

More on Lithium Batteries - jayhoon
http://shkrobius.livejournal.com/425638.html

======
MrMeker
"It is all here

[http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/jp406274e](http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/jp406274e)
[http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/jp406273p"](http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/jp406273p")

(click)

"Your current credentials do not allow retrieval of the full text.

Purchase This Content Choose from the following options: $35.00 for 48 hours
of access Members, log in with your ACS ID to see your reduced price."

Every. Single. Time. I have ever tried to read a scientific paper, this is
what happens. It's complete crap. The research was done in a national
laboratory, under public funding. I should be able to read this.

Fortunately, I am now a university student so I will see if the library can
help me with this.

~~~
educating
There should be the equivalent of wikileaks for scientific papers- a site
where you can anonymously post them and their abstract. While I understand
someone has to pay for hosting, archiving, validation- people should be
allowed to view things like this freely. Otherwise, what is the point of
research you wish to share with the public? Even viewing the paper as images
with watermarks would be better than nothing.

~~~
derefr
I don't know about _anonymously_ \-- why not just the centuries-old library
model? We pay for an organization; the organization licenses the works; the
organization lends out the works for free.

~~~
tekacs
The current problem being that subscribed to an institution which has a
library with the funds to pay for these things is currently either expensive
or hard to get oneself affiliated with without lots of requirements and
quirks. :/

I have access through my home institution, but I'm already dreading being
suddenly cut-off from all of this information when I leave :/ \- the idea that
upon leaving the institution my ability or willingness to read existing
content and contribute back should disappear is bothersome, to say the least.

------
Xcelerate
> When computational chemists got involved, their theories (surprise,
> surprise) provided support for these hand waving models. These folk "knew"
> what they needed to obtain - and they tweaked their models until they got
> it: the models are complex; there are lot of knobs to tweak. Incredibly,
> even on rare occasion when they got it right they dismissed their own
> results, ascribing discrepancies to model imperfections...

This is stupid. My research is molecular dynamics and ab initio studies of
novel carbon anodes in lithium batteries. We don't "tweak" the model until it
fits; if you did that you would be 1) an idiot 2) not a scientist.

All models describe reality only to an approximation. How well this
approximation works depends on how good your model is. In computational
science, we have algorithms that can almost _perfectly_ match experimental
carbon anodes. The only problem? These techniques (short of someone inventing
a quantum computer) take essentially infinite time to run on a classical
computer. So you cut down the computational complexity of your model by making
approximations (e.g. removing electron-electron correlations) until you get
something that can run on today's best supercomputers.

But you don't stop there! You have to actually assess these models and figure
out how well they work! For instance, there's probably 20 or so MD models that
describe water (TIP3P, TIP4P, etc...) Each model can accurately predict
_certain_ properties of real water, but is also very poor at predicting other
properties. In other words, your model needs to fit what it was designed for
and you will get good results.

It seems to me that most people who bash simulations nowadays are
experimentalists that aren't up to date on the state-of-the-art algorithms
that provide very good agreement with reality (for some situations at least).

~~~
koffiezet
To be honest, what you're saying is that to get a 'good model' \- you have to
'tweak' these approximations it so they work well "to fit what it was designed
for". Maybe you don't like the word 'tweaking' \- but your entire post sounds
that it is exactly that, make your model match (certain properties of) reality
as close as possible.

I'm not saying that in a dismissive/judgmental way - it is probably the most
realistic way of doing a lot of things - but it pretty much is exactly what
the original post says (although he is dismissive/negative about this). I
don't know enough about chemistry in general to comment on this, but we do
have batteries and they do improve over time - so some people must be doing
"something" right.

What surprises me more are his claims that we don't even understand (or
understood) even the basics of lithium on a chemical level? Is this even true?
What could be the impact of this paper on future battery development? Could
computational models be improved using this data?

~~~
Xcelerate
> but it pretty much is exactly what the original post says (although he is
> dismissive/negative about this)

The difference is that he is implying scientists tweak their models to get
what they _want_ to see; i.e., they have a hypothesis and then manipulate the
model until it gives them results that confirm their hypothesis. This is bad
science. What I'm saying is that scientists (should) create their model to fit
_reality_ for only the specific situations where it is provably applicable. If
the model then confirms the hypothesis, great. If it doesn't, no big deal; it
just means your hypothesis was wrong and you probably won't get a paper out of
it (in an ideal world, we would publish papers about negative results because
that is science as well, but I'm afraid those papers don't garner near the
attention or interest that positive results do).

> What surprises me more are his claims that we don't even understand (or
> understood) even the basics of lithium on a chemical level? Is this even
> true?

Yeah, it's true. That's why me (and a whole lot of other people) are doing
research in this area.

As for the paper, I'm not sure what its impact is. Research becomes very
narrow in fields like this, and I don't study electrolytes (I study carbon
anodes). So I can't comment on that.

------
jared314
> their theories (surprise, surprise) provided support for these hand waving
> models

> These folk "knew" what they needed to obtain

If I hadn't seen the resemblance between the username and the first name on
the linked publications, I would have closed the page and written it off as a
pseudo-science blogger fighting big corporate interests. I just wish the user
info page had his real name on it, for confirmation.

~~~
Dylan16807
What sounds pseudo-science about the first main paragraph, "It turns out
that...electrode."? I don't understand your reaction to some complaints about
_non-tested_ models.

~~~
jared314
After reading too many blogs trying to substantiate their claims by quoting
science out of context, I never consider the first paragraph as proof of
anything. The second paragraph turned from promoting an idea to almost
accusing others of bias or misconduct, in a way that almost mimicked a
conspiracy theory. I can understand the complaints about inadequately tested
models, because that happens. (And, as there are a lot of russian language
posts in the blog, perhaps it is a cultural language style I am unfamiliar
with.) But, if it wasn't for the username looking similar to the name on the
paper, I would have written it off.

~~~
Dylan16807
Still, I think pseudo-science would use a quote as a springboard into
something nonsensical, it wouldn't just say "these guys didn't do their job
properly", it would do something like accuse them of actual conspiracy, or say
that the answer was _obvious_ because [inane blather].

~~~
jared314
"Nonsensical" and "inane blather" are relative to your personal knowledge and
experience. Science and technology, to people outside of those fields, sounds
like a string of nonsense jargon and technobabble. (That is one of the reasons
why phys.org, university press departments, Congressman[1], and Fox News[2]
can get things so very wrong.) My lack of a background in the detailed inner
workings of Li-Ion batteries, or chemistry in general, prevents me from
directly validating his statements. So, if it wasn't for the username looking
similar to the first name on the paper, I would have written it off.

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Series_of_tubes](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Series_of_tubes)

[2]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6378495](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6378495)

~~~
Dylan16807
The point is that he didn't make _any_ statement there. So you don't need any
field knowledge to realize he didn't springboard into blather, because he
didn't springboard into anything at all.

------
mmagin
So, in essence, most scientists today are busy writing papers or pushing bits
around in computer simulations rather than doing real experiments?

~~~
marcosdumay
Well, that's true.

Experiments are usually so expensive that you want to get the most out of
them, so most people work discovering what experiments they should do, and
what they do with the results, instead of just jumping in the lab and doing
the experiments.

Then, sometimes, people with that culture face a problem just like this one,
where blind experiments are the fastest, simplest, cheapest route to
understanding something. Except that nobody knows it beforehand.

------
frabcus
This is great stuff, and I want more! Any other good blog posts about it? Or
overviews? How are people reacting?

