A serious physics journal is retracting a two-year-old scientific paper that described the transformations of a chemical compound because it was squeezed between two items of diamond.

Such an esoteric discovering — and retraction — wouldn’t usually garner a lot consideration.

However one of many leaders of this analysis is Ranga P. Dias, a professor within the physics and mechanical engineering departments on the College of Rochester in New York who made a a lot larger scientific splash earlier this 12 months, touting the discovery of a room-temperature superconductor.

On the similar time, accusations of analysis misconduct have swirled round Dr. Dias, and his superconductor findings stay largely unconfirmed.

The retracted paper doesn’t contain superconductivity however quite describes how a comparatively mundane materials, manganese sulfide, shifts its habits from an insulator to a steel after which again to an insulator below growing stress.

A criticism that one of many graphs within the paper regarded fishy led the journal, Bodily Overview Letters, to recruit exterior specialists to take a better look.

The inquiry arrived at disquieting conclusions.

“The findings again up the allegations of information fabrication/falsification convincingly,” the journal’s editors wrote in an electronic mail to the authors of the paper on July 10.

The Instances obtained copies of the e-mail and three studies written by the skin reviewers. These haven’t been printed however have circulated amongst scientists within the area. The Campus Instances newspaper on the College of Rochester and the journal Nature reported earlier on the upcoming retraction.

The reviewers had been all unconvinced by the reasons proffered by the authors. Moreover, extra knowledge requested by the journal to again up the paper’s claims clearly didn’t match what had been printed.

Whereas Dr. Dias continues to defend the work, to some scientists, there may be now clear proof of misconduct.

“There’s no believable deniability left,” mentioned N. Peter Armitage, a professor of physics and astronomy at Johns Hopkins College in Baltimore who’s among the many scientists who’ve seen the studies. “They submitted falsified knowledge. There’s no ambiguity there in any respect.”

Over the previous few years, Dr. Dias and his colleagues have printed a sequence of spectacular findings in prime scientific journals.

The most recent declare got here in March. They described, within the journal Nature, the invention of a superconductor — a cloth that conveys electrical energy with out dropping vitality to electrical resistance — that labored at temperatures as much as 70 levels Fahrenheit (though it additionally required a crushing stress of 145,000 kilos per sq. inch). Most superconductors need to be chilled to ultracold temperatures, which limits their sensible use.

Many scientists had been skeptical, nonetheless, as a result of an earlier superconductor paper by Dr. Dias and his colleagues, additionally printed in Nature, had already been retracted. Critics have additionally found that Dr. Dias’s doctoral thesis, accomplished in 2013 at Washington State College, comprises swaths of plagiarism that had been copied from different scientists’ work.

A number of of the authors of the 2 Nature papers additionally seem on the Bodily Overview Letters paper on manganese sulfide. These embrace Dr. Dias; Ashkan Salamat, a professor of physics on the College of Nevada, Las Vegas; and Keith V. Lawler, a analysis professor at UNLV.

In a press release supplied by his publicist, Dr. Dias mentioned, “We specific our disappointment relating to the choice made by PRL’s editors and have duly submitted our responses to handle their inquiries in regards to the knowledge high quality within the authentic paper.”

No scientific misconduct occurred and the work contained no fabrication or manipulation of information, Dr. Dias mentioned within the assertion.

Dr. Salamat and Dr. Lawler didn’t reply to requests for remark.

Dr. Dias’s publicist mentioned the authors had been nonetheless in dialogue amongst themselves, and with the journal’s editors, concerning the subsequent steps.

Media representatives for the College of Rochester and the College of Nevada, Las Vegas, mentioned the colleges had been conscious of discussions of the proposed retraction, and in the event that they obtained discover that the paper was retracted due to misconduct, they’d comply with their insurance policies for dealing with such allegations.

The Bodily Overview Letters inquiry targeted on one determine within the paper that purported to point out electrical resistance in manganese sulfide. Nevertheless, very comparable curves additionally appeared in Dr. Dias’s thesis for a completely completely different materials, germanium selenide.

The scientists, labeled Reviewers Alpha, Beta, Delta and Gamma, weren’t recognized. (Alpha and Beta collaborated on a joint report.) When requested for the unique experimental knowledge used to generate the graph, Dr. Salamat supplied a spreadsheet of numbers that additional raised suspicions.

