Any of the 7 people listed here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LK-99
It must be about physics. It cannot be an apology or examination of past failures; they must be presenting their own new research positively, and have been selected due to the merit of the research, not as an example of failure or other similar fallout from LK-99's failure. Obviously, if LK-99 turns out to be true, then speaking out about it will be frequent and common, and this will YES easily.
The conference must be attended by at least 100 researchers in the field of physics, and must be about physics. It should be a "mainstream" conference. Hard to define, but basically, one which say at least 20% of active physics professors do not dismiss as pseudoscience.
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Hmm. I don't see any selection going on here. Looks like you submit and they schedule you, that's it.
Two NO risks: if it truly is the case that there is no real selection, only filtering for length, membership in APL, content safety and general field, it's hard to count that as having been selected. The text of this market mentions this requirement.
Kim, by repeatedly applying to APL, seems to be trying to find loopholes.
Second, if that is the criteria, would physicists say that APL is not pseudoscience? I've searched a bit but haven't found any direct reports. It seems pretty crappy, maybe the easiest semi-legit target for publication of less legit research
The criteria there say they reserve the right to reject "based on but not limited to" those criteria. "Not limited to" suggests they reserve the right to reject for any reason.
You could also interpret "appropriate content" and "inside the topical scope of the meeting" as likely requiring the content to be original research at least - after all that's what is what is appropriate.
It's a low bar, but if you submitted something of obviously very poor quality ("Are lego bricks superconductors? We asked a toddler, and they said yes"), I would predict it would not be accepted. If you believe that then this is a measure of merit, just a low bar. This is to my understanding pretty normal for large conferences. There are of course more exclusive conferences.
If you want a market that has a higher bar for merit, you could make one on whether they will be an "invited speaker". This is a higher bar, it means the conference sought them out to present rather than the speaker applying.
Though you may want to watch out for the many predatory conferences out there that are always inviting random nobodies (anyone with an email address in a physics department, it seems). Your requirement that the conference is a "mainstream" one is maybe sufficient for this, but I'd emphasise that it's not that these conferences are pseudoscientific, people who attend them may be normal mainstream scientists for all I know, it's just that they're essentially financial scams and thus their "invited speakers" list isn't a good metric for anything other than who they managed to scam.
What's the relevance to this market of submissions to APL?
@chrisjbillington I'm just saying, on the spectrum of "how selected is a paper/group, given they are presenting at APS [edit]?", it feels like we're quite far down the spectrum. Relative to a highly selective, restricted, super high status etc. conference. I am not aiming to profit or make an insane surprise resolution, but on the other hand, there are a LOT of conferences he could present at which would obviously be higher quality, and a lot which obviously don't quality (e.g. "knitting conference". This particular one has some unique traits: It sounds professional and strict, but actually seems very lax in what they accept. This may be fine, but it also overlaps with the behavior of someone who is looking for venues where he can present/publish with lower rigor.
If this conference truly is: "Apply/join this org for $, then as long as you're not obviously violating a bunch of rules, you're good". If it turns out that the only person reviewing any submission were actually an admin assistant without any Physics degree, that would seriously weaken this conference's ability to be used as a case of the LK-99 researcher's work "hav[ing] been selected due to the merit of the research" (a clause from the description)
relevance
I recall from a closed market that Kim in an early interview claimed he was submitting to APL, A journal which some claimed had very low requirements. And now he's attempting to present at a conference which seems very easy to present at. I'm seeing a pattern.
@Ernie APL is Applied Physics Letters, APL Materials is the journal they've (allegedly) been trying to publish a paper in. It is published by the American Institute of Physics. They are not related to this conference.
This conference, APS March Meeting, is run by the American Physical Society, which is the largest society of physicists and the publisher of the Physical Review family of journals, which comprise most of the top journals in physics. So it's very legitimate, but that's a different question to how selective they are.
The criteria did not suggest the degree of selectivity mattered, rather it referred to the legitimacy of the conference, and March Meeting definitely meets your requirements for being a mainstream conference that >20% of physicists don't consider pseudoscience (many practising physicists I worked with when I was in the US will be there).
Yes I saw they are different. I'm saying that both the criteria for inclusion in either seems fairly weak.
The description says "selected for inclusion". I'm saying it's not ideal to satisfy that claim, that the website for this conf suggests they'll take anybody who pays the dues and meets a few low level criteria
A market "will the one LK99 guy with an academic job speak at a conference which is very non selective" is not especially interesting Much more interesting is to bet on whether any conf which has any selectivity would accept their research.
I'm not certain of the actual state of this conf. But I'm saying that for YES holders, if it really is nonselective, that's not a plus.
@chrisjbillington The reason I'm pointing this out is that it contributes to what is likely to be a probabilistic calculation.
We may have something like (70%) The professor spoke in person, (90%) There were 100+ physics profs at the conference, (80%) he spoke about LK-99, (D=60%) there was any selectivity of this topic due to the merit of the research. YES holders need the numbers (plus/minus more) to be high to make it seem "reasonable" to think that this happened.
I am saying that the conf website sounding unselective lowers the number D above in the hypothetical equation above, because even if everything else is certain, the essential flakiness of the conf might still hurt them. Of course, I support getting more and more information about this, and making the numbers as precise as possible.
And in parallel, I'm putting more and more conditions on the newly created markets about this, to make the focus on the point clearer: Will real, professional physicists take the LK-99 researchers seriously, or will they be dismissed. To me, that's the actual interesting thing. Not whether they pick a non-selective, and pay to have someone edit a website and speak to an empty room in the same building with 400 professional physicists who are ignoring them. It would feel pointless to have to YES the latter condition. For this market I will try to resolve as explained in the description.
@Odoacre according to discussion and links in the other market, yes:
https://manifold.markets/Ernie/will-any-of-the-original-7-lk99-res-43626166bfee
@Odoacre I wish we could just get them on tape for an hour each just talking. Unbelievably hard to get any solid media on them at all
@Ernie yeah, at this point they are just grifters. I understand they might have some legitimate reason to back out, but it looks terrible.
@Odoacre imagine they speak at the conference. How will we prove it? Will there be a recording? Given the past it would be great to have this one clearly documented
there's apparently a 12 minute (!) presentation scheduled for Monday, March 4, 2024
8:12AM - 8:24AM in Minneapolis
@BenjaminShindel Yes! I'm just trying to limit cases where they completely switch domains and present about social science or something.