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Schön scandal

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Jan Hendrik Schön (born 1970) is a German physicist who briefly rose to prominence after a series of apparent breakthroughs that were later discovered to be fraudulent.[1] Before he was exposed, Schön had received the Otto-Klung-Weberbank Prize for Physics in 2001, the Braunschweig Prize in 2001 and the Outstanding Young Investigator Award of the Materials Research Society in 2002, which was later rescinded.

The Schön scandal provoked discussion in the scientific community about the degree of responsibility of coauthors and reviewers of scientific papers. The debate centered on whether peer review, traditionally designed to find errors and determine relevance and originality of papers, should also be required to detect deliberate fraud.

Rise to prominence

Schön's field of research was condensed matter physics and nanotechnology.[2] He received his Ph.D. from the University of Konstanz in 1997. In late 1997 he was hired by Bell Labs.

In 2001 he was listed as an author on an average of one research paper every eight days.[2] In that year he announced in Nature that he had produced a transistor on the molecular scale. Schön claimed to have used a thin layer of organic dye molecules to assemble an electric circuit that, when acted on by an electric current, behaved as a transistor. The implications of his work were significant. It would have been the beginning of a move away from silicon-based electronics and towards organic electronics. It would have allowed chips to continue shrinking past the point at which silicon breaks down, and therefore continue Moore's Law for much longer than is currently predicted. It also would have drastically reduced the cost of electronics.

Allegations and investigation

As recounted by Dan Agin in his book Junk Science, soon after Schön published his work on single-molecule semiconductors, others in the physics community alleged that his data contained anomalies. Professor Lydia Sohn, then of Princeton University, noticed that two experiments carried out at very different temperatures had identical noise.[2] When the editors of Nature pointed this out to Schön, he claimed to have accidentally submitted the same graph twice. Professor Paul McEuen of Cornell University then found the same noise in a paper describing a third experiment. More research by McEuen, Sohn and other physicists, uncovered a number of examples of duplicate data in Schön's work. This triggered a series of reactions that quickly led Lucent Technologies (which ran Bell Labs) to start a formal investigation.[3]

In May 2002 Bell Labs set up a committee to investigate with Professor Malcolm Beasley of Stanford University as chair.[4] The committee obtained information from all of Schön's coauthors, and interviewed the three principal ones (Zhenan Bao, Bertram Batlogg and Christian Kloc). It examined electronic drafts of the disputed papers which included processed numeric data. The committee requested copies of the raw data but found that Schön had kept no laboratory notebooks. His raw-data files had been erased from his computer. According to Schön the files were erased because his computer had limited hard drive space. In addition, all of his experimental samples had been discarded, or damaged beyond repair.[2][4]

On September 25, 2002, the committee publicly released its report.[4] The report contained details of 24 allegations of misconduct. They found evidence of Schön's scientific misconduct in at least 16 of them. They found that whole data sets had been reused in a number of different experiments. They also found that some of his graphs, which purportedly had been plotted from experimental data, had instead been produced using mathematical functions.[4]

The report found that all of the misdeeds had been performed by Schön alone. All of the coauthors (including Bertram Batlogg who was the head of the team) were exonerated of scientific misconduct. This sparked widespread debate[5] in the scientific community on how the blame for misconduct should be shared among co-authors, particularly when they share significant part of the credit.[4]

Aftermath and sanctions

Schön acknowledged that the data were incorrect in many of these papers.[4] He claimed that the substitutions could have occurred by honest mistake. He admitted to having falsified some data and stated he did so to show more convincing evidence for behaviour that he observed.

Experimenters at Delft University of Technology and the Thomas J. Watson Research Center have since performed experiments similar to Schön's. They did not obtain similar results.[2] Even before the allegations had become public, several research groups had tried to reproduce most of his groundbreaking results in the field of the physics of organic molecular materials without success.[3][6]

Schön returned to Germany and took a job at an engineering firm.[6] In June 2004 the University of Konstanz issued a press release stating that Schön's doctoral degree had been revoked due to "dishonourable conduct". Department of Physics spokesman Wolfgang Dieterich called the affair the "biggest fraud in physics in the last 50 years" and said that the "credibility of science had been brought into disrepute".[7] Schön appealed the ruling, but on October 28, 2009 it was upheld by the University.[8][9] In response, Schön sued the University, and appeared in court to testify on September 23, 2010. The court overturned the University's decision on September 27, 2010 which means that Schön can keep his doctoral degree.[10]

In October 2004, the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, the German Research Foundation) Joint Committee announced sanctions against him. The former DFG post-doctorate fellow was deprived of his active right to vote in DFG elections or serve on DFG committees for an eight-year period. During that period, Schön will also be unable to serve as a peer reviewer or apply for DFG funds.[11]

Withdrawn journal papers

On October 31, 2002, Science withdrew eight papers written by Schön:[12]

  • J. H. Schön, S. Berg, Ch. Kloc, B. Batlogg, Ambipolar pentacene field-effect transistors and inverters, Science 287, 1022 (2000)
  • J. H. Schön, Ch. Kloc, R. C. Haddon, B. Batlogg, A superconducting field-effect switch, Science 288, 656 (2000)
  • J. H. Schön, Ch. Kloc, B. Batlogg, Fractional quantum Hall effect in organic molecular semiconductors, Science 288, 2338 (2000)
  • J. H. Schön, Ch. Kloc, A. Dodabala-pur, B. Batlogg, An organic solid state injection laser, Science 289, 599 (2000)
  • J. H. Schön, A. Dodabalapur, Ch. Kloc, B. Batlogg, A light-emitting field-effect transistor, Science 290, 963 (2000)
  • J. H. Schön, Ch. Kloc, H. Y. Hwang, B. Batlogg, Josephson junctions with tunable weak links, Science 292, 252 (2001)
  • J. H. Schön, Ch. Kloc, B. Batlogg, High-temperature superconductivity in lattice-expanded C60, Science 293, 2432 (2001)
  • J. H. Schön, H. Meng, Z. Bao, Field-effect modulation of the conductance of single molecules, Science 294, 2138 (2001)

