The clearest précis of the room-temperature superconductivity ruckus about LK-99 (no, not that other one)—a viral, meme-laden extravaganza of semi-scientific speculation run by revelers with the patience and rigor of highly-caffeinated three-year-olds—is that it is science as a live sporting event.
For proponents, the drama is the draw. Many are veterans of hype, enthusiasts of crypto and blockchain and quantum computing, etc.—a sort of generically tech-interested crowd capable of moving from one fad to the next. The ups and downs of early replication attempts, rumors about authorial squabbles, harebrained hypotheses (can I interest you in one about type-III non-Meissner superconductivity?): All of this is part of the great rollercoaster ride, a blow-by-blow without pay-per-view (unless you have twitter blue, which many do). It is by design, and it is exciting. This is science as a live sporting event. Many are, quite literally, gambling on its odds.
Naturally, efforts to suppress the hype around LK-99 have been received about as well as a red card on the home team’s favorite player. Why blow the whistle when there is so much good that comes out of this? Hype, so the argument goes, brings a quicker confirmation and public attention to an often underappreciated branch of physics. For many onlookers, it is a bit of real exposure to physics they would not otherwise have had (a far better use of time than the latest UFO hearings in Congress—that I do not dispute). Why ruin the fun with gatekeeping? “It’s all supposed to be fun, this whole deal was quite fun.” What could be more fun than the first room-temperature superconductor replication by a Russian catgirl?
The problem with hype is that it is not harmless fun. Hype distorts the research landscape, leading substandard research to receive disproportionate attention while important results languish. Often, hype can result in eventual blowback when its promises fail to materialize, damaging trust in the scientific community. Areas of research plagued by hype may become politically toxic for researchers to get funding and work in. On a fundamental level, if goal of science is (very reductively) an attempt to systematically apply rigor to objectively understand the world, hype is opposed to that. Hype is a subjective lens applied to science; it distorts our view and damages the accuracy of our understanding. But that funhouse view is, well, fun.
This is what I think people are mad about when the hype is interrupted or called out. This room temperature superconductivity claim is their shiny new thing, and they resent anyone who would take that fun away from them. Curiously, that has not meant an aversion to criticism of the claim. In fact, some of the most attention-grabbing, lauded tweets were those that pointed out flaws or problems with the paper. When I posted about an issue with the data that Doug Natelson and I spotted, I naïvely thought it might temper some excitement and reduce the fervid attention. It became, instead, the latest clue in a great detective hunt for the ever-more eager spectators.
I should have known. Few good matches are drubbings. A good match has twists and turns, setbacks and triumphant victories, all of which should be entertaining enough to have a pint or three over. But the things which make for an electrifying match—conflict, drama, a clean narrative—are anathema to scientific needs of prudence and patience. To disentangle complex and uncertain results, professional scientists, consciously or not, tend to exhibit these traits. (When news of the persistent muon g−2 anomaly came out in 2021, particle physicists popularized a daring publicity campaign: #cautiouslyexcited.) Consequently, most researchers are unprepared for this kind of spectacle and would rather simply avoid drama. Those willing to comment publicly tend to do so with the kind of judiciousness that creates an asymmetry: The furthest detractors will go is a measured skepticism. Non-scientist proponents have no such restraint; some have taken to writing superconductivity fanfiction.
One of the biggest difficulties in reporting on this is being able to speak bluntly about the bullshit which is driving so much of the attention. Scientists and the staid publications that cover science do not have the sardonic sense to tackle this kind of crap head-on or the dexterity to follow this kind of live and evolving story. There is no Gawker for science. There is no “live” science news team in the world, much less one for physics.
As a result, the action for this is on Twitter. It is on pubpeer, and in the comments on reddit. It is not in newspapers or magazines.
Now, after this somewhat unforgiving, polemical intro, I’m going to say two things that may surprise you:
- Science journalism could learn a thing or two from the dynamism and speed of this discourse
- Science journalism has long treated science as a sporting event
The peddling of science as entertainment is not new to science journalism; there is no high horse here. Since its inception in 19th century periodicals, publishing patents of electrical gizmos and updates on theories about the aether, to contemporary reportage of quantum computers and dark matter, science journalism has always depended on its entertainment value.
It’s true that there are essential things—straight news—that the public should know about science. They should know about the climate as it warms; they should know whether the water they drink is clean; they should know about fraudulent studies of Alzheimer’s disease. Likewise, science journalism is often news-news for its practitioners (especially researchers in adjacent fields).
But what should the public know about our universe and our study of some of its most esoteric and abstruse properties? I would certainly like the public to know what a superconductor is, how electrons behave so oddly under conditions that they are, all of them, somehow jolted into a macroscopic quantum state. It is good to know such things about our universe. But it is often a luxury. It is entertainment to know that quantum mechanics holds the answers to a problem Euler dreamt up, not news. It is not the kind of knowledge that will help on the day-to-day, or form the basis for a worldview.
Seen from its material basis, science journalism is a form of entertainment. Publications must maintain subscribers and must attract the clicks of curious readers for ad revenue. All of this conspires to push cool, “gee-whiz” stories to the forefront. It’s difficult to even imagine what a constituency for hard, just-the-facts science news would look like. Unlike politics or business, science is highly specialized and the familiar readership is much, much smaller. What we have instead is science journalism for model-plane enthusiasts: that is, for interested amateurs.
There’s much more to be said about the kind of perverse incentives this creates in reportage (outright ignoring some important scientific results, staying beholden to single-study reporting and the journal publication cycle, etc.) but right now I want to focus on what this means for the superconductivity drama.
The question is therefore not whether science journalism should debase itself by seeking to entertain, but how it should entertain responsibly. Because if science journalists do not do so, it’s clear that others will entertain irresponsibly. As I write this, at about 2:30 in the morning, people have seized upon one of three new preprints to confidently proclaim: “WE ARE OFFICIALLY BACK.”
The news about LK-99 has made it far outside the typical circles reserved for musing about superconductivity, and the onus is on scientists and journalists to engage, to get in the arena now and play the game. If they don’t blow the whistle for caution, who will?
Note: Added a graf about hype because in my sleep-deprived state I hadn’t really explained why it is a priori harmful to science.
Dan Garisto 