Great article on scientific fraud. Relevant the the deuterium EOS fiasco at Livermore
http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/ockhamsrazor/when-scientists-lie-ian-freckleton-on-scholarly-misconduct-fraud/7660464
Note that all the fraudulent work mentioned the article was ultimately retracted. No such thing for the Livermore scientists involved in the deuterium work. Why didn't the scientific community ever demand a retraction? Also, why does NNSA continue to fund the very same people to do EOS work on NIF?
Phys. Rev. Lett. 78, 483–486 (1997)
Absolute Equation of State Measurements on Shocked Liquid Deuterium up to 200 GPa (2 Mbar)
15 comments:
Big difference between deliberate deception, and publishing something that turns out to be incorrect. I don't know that there is any evidence that that work was deliberate deception, but it does appear to be incorrect.
They've known it was BS data for over a decade and have done nothing to retract it.
Their attempts to produce isentropic compression data like the Z machine have failed miserably.
It's time for NNSA to pull the plug on these frauds, but they won't. Everyone wants to get along and pretend that all approaches are valid.
NIF should concentrate on producing more and more PoP and Nature articles explaining why ICF is a failure.
Sore looser comment !
Sore Sandia loser comment !
But wait, the date of the article is 1997. NIF was not operational. The authors used the 10 beam NOVA laser with less than 60 kJ at 2w or 40 kJ at 3w. This is before the advent of high res CCD camera's. All data was recorded on film (analog) and required painstaking photo densitometry and careful calibration (D-log-E). Streak camera data also on film. It's not a wonder that the data could have given inaccurate conclusions. Compute power was also very limited in 1997 so simulations would have been poor quality. But what do I know ?
More energy does not necessarily equate to better EOS data. NIF still uses film photodensitometry, that is only dicey if you want absolute exposure calibration. And simulations shouldn't effect the quality of experimental data. None have an impact on scientific fraud.
You are calling it scientific fraud. That's a bold and unsubstantiated accusation. I'm not speaking for the authors. And as far as I recall NIF does not use any film for quality data. And speaking as an expert on the subject (and I am !) linearization of the film response (any film) over more than 2 decades is extremely dicey. That's why analysis of Nova laser data and derived results based on film was more qualitative than quantitative. That's why we built NIF. To use the best of modern age digital based diagnostics.
And, film is never used for absolute energy measurement. That's why we have calorimeters and calibrated photodiodes.
If the two posts above are from the same person, you are not an expert on the subject, as is obvious to anyone who is. Most of the NIC x-ray image data was recorded on film, and all high-yield DT implosion data is recorded on film because neutrons kill CCD cameras. Billions have been spent drawing conclusions based on photographic film data. NIF has a large storehouse of film, densitometers and sensitometers, processing chemistry, all as state-of-the-art as possible given the antiquity of the format. Streak and framing cameras are not linear over more than 2 orders of magnitude, and don't even have that much dynamic range from noise to saturation, so no one cares about linearity over a larger range. And if you think NIF was built so that digital diagnostics could be used, I want some of what you are smoking.
Thanks for the clarification ! I'm glad that film is not dead ! We do know each other, so sorry for my comments. I had forgot about the NIC x-ray data.
How do we answer the Sandia claim that the Da Silva, Celliers, Collins work (Phys Rev Lett. 78(3), 483-486, 1997) is a fraud. I don't think so.
I don't think so either. Those people are solid, and if there had been any scientific fraud, it would have been outed long ago. That doesn't mean the conclusions were correct, but EOS is a tough business and they were blazing a new trail using new tools.
but EOS is a tough business and they were blazing a new trail using new tools.
August 5, 2016 at 6:50 PM
Indeed however they blazed a new trail in the utterly wrong direction and published it. In order to make an omelette your have to break a few eggs or waste a few billions dollars but in the end you get an omelette or in the case of NIF nothing, but hey the analogy sounded good.
Livermore, liars? Unprecedented. Who knew?
Oh come now. Key members of the Nova team won the 1998 APS Award for Excellence in Plasma Physics, because it was so cutting edge. Coupling a cryostat to a giant laser facility to do EOS measurements at hundreds of GPa was unbelievable at the time. They didn't know what they didn't know, but they were the first to go there, and correct or not, that paper started an industry that the Sandia program benefits from to this day.
"unbelievable at the time" and still so
"Ignition"? Not so much. Face it. The entire program has been a gigantic scam.
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