Publishing important work that lacks validity or reproducibility – pushing frontiers or corrupting science?

ABSTRACT

Scientific research requires objectivity, impartiality and stringency. However, scholarly literature is littered with preliminary and explorative findings that lack reproducibility or validity. Some low-quality papers with perceived high impact have become publicly notable. The collective effort of fellow researchers who follow these false leads down blind alleys and impasses is a waste of time and resources, and this is particularly damaging for early career researchers. Furthermore, the lay public might also be affected by socioeconomic repercussions associated with the findings. It is arguable that the nature of scientific research is such that its frontiers are moved and shaped by cycles of published claims inducing in turn rounds of validation by others. Using recent example cases of room-temperature superconducting materials research, I argue instead that publication of perceptibly important or spectacular claims that lack reproducibility or validity is epistemically and socially irresponsible. This is even more so if authors refuse to share research materials and raw data for verification by others. Such acts do not advance, but would instead corrupt science, and should be prohibited by consensual governing rules on material and data sharing within the research community, with malpractices appropriately sanctioned.

KEYWORDS:

• Epistemic responsibility
• research integrity
• research misconduct
• room-temperature superconductor
• social responsibility

Acknowledgments

The author is grateful to Dr Shih, another anonymous reviewer, as well as the editors Dr Mohammad Hosseini, Dr David Resnik and Dr Lisa Rasmussen for their constructive comments, which improved the manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. Preprints have digital object identifiers (DOI) and a permanent digital record. Major databases such as PubMed and Scopus are now accepting preprints for indexing.

2. https://patentscope.wipo.int/search/en/detail.jsf?docId=WO2023064019

3. A patent on LK-99 has also been filed by the Korean group https://patents.google.com/patent/WO2023027536A1/en?oq=WO2023%2f027536A

4. It would be fair to say that the world began to take note of LK-99 after the appearance of the two arXiv hosted preprints. However, the major data claiming superconductivity in LK-99 has already been presented in an earlier peer-reviewed paper in Korean in the Journal of the Korean Crystal Growth and Crystal Technology (in which Lee, Kim and Kwon and three others are listed as coauthors).

Additional information

Funding

The authors reported there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article.