A former employee was the first to publish a paper with only three authors. I am surprised you haven't heard about this.

Then a few hours later a paper was published with six authors (without one of the original three authors), ostensibly by the core team that has been working on this.

There should be much more detail on the Internet if you search for it.

I also hadn't heard about this for what it's worth.

It's one of the reasons people were thinking this might not be a fraud.

Nobel prizes are capped to 3 people, and the speculation is that the rogue person published early to try and ensure they were one of the people that received it. No reason for infighting like that if you know it's a hoax.

I even wondered about that, is ever a thing?

Like saying "SORRY, FIRST" to the nobel committee?

> No reason for infighting like that if you know it's a hoax.

There was plenty of bitter infighting over credit during the 1989 cold fusion fiasco.

Knowing it's not a hoax does not mean it is true.

As always, only reproduction attempts matter.

I never said it was true. Just that it's some evidence against it being a fraud.

Notably, the missing author from the second paper is the rogue employee who published the first paper. The order of the first two authors is the same for both papers.

earlier in the week, someone posted that the person who posted the paper early is someone who wanted to fund the project, but the researchers didn't want to include him. So he took as much data as he could collect and posted it publicly with the addition of his name. He is not a researcher or scientist for the team.

See this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36953050

Fascinating, thank you

In the early 90s, Prof. Choi theorized a new way of creating a room temperature superconductor but it wasn't really accepted by the mainstream. Supposedly, in 1999, two researchers in Choi's lab, Lee and Kim (hence LK), created the first sample of LK-99. They weren't able to reliably replicate nor were they able to fully explain the theory. In 2017, as a dying wish, Choi asked Lee and Kim to continue on with the LK-99 research but asked to not publish it until they understand the theory behind it. They founded a lab and collaborated with other scientists in the field and Kwon was one of them. 4 months ago, Kwon left the lab and two weeks ago Kwon leaked the paper. The paper Kwon leaked only listed Lee, Kim and Kwon as the authors and excluded other collaborators. Some suspect Kwon excluded the other collaborators because Nobel prize can only be awarded to three people at most. A few days after the leak, Lee & Kim hastily published a paper with four more authors but not Kwon.

https://namu.wiki/w/LK-99/%EC%A0%84%EA%B0%9C