College of Rochester physicist Ranga Dias made headlines together with his debatable claims of high-temperature superconductivity—and made headlines once more when the 2 papers reporting the breakthroughs have been later retracted beneath suspicion of clinical misconduct, even though Dias denied any wrongdoing. The college performed a proper investigation over the last yr and has now terminated Dias’ employment, The Wall Boulevard Magazine reported.
“Prior to now yr, the college finished an excellent and thorough investigation—performed via a panel of nationally and across the world recognized physicists—into information reliability considerations inside of a number of retracted papers during which Dias served as a senior and corresponding creator,” a spokesperson for the College of Rochester stated in a observation to the WSJ, confirming his termination. “The overall document concluded that he engaged in analysis misconduct whilst a college member right here.”
The spokesperson declined to elaborate additional on the main points of his departure, and Dias didn’t reply to the WSJ’s request for remark. Dias didn’t have tenure, so the overall determination rested with the Board of Trustees after a advice from college President Sarah Mangelsdorf. Mangelsdorf had referred to as for terminating his place in an August letter to the chair and vice chair of the Board of Trustees, so the verdict must now not come as a wonder. Dias’ lawsuit claiming that the investigation was once biased was once pushed aside via a pass judgement on in April.
Ars has been following this tale ever since Dias first burst onto the scene with studies of a high-pressure, room-temperature superconductor, printed in Nature in 2020. Whilst that paper was once being retracted because of considerations concerning the validity of a few of its information, Dias printed a 2d paper in Nature claiming a an identical step forward: a superconductor that works at excessive temperatures however reasonably decrease pressures. In a while later on, that paper was once retracted as smartly. As Ars Science Editor John Timmer reported in the past:
Dias’ lab was once excited about high-pressure superconductivity. At excessive pressures, the orbitals the place electrons hang around get distorted, which will modify the chemistry and digital houses of fabrics. It will imply the formation of chemical substances that do not exist at standard pressures, at the side of distinct conductivity. In quite a few instances, those adjustments enabled superconductivity at strangely excessive temperatures, even though nonetheless smartly underneath the freezing level of water.
Dias, then again, supposedly discovered a mixture of chemical substances that may spice up the transition to superconductivity to close room temperature, even though handiest at excessive pressures. Whilst the consequences have been believable, the main points relating to how probably the most information was once processed to supply some of the paper’s key graphs have been missing, and Dias did not supply a transparent rationalization.
The following investigation cleared Dias of misconduct for that first paper. Then got here the second one paper, which reported some other high-temperature superconductor forming at much less excessive pressures. On the other hand, attainable issues quickly become obvious, with lots of the authors calling for its retraction, even though Dias didn’t.
