some possibilities:

- they have not been able to conclusively replicate anything and don't want to publish a negative result for fear of someone else publishing a conclusive positive result later.

- they are more careful to publish something that they are not (yet?) 100% sure about

- they don't care so much about the whole 'science in the spotlight' thing and prefer to go the traditional route of publishing after peer review of one or more papers rather than to make YT videos and having to fend off a barrage of interaction

- fear of getting it wrong.

Indeed, if I am not mistaken the paper was put out on pre-print on 22nd July?

If anything the surprising thing is the warp speed of replication from the Chinese Institutes. Very exciting to see.

- There are way more STEM graduates in China by a wide margin

- 18/20 of top universities in the world for chemistry research is in China according to Nature, including one of the attempts by USTC (#2 ranking): https://www.nature.com/nature-index/institution-outputs/gene...

- Supply chain is faster in China for chemicals and resources

- China has more money/equipment for this sort of stuff

The USA and Europe are 'on average' also more pro-science than the rest of the world, but I think the East has the edge in education and comes across as more focused on progress. Probably this is underpinned in part because they have a ton of very hard problems that need solving and in the 'rich West' people are much less driven because their lives and the lives of their families are on average already quite plushy.

It makes you wonder what could happen in Africa and Latin America once they embrace education and science.

There’s quite a lot of anti-intellectualism in the US. Therefore, there’s an equal amount of anti-science.

Meanwhile, every Chinese I’ve ever met is pro-education and thinks highly of science.

I didn’t want to get into it too much but I wrote that Chinese people are on average, more pro-science because they’re less religious or that their religion does not strongly contradict with science.

I’m guessing your parents’ HK church friends are Christians?

The mainland Chinese social order is secular. The technocratic state, the CCP, had a lot to do with that. I would actually argue that technocracy is a superficial form of scientific culture.

Young researchers in China often face intense competition and pressure. While they are generally well-funded in the short-term, even more so than their counterparts in the US or Europe, the lack of long-term career security can be challenging. They must continuously chase after every potential scientific breakthrough, like LK-99, not just out of passion or curiosity, but as a necessary step for survival in their career.

Furthermore, the system in China offers many awards, grants, and titles that are tied to age. These are not just for prestige but are critical for progressing in their career. This situation adds another layer of urgency and competition among young researchers.

I don’t know, my fellow PhD students in EU have the same fears.

What would some PhD student in EU who is worried about job security be able to do about it constructively?

I did a post-doc in China, so that's my sample size N=1 piece of cheap opinion

https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV1cY4y1y7ZM

Translation of the title: If room temperature superconductivity is really repeated, I will eat shit

Then this topic became hot in bilibili. Currently the first LK-99 replication video reaches nearly 10 million views.

Good rigorous science takes time to produce. It can take anywhere between several months to a year or more, and the career implications for rushing something out that is later found lacking is not great.

On a tangent, this idea of reputation keeps on coming up in this whole discussion and I am burdened by it in a way I don't fully understand. The way people have talked, if this LK-99 doesn't work out, then it is almost as if those who published this did something _morally_ wrong. Well, morally wrong is not quite true, but the way people talk about it tanking their reputation it feels like such a strong statement. Is there some way we can focus on the science and not get bogged down in the very human reputational part of this whole thing? It's almost as if a good chunk of the scientific community don't care about the benefits the science brings but the reputational benefits.

Of course they care about science itself, but there's a limit to what risks they'll be willing to take when it affects them personally.

For people with a relatively low reputation (or no reputation, i.e. unknown), taking a risk is not a bad move. They have less opportunity, and there's a chance the risk might pay off and boost their reputation.

For people whose reputation is already good, the risk is less worth it. They don't stand to gain as much, and they could lose a lot. So they're less likely to do it.

But there are costs to this. There are big gaps between what people discuss with colleagues and what gets published, and the is no forum to publish partial or negative results, except maybe conferences. Ideally published papers stay at a very high bar, but there are other forums to publicly share work in progress. In a way Twitter is becoming this.

This means it's really easy to just claim something, that will be really hard for others to verify.

And wrong claims are incredibly common. It's easy to delude yourself through all sorts of biases or good old sloppy work.

That's why, when scientists talk to each other, they need to know that the other person is a serious scientist and won't pollute their mind with nonsense.

If you develop a reputation for making baseless claims, people will stop including your claims in their own thoughts.

