Two papers of faked room-temperature superconductivity retracted from Nature: Should raw-data sharing become mandatory?

A group from University of Rochester in New York led by Ranga Dias published two papers [1,2] in Nature (Oct. 2020 and Nov. 2023). The papers claimed to report room-temperature superconductivity under extremely high pressures, each in different materials.

After members of the community told the journal they were troubled by aspects of the data being reported, Nature initiated an investigative process that resulted in the 2020 paper being retracted. [3] Nature also initiated an investigation into the 2023 paper, however, this article was retracted at the request of most of Dias’s co-authors while the investigation was still ongoing.

Meanwhile, National Science Foundation, a major funder of US academic research that in 2021 awarded Dias a prestigious US$790,000 CAREER grant, ordered an investigation with the Monroe County Supreme Court. [4] A 124-page report revealed that a team of independent reviewers concluded after a ten-month assessment of evidence that it was more likely than not that Dias had committed data fabrication, falsification and plagiarism. [5]

In very recent Editors' take [3], Nature addressed two interesting questions: why it published Dias’s second paper in March 2023, when questions were being asked about the first one and why the retraction notices didn’t spell out that there has been misconduct.

For the first one, answer was that journal's editorial policy is to consider each submission in its own right. Which really makes sense.

While for the second, it was said that peer review is not designed to identify potential misconduct. […] it is for the institutions involved to determine whether there has been misconduct, and to do so only after the completion of due process, which involves a systematic evaluation of primary evidence, such as unmodified experimental data. Access to raw data is fundamental to resolving cases of potential misconduct. […] there must be more the research community — including funders and institutions — can all do to incentivize data sharing.

Which got me thinking.. is raw-data sharing really a holy grail to prevent misconduct? If so, should it be made mandatory? Even more, could ResearchHub help incentivize data sharing and prevent scientific misconduct?

References:
[1] https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-020-2801-z
[2] https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-023-05742-0
[3] https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-024-01174-6
[4] https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-024-00976-y
[5] https://media.nature.com/original/magazine-assets/d41586-024-00976-y/26947600

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Two papers of faked room-temperature superconductivity retracted from Nature: Should raw-data sharing become mandatory?