Will the BBC News site publish an article about LK-99 or room-temperature superconductors in the next week?
Standard
101
Ṁ16k
resolved Aug 8
Resolved
NO

Given the enormous amount of hype about LK-99 in so many online spaces including Manifold, I have been very surprised to see the lack of coverage in most mainstream media.

As far as I can tell, at time of writing there has been no coverage at all of LK-99 in the Guardian, the Economist or the BBC.

Will the BBC publish an article on the BBC News website about LK-99 or the purported discovery of a room-temperature superconductor in the next week?

Other markets on the subject:

/SimonGrayson/will-the-bbc-news-site-publish-an-a

/SimonGrayson/will-the-guardian-publish-an-articl

/SimonGrayson/will-the-economist-publish-an-artic

Resolution criterea:

  • I will count any article which has been published on https://www.bbc.co.uk/news by 22:00 BST on Tuesday 8th August

  • The article must be accessible on a URL which begins with https://www.bbc.co.uk/news - something which is published on another BBC site or product will not count unless some version of it appears on the news site itself

  • The primary subject of the article must be the potential discovery of a room-temperature superconductor, the specific research and discussion around LK-99 or the reaction to it. An article debunking or dismissing the research or an article about how the whole thing has been a hoax would count, but an article which is primarily about something else but which has a passing mention of LK-99 or superconductors in general would not.

  • Hopefully there won't be any ambiguity (either they publish an article which is primarily about this subject or they don't), but just in case there is some level of subjectivity, I will not trade on this market.

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predicted YES

Hahaha

My long BBC, short The Economist was resolved the exactly opposite

@MP That seems like it should have been a pretty sensible bet - if it looked like a genuine scientific breakthrough then they'd both give it some attention but if it was looking like there was a lot of interest around nothing, the BBC seem like they would be more likely to write an article about it.

In fact, I'm really quite surprised that neither the BBC or the Guardian have written about it yet. Even if LK-99 is completely worthless, the fact that it has had so much attention seems newsworthy!

A final search shows that the BBC have published absolutely nothing about superconductors in general or LK-99 in the past few weeks. This resolves to NO, despite trading well above 80% for quite some time.

Well done to everyone who got in when the odds were so high!

This looks set to resolve to NO unless the BBC publish something in the next 15 minutes or someone is about to tell me that I’m missing something.

Brilliantly the top Google result when I search for LK-99 BBC is this market on Manifold!

Since they’re yet to publish anything, will they do so by the end of the month?

24 hours to go, and still nothing on the BBC site as far as I can tell.

Now that the market is down to 25%, there's a big profit opportunity here if someone spots any BBC coverage of LK-99 first!

@DanielPugh I think someone had a market on whether it would be reported in the Financial Times rather than the Times - and then they resolved that market to YES.

But if it's been reported in the Times, that makes it more likely that the BBC will see it as being newsworthy!

Five days down, two days to go.

As far as I can see, still no mention of LK-99 or superconductors on the BBC or the Guardian.

/SimonGrayson/will-the-guardian-publish-an-articl

The Economist have published a story about LK-99:

https://www.economist.com/the-economist-explains/2023/08/03/have-scientists-really-found-a-room-temperature-superconductor

We're still waiting on the BBC and the Guardian to follow suit...