This summer, a group of researchers from Korea University stirred up excitement in the scientific community with the news of a material called LK-99. Led by Lee Sukbae and Kim Ji-Hoon, the scientists released information about a room temperature superconductor. Experts and non-experts alike from laboratories, universities, and elsewhere in the world were talking about the discovery. While the scientific community attempted to replicate and verify the discovery, the general public speculated on the long-term changes the technology would bring. However, the viral discovery proved false. Multiple labs across the world were unable to replicate LK-99, and the claim was abandoned. Only after LK-99 was rigorously disproved did the hype die down. 

Over the years, certain scientific news has gone viral, while others remain largely unknown. For instance, this year’s Nobel Prize in Physics was given to three scientists who pioneered the development of the shortest light pulses ever created. These “ultrashort pulses” are some of the most important tools ever developed to probe the quantum mechanical behavior of electrons. While this illuminated an entire new area of research and won science’s highest honor, this did not go viral. Why?

What allows certain discoveries to capture the public’s attention? 

Perhaps it is the interest level of the topic itself that garners popularity. Explaining superconductivity in a news article is easier than explaining the intricacies which won the 2023 Nobel Prize. Superconductors are exciting and open up new realms of technology which could change the world. Another example of this kind of discovery took place in December of 2022, when scientists at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory revealed that they had achieved fusion ignition. For the first time, more energy was outputted in a fusion reaction than was inputted, provoking wild speculation on a clean energy future. Unlike the LK-99 frenzy, this hype was not killed by debunking. However, it shared the LK-99 discovery’s ease of explanation. A typical consumer of popular science could easily picture what a fusion reaction involved, and dream up ideas about how this could change the world.

To put it plainly, some discoveries just thrill the general public more than others. These are typically easy to explain, sound exciting, and open up speculation on practical application. However, ease of explanation is not the only factor in ensuring viral science.

Ease of explanation and an exciting topic are not a guarantee that a scientific development will go viral. In fact, the University of Korea team was not even the first group of 2023 to claim room temperature superconductivity. Just a few months before the LK-99 frenzy, a group at the University of Rochester had published work in Nature claiming to produce a similar material. An almost identical claim (albeit with a different material) was accompanied by almost no response from the general public.

To further explain why some discoveries go viral, we must compare the process of the University of Rochester group and the Korea University group, and see what made the latter so popular. Over the course of the Rochester group’s publication, very little supporting news emerged on its behalf. Instead, scientists were quick to promote errors in the data and questioned the results. In response to the critical approach of most news, the head investigator, Ranga Dias, withdrew the paper.

Without any external supporting news of the discovery, the Rochester group’s research failed to make headlines. By contrast, the Korea University’s preprint was accompanied by several accounts on Twitter fictitiously claiming to have replicated the results. Additionally, some scientists expressed cautious support for LK-99, proposing that replication would soon take place. These initial confirmations bolstered the group’s credibility.

This support would quickly wane as scientists failed to replicate LK-99’s purported success. However, it took about a month before the news was thoroughly debunked in the lab. A slow and difficult process of replicating this discovery allowed the news to become viral for a while, as speculation continued to rise. If the claim had been easily debunked by scientists, the media would be unable to keep the story alive. Instead, a lack of immediate reproducibility allowed initial support to grow out of control.

The fate of scientific discoveries lies firmly within the field it originated. When sensationalist news hits the headlines, there is never any doubt that the scientific community will rigorously test the claim, and a correct result will emerge. However, certain factors can create situations in which a research development becomes massively popular within the greater public. Such discoveries are typically very easy to explain. From there, even the most subtle support contributes to short-term credibility. Finally, discoveries that are difficult to reproduce can ride the hype for long enough to survive an entire news cycle, making an otherwise unverified scientific hypothesis a household name.

Bombshell, unverified announcements like LK-99 rarely live up to the hype. When pop science “jumps the gun” with sensationalist headlines, it often leads to a misinformed public. Hopefully the science community, and readers at large, will one day enjoy more careful mainstream reporting.