Also you are making the mistake of using semantics to discard the scientific method. What you are arguing would in science be the same as claiming a hypothesis false without examination. That would be an argument from ignorance.
Not all claims are equal, there’s a difference between a scientific claim and saying I had cereal for breakfast. Questioning an everyday personal experience is very different from questioning a scientific claim without evidence.
How do I go about disproving something then?
It’s extremely hard to disprove things in general as opposed to proving them, unless you’re dealing with math or logic.
Basically, repeat the experiment under a wide range of conditions, and show that the conditions for success, if any, are far beyond the original claim. I always loved the ‘mythbusters’ approach: if one bible can’t stop a bullet, how about two bibles? ten? where is the cutoff between true and false?
We have seen a bunch of samples float, and we have seen papers detect no superconductivity on samples that don’t float. The missing damning evidence would be a paper that manages to produce samples that do float but aren’t superconducting. Instead we are getting a slow trickle of reasons why other causes for the material to float are less and less likely, while superconductivit in lk99 is still perfectly plausible. Not to mention the various theoretical papers that also seem to indicate very high temperature superconductivity is plausible to expected in lk99.
On top of all that there is a second group that has a prepub paper showing high temperature superconductivity.
For this to turn into a nothing burger either all the various observed cases of levitation would all have to be wrong somehow, or despite all theoretical expectations this material would have to be diamagnetic, while also being a high temperature superconductor (which is a pretty rare combination of properties on top), or the paper measuring high temperature superconductivity would have to be wrong and still despite all theoretical expectations this material would have to be diamagnetic not superconducting even though our (admitedly flawed) models indicate the reverse.