During the 'golden age' of science, the time of the Royal Society the fields weren't specialized at all and the publication mechanism was scientists sending each other interesting stuff by post. At that time there was no meta analysis at all and there was so much low hanging fruit that the 'gentleman scientist' could make big breakthroughs in their home laboratories. But as that low hanging fruit decreased the educational paths required before being able to do meaningful science became longer and longer, then specialization set in and the costs of doing science went up. That's how we arrived at grants used to fund science.

A lot of these gentleman scientists were independently wealthy aristocrats that didn't need hand-outs. The fact that we don't to a meaningful extent have that sort of leisure class anymore is arguably a much bigger reason we need grant funded science these days.

It could be argued there a bit of a replication of the pattern in the space race between Musk and Bezos, but they're missing the sort of well education the aristocrats of yore would have had[1]. They employ a lot of people to do the actual dirty work, but that's not really a big difference from back then either.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloom%27s_2_sigma_problem

This sheds some light on it to me. I guess what partly surprises me is that people seem to care more about reputation than just a means for improving the signal to noise ratio in papers or as a estimate on what will give you your biggest bang for your buck.

The other issue I see come up is the idea that if there is no signal to noise filter, then a scientist might "waste their time," either reading the paper or trying to replicate. But to me, it sounds a little bit like trying to avoid actually doing science. And peer reviewed papers don't imply excellent quality either. You should evaluate papers on their merits. It is your job, as a scientist, to evaluate the most productive approaches based on the merits of the science being done, not based on reputation.

Implying that Chinese science is bad?

Chinese universities absolutely dominate in chemistry: https://www.nature.com/nature-index/institution-outputs/gene...

By my count, 18/20 top universities for chemistry research is in China. The first US university in chemistry is MIT at 23.

China's lead in chemistry research is also translating directly to real world applications. For example, CATL and BYD combined own more than 50% of the car battery market. Six of the top 10 car battery makers are Chinese companies. [0]

It's not surprising that most of the first replication attempts are from China.

[0] https://cnevpost.com/2023/01/04/global-ev-battery-market-sha...

It was true 20 years ago when China had to catch up in everything.

The thinking needs to be updated.

Heck, just look at the chemistry publications from top US and European universities. Chances are, there's one or more Chinese names in most of them.

I was only following the logic of the original question and your initial reply.

Original question: Why aren't labs outside of China publishing results?

Your answer: Because good rigorous science takes time to produce.

Logical interpretation of your answer: Chinese universities are producing bad, unrigorous science because they're publishing their findings so fast.

Instead of going on the offensive and taking such an uncharitable interpretation as a given, if you truly can find no charitable interpretation[1], maybe ask for a clarification rather than jumping to conclusions about unspoken implications.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_charity

You go out of your way to look for uncharitable ways of interpreting how others are interpreting your messages.

This happens in machine learning all the time. Low quality papers rush in after every major release and announcement in order to be first. But in the long term they're meaningless because it takes time to do a good job.

Good labs don't want to announce half done maybe results. They want to announce conclusive comprehensive high quality results they can stand behind. That's what moves science forward.

Plenty of labs are working on lk-99, but they won't publish this sort of half assed analysis.

Red phosphorus, one of the ingredients in the synthesis, is a controlled substance in the US. Might be delaying everyone while they fill out the paperwork with whoever their supplier is.

* https://twitter.com/andrewmccalip/status/1687288889717989376

* https://twitter.com/CondMatfyz/status/1687051547337781248

I imagine over the next few weeks there'll be an explosion of DIY efforts to replicate for the thrills if it's truly that straightforward to produce some toy amounts.

Surely, most tech workers have encountered working with highly competent technical coworkers from China? Or that Chinese students in America tend to perform well above average academically?

Why should anyone be surprised that China performs exceedingly well in sciences?

Now I hate that I have to say this (because it should be a given), but _obviously_ this does not apply across the board, but when people experience shocking behaviour like this you can see why they might hold grudges or biases, even when that's wrong to do.

That aside, China & the US (of which are are a lot of Americans on this site) seem to have held a grudge for quite a long time now, on both sides. Which is a shame, because we're all human at the end of the day and especially science should recognise that stupid tribal human concepts like nationalities and borders are meaningless to the big picture.

There might be people who have verified (or studied) this outside China, but not want to talk about what they've learnt. At least in the US (given the Cold war history), I suppose there would be processes in place to respond to breakthroughs which have an outsized impact.

but it's a growing trend anyway.

Twitter is just one of those communication platforms.

I don't fault them for failing to synthesize room-temperature superconductors while they were relaxing in some resort in Turkey or Thailand.

USTC is the second best university in the world in chemistry research according to Nature. [0]

https://www.nature.com/nature-index/institution-outputs/gene...