The entire reviewers famous that after they plotted Dr. Salamat’s knowledge on a chart, they didn’t see kinks seen within the printed graph. “The alleged ‘uncooked’ knowledge seems to be a smoothed and in any other case doctored model of the info proven” within the journal article, Reviewers Alpha and Beta wrote.

Of their electronic mail, the journal editors wrote, “We view this lack of correspondence and what seems to be a deliberate try and impede the investigation as one other moral breach.”

The journal informed the authors that they might volunteer to retract the paper themselves. The journal added that it will retract the paper if the authors didn’t.

Till now, each the College of Nevada, Las Vegas and the College of Rochester have lauded the potential breakthroughs {that a} room-temperature superconductor may result in.

“I hope this forces the establishments concerned — the College of Rochester, the College of Nevada, Las Vegas — to confront what’s going right here,” Dr. Armitage mentioned.

After James J. Hamlin, a professor of physics on the College of Florida, reported the similarities between the graphs, one of many paper’s authors, Simon A.J. Kimber, mentioned he instantly acknowledged issues with the resistance knowledge.

“I known as for a retraction lower than 24 hours later and was uninvolved in makes an attempt to forestall it,” Dr. Kimber mentioned in an electronic mail.

The opposite authors — Dr. Salamat and Dr. Dias, particularly — continued to defend the paper, saying that below stress, each manganese sulfide and germanium selenide act like metals, and thus it will not be shocking that each supplies would conduct electrical energy equally.

The reviewers weren’t satisfied, pointing to smaller kinks within the curves that gave the impression to be measurement glitches or noise.

“If you need an analogy,” mentioned one of many reviewers, who requested to stay nameless as a result of the reviewers haven’t been publicly recognized, “you possibly can say, Oh, one blond actress appears to be like like every other blond actress. However these blips are extra just like the mole on the cheek of Marilyn Monroe.”

To seek out one other blond actress with an similar mole on the similar location on the identical cheek would defy disbelief. That’s how carefully the manganese sulfide curve matches the germanium selenide one, this reviewer mentioned.

The conclusion within the report of Reviewer Gamma wryly famous that this match, if true, would herald a serious discovery — “a novel universality in nature” that completely different supplies below completely different situations behave the identical.

Reviewer Gamma added, “Additionally it is conceivable that these findings recommend a departure from normal practices in experimental condensed matter analysis and require nearer investigation.”

Because the Bodily Overview Letters paper faces retraction, the superconducting declare from March stays in scientific limbo.

“The group that made this phenomenal declare is a bunch that now’s demonstrably engaged in slipshod and even fraudulent knowledge dealing with,” mentioned the reviewer who spoke on the situation of anonymity. “It simply places a large beware signal on these outcomes.”

The cloud of suspicion and uncertainty hovering over Dr. Dias overshadows earlier breakthroughs by different scientists, the reviewer mentioned. Starting in 2014, a analysis group led by Mikhail Eremets of the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry in Germany confirmed that hydrogen-containing compounds are superconductors at surprisingly heat temperatures when squeezed below ultrahigh pressures.

“There actually does appear like there’s high-pressure, near-room-temperature superconductivity,” the reviewer mentioned. “This can be a phenomenal discovery and is broadly accepted in the neighborhood.”

Dr. Dias just isn’t the one researcher looking for a room-temperature superconductor. A paper posted by researchers in South Korea a couple of days in the past claims that modifying the mineral apatite produces a superconductor that works at bizarre temperatures and pressures.

The manganese sulfide episode echoes a scientific scandal twenty years in the past at Bell Labs in New Jersey. A physicist there, J. Hendrik Schön, printed groundbreaking analysis that turned out to be fabricated.

“My preliminary response is that that is similar to the Schön case by way of what seems as knowledge duplication,” mentioned Lydia L. Sohn, a professor of mechanical engineering on the College of California, Berkeley, who was one of many scientists who discovered almost similar graphs in a number of of Dr. Schön’s papers.

Dr. Sohn mentioned the proof to date was not sufficient to succeed in a assured conclusion of scientific misconduct within the manganese sulfide work. She famous {that a} panel assembled to analyze the Bell Labs scandal supplied Dr. Schön the chance to confirm his experiments.

“The PRL authors ought to be given this chance as nicely,” Dr. Sohn mentioned. If the phenomenon is actual, she mentioned, “then the info will repeat.”