{"id":533765,"date":"2026-07-09T22:57:07","date_gmt":"2026-07-09T22:57:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/533765\/"},"modified":"2026-07-09T22:57:07","modified_gmt":"2026-07-09T22:57:07","slug":"physicist-says-splashy-new-cosmology-study-made-elemental-mistake","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/533765\/","title":{"rendered":"Physicist says splashy new cosmology study made \u2018elemental\u2019 mistake"},"content":{"rendered":"

Two weeks ago, when Till Sawala heard the news of a peer-reviewed paper<\/a> that purported to upend our understanding of the universe, he immediately suspected that something was off. Then again, the paper was published<\/a> in Nature, one of the world\u2019s most authoritative and influential scientific journals.<\/p>\n

\u201cI thought, \u2018Okay, this is either one of the most important results in cosmology in the last 10 years, or it\u2019s wrong,\u2019\u201d says Sawala, a cosmologist at the University of Helsinki. \u201cAnd my instinct is that it was wrong.\u201d In his experience, the more a claim flies in the face of expert consensus, the less likely it is to withstand expert scrutiny. In this case, the Nature paper argued that, at multibillion-light-year scales, the universe\u2019s contents weren\u2019t spread out as uniformly as scientists had thought. The assertion, if true, would overturn decades of cosmic dogma.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf something this big had been missed, it would have been quite an embarrassment to the community,\u201d Sawala says. \u201cSo I thought it was important to correct the record.\u201d<\/p>\n

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The Nature paper concerned a massive dataset of 47 million galaxies and quasars across more than 11 billion years of the universe\u2019s 13.8-billion-year history, as captured by the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI)<\/a>. The DESI dataset, like many before it, showed that intergalactic matter glommed together into a vast \u201ccosmic web\u201d of galaxy-rich filaments and sheets surrounding enormous galaxy-sparse voids. But the authors of the Nature paper claimed the DESI data also showed that these filaments stretched farther than anyone realized: billions of light-years. Most crucially, the authors said these filaments were oriented in certain directions more than others. If the universe\u2019s large-scale contents indeed had such \u201cpreferred\u201d directions, that would violate a rigid dogma known as the cosmological principle.<\/p>\n

Upon closer inspection, however, Sawala found problems with how the authors calculated the scale of the DESI data. He argues that they measured the distances of galaxies with a unit called \u201cluminosity distance\u201d when they should have used a different unit called the \u201ccomoving distance.\u201d They also neglected to scale these distances to account for how fast the universe is growing. After correcting for these issues, his independent analysis suggests the DESI data are consistent with the prevailing consensus: no mysterious mega-alignments of filaments; no violation of the cherished cosmological principle.<\/p>\n

Francesco Sylos Labini, one of the Nature paper\u2019s authors and a physicist at the Enrico Fermi Research Center in Rome, points out that Sawala\u2019s analysis relies on the patchiness of the universe\u2019s large-scale structures rather than their orientation. But Sawala says that the mistakes he\u2019s uncovered apply in either case.<\/p>\n

Major journals such as Nature maintain their prestige by featuring the most impactful research\u2014and what could be more impactful than research with revolutionary implications? But as Carl Sagan famously put it, \u201cExtraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence\u201d\u2014peer review is especially crucial in such cases. \u201cIn order for a paper to be in Nature, it has to be groundbreaking,\u201d Sawala says. \u201cThis was definitely groundbreaking, so it cleared that hurdle. But it turned out not to be correct.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is disappointing that this made it past the reviewers,\u201d says David Spergel, an astrophysicist and president of the Simons Foundation. \u201cNature\u2019s editors need to be more careful in the future.\u201d<\/p>\n

But even if the journal had assigned Sawala as one of the paper\u2019s two referees, he says, he\u2019s not sure that he would have caught such an \u201celemental\u201d mistake\u2014though he would have had some basic questions. \u201cBeing a reviewer is difficult,\u201d Sawala says. \u201cYou are usually an expert in only some parts of the paper.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cosmologist Daniel Eisenstein of Harvard University, who was not involved in either manuscript, agrees. \u201cUnfortunately, it\u2019s easy to see how this kind of bug could sit unnoticed in a code for a long time,\u201d he says. \u201cIt is not obvious to me that a reviewer should reasonably have caught it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sawala has submitted his rebuttal for its own peer review, and the preprint<\/a> is already making rounds in the cosmology community. But a corrective follow-up to a sensational claim rarely draws the same splashy headlines from mainstream outlets. This tendency to avoid revisiting \u201cyesterday\u2019s news\u201d can misalign the public\u2019s understanding with the science.<\/p>\n

These pitfalls of peer review are why physicists increasingly rely on preprint servers, such as arXiv.org, which allow the whole community to judge a paper in concert. \u201cYou\u2019d have to be lucky, with one or two reviewers, if they happened to catch this,\u201d Sawala says. \u201cBut someone else surely would have if it had been on arXiv.\u201d The Nature paper was not posted to arXiv.org or elsewhere prior to its publication.<\/p>\n

When scientists submit a flashy result to a top journal such as Nature, however, they often opt to keep that result secret until a few days before publication, when journalists are given a heads up. This practice\u2014called placing it under \u201cembargo\u201d\u2014makes a paper\u2019s publication a newsier event but does so at the expense of scientific openness.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think these embargoes serve the publication more than the science,\u201d Sawala says. \u201cAnd I think the science should come first.<\/p>\n

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