TYin

[TYin @Tengh_Yin]

@zhigangsuo I have that picture in my mind because I did the exact same thing once at a hotel in Baltimore.🤣

[Susmita Naskar @drsusmitanaskar]

This morning I received review of my PhD student's work and the reviewer felt the quality of the paper can only be improved by citing his own 25 papers. The more interesting fact is he suggested review for completely different paper. Some people take review process like a joke!!

[TYin @Tengh_Yin]

@BuzhidaoUS @zhigangsuo Totally agree. I had a two-year working experimence in Huawei after phd. What I found is that it's difficult to get down to think a science problem deeply. The driving force for industrical community is product and money, large gap with science. That's why i back to academia.

[Andrew Akbashev @Andrew_Akbashev]

It’s a story of how academia goes wrong. And how it self-corrects.

A must read for everyone:

2020 - A discovery of room-temperature superconductivity is published in Nature by Ranga Dias

2023 - The second RT superconductor is reported by Dias in Nature

2024 - The first paper is retracted. Then the second. No one could replicate his results.

The forth investigation by external experts showed that ‘he concealed information from his students, manipulated them and shut them out of key steps in the research process’.

▫️

The story looks like this:

1. Dias proposed that adding carbon to H3S might lead to RT superconductivity.

2. His PhD students could NOT observe the signs of superconductivity in the samples (no resistivity drop, no susceptibility change).

3. Suddenly, Dias emailed everyone and announced the discovery of RT superconductivity. Students were shocked.

4. The draft was sent to the team at 5.13 p.m. and SUBMITTED to Nature at 8.26 p.m. In just TWO hours! No one had time to read it.

5. Dias told the students he ‘had taken all the resistance and magnetic-susceptibility data before coming to Rochester’.

6. 3 reviewers were concerned. Only one supported publication. It was published on 14 October 2020.

7. A year(!!!) later Dias made raw data publicly available. This prompted data check where ‘data points were separated by suspiciously regular intervals’.

8. Then, Nature initiated post-publication review by 4 experts. Two said there were big problems.

9. Following rebuttal & responses, Nature retracted the manuscript. Dias did NOT tell the students about the post-publication review process and data fabrication concerns.

▫️

Now, the 2nd paper raised concerns about PhD students:

- Dias sent them the draft at 2.09 am and asked for comments by 10.30 am (same day). The draft had NO figures.

- The students convinced Dias to postpone submission by one day.

- The students raised concerns about the pressure data because none of it was “anything that we actually measured”. Dias dismissed it with: “Pressure is a joke.”

- Then ‘Dias gave them an ultimatum: remove their names, or let him send the draft’. It was very intimidating. The students gave in: “What if I [object] and he makes the rest of my life miserable?”

▫️

My conclusions:

1. This situation shows how easily a supervisor can manipulate inexperienced students into publishing and believing the results. I am sure there are many other examples in academia that just haven’t surfaced.

2. All data must be publicly available. Before publication.

3. Nature took the case professionally, asking for extra refereeing and post-publication review multiple times as things were unfolding. BUT it's not so common. I heard many stories where some journals just didn’t care.

4. Finally and MOST importantly - students suffer the most.

As one of them said:

“My thesis is going to be full of fabricated data. How am I supposed to graduate in this lab?”

#academia #PhD #research

[TYin @Tengh_Yin]

@Junsoo_twit Congratulations junsoo!

[Zhigang Suo @zhigangsuo]

I’m deeply honored to be elected a foreign member of Chinese Academy of Sciences.

The Academy announced the election today, a day before Thanksgiving.

Thank you all—family, friends, coworkers.

30 foreign members elected this year⤵️

[TYin @Tengh_Yin]

@zhigangsuo Hearty Congratulations and happy Thanksgiving Zhigang!👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻

[TYin @Tengh_Yin]

@ShiQingWang4 @zhigangsuo We actually have a paper on essential work of fracture of elastomers

[TYin @Tengh_Yin]

@zhigangsuo Three giants!

[Science girl @sciencegirl]

This video is controversial but I’d like to explore its physics in this thread

As I see it the potential energy of the nails convert to kinetic energy so it transfers energy all through the box the entropy of the system is increased 1/🧵

[TYin @Tengh_Yin]

@jianyuvli @EmlWebinar found~

[TYin @Tengh_Yin]

@jianyuvli @EmlWebinar A paper link? 😁

[TYin @Tengh_Yin]

@Junsoo_twit @zhigangsuo @MeixuanziS @GuogaoZhang Big Congratulations!👍👍👍

[Quan Jiao @QuanJiao]

Degradable polymers are under intense development for sustainability and healthcare. The chemical reaction that decomposes a polymer can also grow a crack. Here, we demonstrate that a crack slows down markedly in a composite of two degradable materials.
https://t.co/RHHalty92z

[Zhigang Suo @zhigangsuo]

Polyurethane elastomers suffer from fatigue, with a fatigue threshold about 100 J/m2.

In this paper, we make a composite of polyurethane fibers (Spandex) and a polyurethane matrix. The all-polyurethane composite has a fatigue threshold of 3900 J/m2. https://t.co/2SP4Qd8ErH

[TYin @Tengh_Yin]

@Bolei_Deng @zhigangsuo These two cars are not on the same level. The prices are also much different🥲

[TYin @Tengh_Yin]

@zhigangsuo Tesla is more like an electronic than a car. Black is easy to be soiled but really cool😁

[Cell Reports Physical Science @CellRepPhysSci]

Online now: "Photoinitiator-grafted polymer chains for integrating hydrogels with various materials" by Zhigang Suo (@zhigangsuo) and teams (@Tengh_Yin) at @kavli_harvard and @ZJU_China

https://t.co/L1ATuo4Vt9

[TYin @Tengh_Yin]

We use 4-ABP molecules in preparing PGPCs, which serve as both initiators and crosslinkers of the hydrogel.

[Shawn Lavoie @ShawnLavoieMec]

De-concentration of stress along fibers leads to high toughness in ceramic matrix composites when loading rate is low. At higher rates, the viscous shear stress between the matrix and the fiber becomes large and contracts this toughening mechanism.

https://t.co/WZpSsiQhhv