The physicist Ranga Dias has been criticized for months. He attracted attention about a year ago with a scientific discovery – as was believed at the time: Ranga Dias and his team from the University of Rochester in New York claimed to have discovered a material called lutetium hydride (LuH), which has highly attractive electrical properties. It should be a room temperature superconductor, such a material would revolutionize electronics. The work was in a scientific journal at the time Nature been published.
Shortly after publication, skepticism could be heard from the community; other research groups were unable to reproduce the results. Eventually, Dias’ co-authors, some of whom were his graduate students, reached out Nature and asked for the article to be retracted. In November, the Journal followed their request.
Dias, in turn, has been suing his university since December for withdrawing its student employees from him in August. In the course of these legal proceedings a 124-page report on Ranga Dias’ case unearthedthe Nature News has now evaluated. Three independent scientists created it for the University of Rochester. They come to the conclusion that Dias knowingly manipulated, falsified and plagiarized data. In all 16 allegations that the experts examined, the physicist was accused of scientific misconduct.
Measured values deliberately omitted
Dias therefore probably did not simply make mistakes and act unwisely, but rather deliberately cheated. The report explains that he is said to have lied to his colleagues and co-authors and, after initial criticism of his research, published fake measurement data.
Before the LuH paper, another work by Dias’ group was already in progress Nature has been withdrawn, which claimed to have shown the discovery of another supposed room temperature superconductor called CSH in 2020. Had in March Nature News revealedthat slides in both Nature– Scientific articles had distorted data and had misled his colleagues and co-working students about it. The new study now describes how he probably did it: Dias is said to have deliberately omitted measurements that would have raised doubts about the superconductivity of the LuH material. Dias also turned a measurement curve upside down to create a signature characteristic of superconductors. The report also describes that slides in two other specialist articles could also have been misleading in other journals.
To date, Dias has not released the real measurement data on which his alleged sensational findings are based. The University of Rochester had received several complaints about Dias’s research early on, which the university apparently had examined by two researchers who had previously worked with Dias on the subject, such as Nature News from the court documents. Both experts did not consider further investigations necessary at the time. It was only the American research institution NSF that forced the university to take a closer look at whether there was any misconduct.
Ranga Dias wanted to face each other Nature News not comment on the report. In the court documents he is quoted as saying: “It is essential to reaffirm the fundamental integrity and scientific validity of our work amidst all the criticism and accusations.” The authors of the study recommend that he no longer be allowed to research and teach. You can’t trust Dias.