Tim Lezon

I'm just trying to make it through life alive.

[Tim Lezon @TimLezon]

I should start my tweeting on a positive note. Here's a rock that I passed daily on my commute along some of Pittsburgh's famous steps

[Tim Lezon @TimLezon]

@PhillipCompeau Better than making it into a donkey, no?

[Tim Lezon @TimLezon]

"Science moves, but slowly slowly, creeping on from point to point..."

[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

[Tim Lezon @TimLezon]

@drmadef Your brother sounds pretty cool.

[Tim Lezon @TimLezon]

@NathanClark111 Wait til you hear what astronomers call "magnitude"

[Tim Lezon @TimLezon]

@SamuelAdamsBeer : NEW COKE

[Tim Lezon @TimLezon]

@FFPMRNCOP Science is fun!

[Tim Lezon @TimLezon]

@PhillipCompeau In that case, keep your cool and laugh at attacks

[Michael Baym @baym]

Here's the thing about AI in biology: it absolutely has revolutionary potential, but any model is only as good as the data it's trained on. And there's a lot we don't know or are simply wrong about in bio.

Want to truly build AI for bio? Invest in basic discovery science.

[Tim Lezon @TimLezon]

Duh. I can't believe how few people actually know this.

[dave wagner @Dbwagner104]

the reason cats are no longer allowed to vote is because they all just wrote in their own names. for decades, they did this. absolute chaos. millions of cats, each earning one vote. plus, they'd get ink all over their paws. a mess.

this stuff is in books, people.

[Tim Lezon @TimLezon]

Just one more to break the record, Pittsburgh! We can do it! #well_regulated
https://t.co/HvgIBSOsqn

[Shaun Mahony @mahonylab]

Mark your calendars for the next Great Lakes Bioinformatics conference (GLBIO): May 13-16, 2024 in Pittsburgh, PA.

Special Session & Workshop Proposal Deadline: Oct 23
Full Paper Submission Deadline: Feb 5, 2024

https://t.co/3o757DwXhK

[Tim Lezon @TimLezon]

And the greatest irony in science funding is that the current model wouldn't even get discussed in study section.

[Michael 英泉 Eisen @mbeisen]

The greatest irony in science is that peer review would not survive peer review.

Its methods are opaque.
Its claimed benefits have never been rigorous tested.
Its impact is misrepresented are widely overstated.

[Tim Lezon @TimLezon]

@FFPMRNCOP I'm cautiously optimistic, and I'm happy that condensed matter physics is capturing the public's attention.

Replication efforts over the next few weeks should tell us whether or not it's real.

[Tim Lezon @TimLezon]

🤔🤔

[Tim Lezon @TimLezon]

🤔

[Tim Lezon @TimLezon]

This is the most fascinating and disgusting thing I've learned in a while...

[Tauana J. Cunha @tauanajc]

Ever heard about crazy hairworms that infect insects and make them jump into water so the worm can get out and find mates?

Well, we sequenced the first genomes of this entire phylum of animals, and learned that they are even weirder than we thought!

1/N

https://t.co/hp9VefI3Za

[Tim Lezon @TimLezon]

Industry: My PhD is in X, but now I'm an expert in Y.

Academia: My PhD is in X, but now I'm an expert in How To Write A Grant.

[Tim Lezon @TimLezon]

Happy that I'm not the only one with this unpopular take on Python.

[David Mimno @dmimno]

There was a tweet yesterday about how major python libraries mostly aren't written in python, and it implied that this was something that should be fixed. I take it as revealed preference: experts don't like working in python. It's also a terrible language for beginners.

[Tim Lezon @TimLezon]

22.5 + 22.5 =