Questioning the Experimental Protocol in Two Nobel Prizes
For discussions in the scientific community, we question the Post-Selection protocols (also known as p-hacking) in works that received the Nobel Prize in Physics 2024 and the Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2024, as well as the current flood of Post-Selection in Artificial Intelligence (AI) and machine learning within many other disciplines of science and engineering. We hypothesize that the Post-Selection protocol has three mistakes: (a) missing a test, (b) hiding bad-looking data, and (c) exaggerating prediction accuracy. Nobel Prizes must not escape the well-known scientific laws: (1) Different initial guesses in nonlinear problems lead to different local minima. (2) Papers about nonlinear problems must explain how the authors avoided local minima. Evidence: None of the questioned papers discuss (1) and (2). Therefore, they are not scientifically ethical. However, the future of AI and machine learning seems to be bright.
Authors
- Ming Xie (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8013-7274)
- Christian Schmidt (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8742-193X)
- Dongshu Wang (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9207-1049)
- Juyang Weng (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1383-3872)
Institutions
- Allen Institute for Brain Science (US)
- Nanyang Technological University (SG)
- Arts et Métiers (FR)
- Zhengzhou University (CN)
- HESAM Université (FR)
Publication Details
- Published
- 2025-05-29
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1109/icaide65466.2025.11189692
- Primary Topic
- History and advancements in chemistry
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 0.00