Monday, March 29, 2010

Slightly missing the point

I am, of course, pleased that Nature Materials ran a news item about our recent paper.  However, they appear to have missed the point a bit.  What we were trying to point out was that plotting data in scaled coordinates (current normalized by temperature to some power vs. voltage normalized by temperature, in this case) can be misleading.  In this particular case, plotting temperature-independent data in this way on a log-log plot can make it look like the data all collapse onto some universal curve (with deep implications).  In fact, the data themselves aren't doing any such thing - the apparent collapse is due to a flawed plotting procedure.  Ross McKenzie got this point immediately.  Ahh well.  Bottom line: be very careful when plotting "scaled" quantities, to make sure that you're not biasing yourself toward a particular conclusion.

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