Will the "First Room-Temperature Ambient-Pressure Superconductor" paper be retracted (by 2025)?

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Resolves YES if the following arxiv link is updated to include a retraction of the original results, before the end of 2025. NO otherwise.

Small experimental adjustments or clarifications won't count. The paper is allowed to produce a genuine new discovery, as long as the claim to have produced room-temperature ambient-pressure superconductors is retracted. If there is a disagreement among the authors, any author registering a retraction is sufficient. If the authors publish a retraction but don't bother updating the arxiv, I will likely still accept it as a retraction.

Statements by journalists or other scientists won't count.

Main paper: https://arxiv.org/abs/2307.12008

Companion paper: https://arxiv.org/abs/2307.12037

This question is based on https://manifold.markets/Mira/will-the-first-roomtemperature-ambi but with a longer timeframe.

The First Room-Temperature Ambient-Pressure Superconductor

For the first time in the world, we succeeded in synthesizing the room-temperature superconductor ($T_c \ge 400$ K, 127$^\circ$C) working at ambient pressure with a modified lead-apatite (LK-99) structure. The superconductivity of LK-99 is proved with the Critical temperature ($T_c$), Zero-resistivi…

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#Science

#superconductivity

#LK-99

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Arxiv's withdrawal policy is pretty cosmetic: https://info.arxiv.org/help/withdraw.html

Google indexes 25,500 withdrawn notifications out of 19,700,000 PDFs on site:arxiv.org. Knowing that most of that 0.1% was withdrawn for bookkeeping or publication conflict reasons, odds don't look good.

predictedNO

@alexkropivny I have been trying to tell people for months. Retractions are not a thing

predictedNO

Strange how flat this has been lately really, as about 10% of the remaining time has passed

I think y'all are overestimating how common arXiv retractions are. There is very little incentive to do this even if everyone agrees it's wrong.

The paper is not even published. It needs to be published in a journal first in order to be retracted. Or does a withdrawal from arxiv count as a "retraction"? There's not a lot of pressure to do so.

predictedYES

@DanielTegnered Withdrawal from arxiv counts as retraction yes ("arxiv link is updated to include a retraction of the original results")

I believe it's reasonably common for papers to be withdrawn when discovered to be incorrect. There's more discussion about this on https://manifold.markets/Mira/will-the-first-roomtemperature-ambi

If you can create pockets of higher pressure via lattice defects straining the material then the ambient pressure is sorta irrelevant.

Hmmm, this market is slightly misleading. I think it's very possible that THIS paper (the 3 author one) will be retracted but the SISTER paper (the 6 author one) will not, due to this one being a hasty and incomplete version of the other, without it having any bearing on the validity of the underlying claims.

predictedNO

@BenjaminShindel It's not misleading, you just have to be aware that the question is about retraction of a paper, not about whether LK-99 is a superconductor.

I think it's very possible that THIS paper (the 3 author one) will be retracted but the SISTER paper (the 6 author one) will not, due to this one being a hasty and incomplete version of the other, without it having any bearing on the validity of the underlying claims.

This is correct. Or both of them could be retracted (it seems like they both have issues) even if LK-99 actually is a superconductor. Or the papers could be wrong but not retracted.

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