This investigation of Ranga Dias' superconductivity publications is remarkable for multiple reasons.

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-00716-2

Nobody comes out of it well, but Nature are much more transparent about the review process than I can ever remember. (It's a little unclear if that was spontaneous, but, if not, the frequently claimed independence of Nature News came good.)

Thread. /1

The "research" is at times risible. Key experimental results appeared suddenly in a manuscript version upon which lab members were given a couple of hours to comment before submission to Nature.

"When the students asked Dias about the stunning new data, they say, he told them he had taken all the resistance and magnetic-susceptibility data before coming to Rochester."

Just nonchalantly sitting on proof of room-temperature superconductivity for a few years, as one does. /2

The students are definitely not the villains of the piece, but if they "did not suspect misconduct at the time" and "trusted their adviser", they seem somewhat naive under the circumstances. This was Harvard. /3

For the first paper, Nature engaged three referees and there were three rounds of review. One referee was strongly positive, the other two did not support publication. Nature went ahead anyway.

I can't think of a previous black on white example where Nature have admitted allowing impact to override quality, although that's always been the tacit implication of their editorial policy. And this is exactly the result they risk with that policy. /4

Nature did try to deal with the mess when they received complaints about the data, and they ended up retracting the paper. Gone are the days of stonewalling all such problems, and good riddance.

Procedures can certainly be approved, though. Co-authors (students) had been kept out of the loop during the investigation, which they only discovered when asked if they agreed with the retraction. Obviously they should have been contacted as soon as the investigation began. /5

Incredibly, though, Nature then managed to accept another paper from Dias about a new superconducting material.

EiC Magdalena Skipper: "Our editorial policy considers every submission in its own right”. That policy is shown to be dangerously naive.

Also: "decisions should be made on the basis of the scientific quality, not who the authors are." This paper was an embarrassing failure of that ideal. How do Nature aim to improve their processes? /6

Nature were not helped by the institution, Rochester University. Only the *fourth* investigation identified any problems. During none of the first three were any of the students contacted! Simply pathetic. Nobody, including journals, should rely on (non-transparent) institutional investigations. /7

@BorisBarbour Good write-up, thanks. That's what I find most striking as well, Rochester University only got around to ask the grad students on the *fourth* investigation. What were they checking in the previous rounds, I wonder?