They’ve been working on this for years. To me it looks like whatever their process is, they don’t have something that’s repeatable. So maybe a couple of small samples are all there are after 1000s of attempts doing more or less the same thing.
> So the groups trying to replicate right now are basically wasting their time?
If a few dozen groups all try and replicate, and there is something to replicate, then odds are good someone will get lucky (birthday paradox and all that). Each individual group is definitely wasting their time, but the aggregate time spent may not be a waste.
The birthday paradox would only apply if we are interested in one group replicating the result of any other group, not the result of the original paper.
It's the difference between "do any people in this group share a birthday" vs "do any people in this group share my birthday".
No, this still needs replication. A room temp and pressure superconductor being possible at all, verifiably, implies there are probably better versions to be discovered. This could really improve the funding in the area, and labs that attempt replication and fail could benefit from that.
They’ve been working on this for years. To me it looks like whatever their process is, they don’t have something that’s repeatable. So maybe a couple of small samples are all there are after 1000s of attempts doing more or less the same thing.