Template:Did you know nominations/Chain-melted state

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The following is an archived discussion of the DYK nomination of the article below. Please do not modify this page. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as this nomination's talk page, the article's talk page or Wikipedia talk:Did you know), unless there is consensus to re-open the discussion at this page. No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was: promoted by AirshipJungleman29 talk 17:18, 7 January 2024 (UTC)

Chain-melted state

Created by SonOfYoutubers (talk). Self-nominated at 21:33, 6 November 2023 (UTC). Post-promotion hook changes for this nom will be logged at Template talk:Did you know nominations/Chain-melted state; consider watching this nomination, if it is successful, until the hook appears on the Main Page.

  • SonOfYoutubers, what a strange state of matter that is — the hook certainly is interesting. The article is long enough, and was moved from draftspace on 4 November so it is also new enough. I don't see any issues with the article. The hook is also sourced correctly and matches the article. I think ALT0 is much better as we don't need all the detail that ALT1 has. Anyway, a QPQ is not necessary, so overall I'm happy to approve. —Panamitsu (talk) 21:40, 7 November 2023 (UTC)
    • I was gonna promote this, but I'm not sure I love the sources on this article being science aggregation websites. theleekycauldron (talk • she/her) 23:39, 15 November 2023 (UTC)
      • @Theleekycauldron:. The nominator has placed a National Geographic cite (that was already in the article) on the nominaton here. That's a reliable secondary source. The article itself has solid academic sources. Mike Turnbull (talk) 14:09, 19 November 2023 (UTC)
        • @Michael D. Turnbull: I'm seeing ScienceAlert, NewsClick.in, Labroots.com, and EurekAlert! – if something's there that's not in the academic sources, I think that's a bit suspicious. theleekycauldron (talk • she/her) 08:02, 21 November 2023 (UTC)
          • @Theleekycauldron:. What does that suspicion lead to? Are you suggesting that some of these cites should be removed from the article? That would still leave CNN and National Geographic. It seems to me that the reason that the aggregator sites picked up on the PNAS paper (perhaps via a press release) is the same reason that the DYK hook is good: this is an unusual state of matter. We are over 8 years on from the original report and there are now plenty of well peer-reviewed academic papers about the topic. Mike Turnbull (talk) 12:23, 21 November 2023 (UTC)
            • @Michael D. Turnbull: I'll defer to the judgement on the nominator on CNN and NatGeo – those are heavyweight, reputable sources, even if they don't meet MEDRS (a guideline we're not using here). But for science like this, I think that just having an editorial staff isn't enough. I do think that if an aggregator source says something, it takes just as much due weight as wherever they got it from and we should cite that instead. theleekycauldron (talk • she/her) 21:32, 21 November 2023 (UTC)
              • @Theleekycauldron: I mean, on the article, I do have cited the direct sources in which the aggregator sites are using. I have two actually, one published on the NCBI (an American government website) and another as a PDF from another journal (I can't quite remember it, I would have to check). Is this what you're talking about when you request direct sources, because if so, I do already have them cited. The issue, however, is that for the hook, I would need an interesting piece of information. They are usually extremely formal, but news sources on the other hand, usually to actually captivate an audience, use phrases that are interesting and inherently hook-like. That is the main reason I'm using those and not the exact journals, because it helps make the hook actually interesting. SonOfYoutubers (talk 23:19, 23 November 2023 (UTC)
                • @Theleekycauldron: Are you satisfied with the above rationale? ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 22:28, 2 January 2024 (UTC)
                  • @AirshipJungleman29 and SonOfYoutubers: Looks like this one fell off my radar screen; that's on me. But no, I don't think I can get behind that. Media coverage of scientific research is famously awful, in large part because they're willing to say the "interesting" things based on literature that end up being distorted or exaggerated. If the scientific research doesn't support a conclusion, there's no reason to assume that an aggregator is qualified to fill that gap. If the claim is in the literature, but it's somewhat hidden or spread out, that's fine (as long as it's not OR). theleekycauldron (talk • she/her) 10:59, 4 January 2024 (UTC)
                    • I've looked at the articles SonOfYoutubers; I can see claims that metals being in the chain-melted state makes them behave like they're in between liquid and solid, but I can't see anything that actually says they're both. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 12:39, 4 January 2024 (UTC)
                      • AirshipJungleman29 You do make a good point there, I think it would be a better phrasing to put it as behaves and not is. But other than that, I'm going to be honest, I don't really understand why my hook still doesn't work. I don't see how much more I can improve it beyond this small fix. I'm not quite seeing why a Nat Geo article isn't supportive enough for this. SonOfYoutubers (talk) 00:10, 7 January 2024 (UTC)