good points. I can agree to that. However, I do think something did break down and I think your assessment below is more accurate than my initial take.
> One may argue that this was really a failure in media communication vs. the actual underlying science
the scientific process and scientists here are innocent, media not so much in my eyes.
While we’re talking about things working as they should, even when frequently the opposite is true… what a wonderful discourse this was between two people disagreeing and then coming to find common ground. Thank you for providing such a great example to all of us.
The media is often wrong about many things. Sometimes due to ignorance. Others negligence. And occasionally its malicious. If anyone figures out how to fix that without destroying freedom of the press they should get a nobel.
Yeah, I think Professor Moriarty in the video comes to a similar conclusion - he does say "in that sense is science working", and goes on to lament the problems with misinformation in the social media age. I can definitely sympathize with the frustration of scientists having to deal with so much social media bullshit, and people who so confidently believe "My ignorance is as equal as your hard work and experience."
That said, I really loved that Sixty Symbols video for a couple reasons:
1. First, Moriarty was pretty much exactly spot on in his skepticism: the reduction in resistivity is not the behavior you'd expect to see in a superconductor (turned out to be due to copper sulfide impurities), and that the floating in a magnet behavior is not that surprising and could be due to diamagnetism.
2. I wasn't previously that familiar with diamagnetism beyond a vague "I remember hearing about that", so this whole thing led me known the wikipedia rabbit hole to find out about diamagnetism which was really interesting to me.
3. Professor Moriarty explains "this is not how you do science" (bad science by over-hyped press release is at least as old as cold fusion) and gives very good advice on how you should do good science in an age of Arxiv.
> One may argue that this was really a failure in media communication vs. the actual underlying science
the scientific process and scientists here are innocent, media not so much in my eyes.