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Physicists are grappling with their own reproducibility crisis

A contentious meeting of physicists highlighted concerns, failures and possible fixes for a crisis in condensed matter physics

By Karmela Padavic-Callaghan

17 May 2024 Last updated 21 May 2024

Some claims of high-temperature superconductivity were unable to be recreated
Shutterstock / Dragon Claws

Physics is in a crisis. Over the past year, a series of research papers claimed to find evidence for high-temperature superconductors – materials that conduct electricity without losses, which could revolutionise global energy use. These were retracted after all efforts to reproduce them failed, and in some cases original data was shown to . Now, physicists are sounding the alarm about a wider reproducibility crisis in their field.

“That is just the latest story, it is by far not the only one, or the…

Article amended on 22 May 2024

We clarified comments from Legg about the Microsoft study

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