Physics is in a crisis. Over the past year, a series of research papers claimed to find evidence for high-temperature superconductors – materials that conduct electricity without losses, which could revolutionise global energy use. These were retracted after all efforts to reproduce them failed, and in some cases original data was shown to have been falsified. Now, physicists are sounding the alarm about a wider reproducibility crisis in their field.

“That is just the latest story, it is by far not…