Nature journal - Fresh Lime Soda

Rescuing superconductivity

Dec 21, 2024 4 min read

From a paper in Nature Reviews Physics, December 19, 2024: One of the forefront fields of modern superconductivity research is that on hydrides at high pressures. Over the past few years, this resear…

The journal's part in a retraction

Sep 29, 2023 3 min read

Science Ashkan Salamat Brad Ramshaw James Hamlin lutetium hydride Nature journal peer review Physical Review Letters Ranga Dias retraction room-temperature superconductivity

What explains a journal's peer-review producing two different results on two separate occasions?…

Scientists' conduct affects science

Sep 7, 2023 4 min read

Analysis Science Douglas Natelson Majorana zero modes Microsoft Research Mikhail Eremets Nature journal objectivity Paul Feyerabend Ranga Dias rationalism Russell Hemley self-correcting

Nature News has published an excellent feature by Edwin Cartlidge on the "wall of scepticism" that arose in response to the latest superconductivity claim from Ranga Dias et al., purportedly…

What's with superconductors and peer-review?

Aug 6, 2023 7 min read

Analysis Scicomm Science academic publishing arXiv Jan Hendrik Schön LK-99 Nature journal peer review preprint papers Ranga P Dias room-temperature superconductivity Science journal

Throughout the time I've been a commissioning editor for science-related articles for news outlets, I've always sought and published articles about academic publishing. It's the part of th…

A 'bold' vision

Jul 30, 2022 1 min read

Science Nature journal research assessment

'Support Europe's bold vision for responsible research assessment', Nature editorial, July 27, 2022: The Agreement on Reforming Research Assessment, announced on 20 July and open for sign…

The cycle

Nov 7, 2019 1 min read

Science for-profit publishing impact factor Nature journal peer review prestige bias prestige journals publish or perish scientific publishing

Is it just me or does everyone see a self-fulfilling prophecy here? https://twitter.com/nature/status/1192129029924634625 For a long time, and assisted ably by the ‘publish or perish’ paradigm, rese…

Why are the Nobel Prizes still relevant?

Oct 16, 2019 6 min read

Culture Op-eds Science Abhijit Banerjee Albert Einstein Appa Rao Podile Booker Prize Brian Keating Caltech Chien-Shiung Wu CV Raman Esther Duflo Fermilab Göran Hansson gender-based discrimination Hindutva Hugo Award impact factor Isaac Asimov John B Goodenough late capitalism Lise Meitner Margaret Atwood nationalism Nature journal Nobel laureates Nobel Prize prestige bias Prime Minister Narendra Modi sexism The Big Bang Theory Vera Rubin

Note: A condensed version of this post has been published in The Wire. Around this time last week, the world had nine new Nobel Prize winners in the sciences (physics, chemistry and medicine), all bu…

Prestige journals and their prestigious mistakes

Jul 19, 2019 3 min read

Op-eds Science carbon dioxide climate change climate geoengineering morality Nature journal Nature Scientific Reports retraction index Science journal

On June 24, the journal Nature Scientific Reports published a paper claiming that Earth's surface was warming by more than what non-anthropogenic sources could account for because it was simply mo…