37/ So please don't think I'm weaving a conspiracy theory against the authors or anyone else.
Conversation
38/ Strangely, though, the "Wiles Licher" account was created July 7. That's 16 days _before_ the paper appeared on the arxiv.
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39/ Small update:
The Wiles Licher facebook account and the protonmail email account have both apparently been deleted.
PR is convinced from the fake emails that this imposter was "bright" and "subtle", good enough to convincingly mimic TVR:
facebook.com/photo.php?fbid
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40/ PR reports seeing a single public message on the Wiles Licher facebook page:
"Remember: Julius Caesar went too far!"
What I saw was the less threatening message "Julius Caesar. The Caesar that did not stop." So I hope PR is remembering wrong.
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41/ A couple of us have been spending some time trying to figure out who "Wiles Licher" is.
There are a few clues from the (now deleted) facebook account:
(1) A listed birthday: June 17, 1984
(2) Three people who were "followed" by the account. All three people are in Bangalore.
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42/ The three people are:
- the director of an art/architecture studio
- a grad student in biology
- the founder of a website/small business
They seem to have nothing in common other than their location (Bangalore) and age (30s, as far as I can tell)
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43/ I contacted a two of these people, and they are completely baffled. They got a friend request from Wiles Licher on July 7, and declined it.
Both say they don't know either of the other 2, and they don't know anyone in physics or chemistry at the Indian Institute for Science.
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44/ Wiles Licher update:
Both PR and I just received the following email.
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45/ The facebook account has also been reactivated, and there are some troll-y new posts that are keeping with the Caesar theme while slyly referencing the experiment.
I am disinclined to give this person any more attention.
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46/ A long-awaited update on the story of the putative room-temperature superconductor.
The authors have submitted a (heavily) revised version of the paper. There are now 62 additional pages and 8 additional authors!
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