On December 20, 2002, the Physical Review journals withdrew six papers written by Schön:[13]

  • J. H. Schön, Ch. Kloc, R. A. Laudise, and B. Batlogg, Electrical properties of single crystals of rigid rodlike conjugated molecules, Phys. Rev. B 58, 12952-12957 (1998)
  • J. H. Schön, Ch. Kloc, and B. Batlogg, Hole transport in pentacene single crystals, Phys. Rev. B 63, 245201 (2001)
  • J. H. Schön, Ch. Kloc, D. Fichou, and B. Batlogg, Conjugation length dependence of the charge transport in oligothiophene single crystals, Phys. Rev. B 64, 035209 (2001)
  • J. H. Schön, Ch. Kloc, and B. Batlogg, Mobile iodine dopants in organic semiconductors, Phys. Rev. B 61, 10803-10806
  • J. H. Schön, Ch. Kloc, and B. Batlogg, Low-temperature transport in high-mobility polycrystalline pentacene field-effect transistors, Phys. Rev. B 63, 125304 (2001)
  • J. H. Schön, Ch. Kloc, and B. Batlogg, Universal Crossover from Band to Hopping Conduction in Molecular Organic, Phys. Rev. Lett. 86, 3843–3846 (2001)

On March 5, 2003, Nature withdrew seven papers written by Schön:[14]

  • J. H. Schön, Ch. Kloc, E. Bucher and B. Batlogg. Efficient organic photovoltaic diodes based on doped pentacene. Nature 403, 408–410 (1999)
  • J. H. Schön, Ch. Kloc and B. Batlogg. Superconductivity in molecular crystals induced by charge injection. Nature 406, 702–704 (2000)
  • J. H. Schön, Ch. Kloc and B. Batlogg. Superconductivity at 52 K in hole-doped C60. Nature 408, 549–552 (2000)
  • J. H. Schön, A. Dodabalapur, Z. Bao, C. Kloc, O. Schenker and B. Batlogg. Gate-induced superconductivity in a solution-processed organic polymer film. Nature 410, 189–192 (2001)
  • J. H. Schön, H. Meng and Z. Bao. Self-assembled monolayer organic field-effect transistors. Nature 413, 713–716 (2001)
  • J. H. Schön, C. Kloc, T. Siegrist, M. Steigerwald, C. Svensson and B. Batlogg. Superconductivity in single crystals of the fullerene C70. Nature 413, 831–833 (2001)
  • J. H. Schön, M. Dorget, F. C. Beuran, X. Z. Zu, E. Arushanov, C. D. Cavellin and M. Lagues. Superconductivity in CaCuO2 as a result of field-effect doping. Nature 414, 434–436 (2001)

See also

References

  1. ^ "Scandal Rocks Scientific Community". Deutsche Welle. 30 September 2002.
  2. ^ a b c d e Agin, Dan (2007). Junk Science: An Overdue Indictment of Government, Industry, and Faith Groups That Twist Science for Their Own Gain. Macmillan. ISBN 9780312374808.
  3. ^ a b Cassuto, Leonard (16 September 2002). "Big trouble in the world of "Big Physics"". Salon.com.
  4. ^ a b c d e f Beasley, Malcolm R. (2002). "Report of the Investigation Committee on the possibility of Scientific Misconduct in the work of Hendrik Schon and Coauthors" (pdf). Bell Labs. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help); Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)
  5. ^ Cargo-cult science redux, Michael R. Norman, Nature Physics 5, 451–452 (July 2009)
  6. ^ a b The rise and fall of a physics fraudster, physicsworld.com, 1 May 2009, also published in Physics World, 22(5), May 2009, page 24. Abridged and edited from Reich, E. S. Plastic Fantastic: How the Biggest Fraud in Physics Shook the Scientific World, Macmillan 2009, ISBN 978-0230224674.
  7. ^ "Universität Konstanz entzieht Jan Hendrik Schön den Doktortitel" (Press release). University of Konstanz. 2004.
  8. ^ "Erhebliches wissenschaftliches Fehlverhalten: Widerspruch gegen Entzug des Doktorgrades zurückgewiesen" (Press release). University of Konstanz. 2008. {{cite press release}}: Unknown parameter |day= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)
  9. ^ Von Frank van Bebber (2009-10-28). "Uni Konstanz bleibt bei Aberkennung des Doktortitels". Spiegel Online.
  10. ^ "Verfahren um Entzug des Doktorgrades von Dr. Jan Hendrik Schön" (Press release). University of Konstanz. 2010.
  11. ^ "DFG Imposes Sanctions Against Jan Hendrik Schön" (PDF) (Press release). Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft. 2004.
  12. ^ Bao, Z. (2002). "Retraction". Science. 298 (5595): 961b-. doi:10.1126/science.298.5595.961b. {{cite journal}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
  13. ^ Schön, J. H. (2002). "Retraction: Hole transport in pentacene single crystals [Phys. Rev. B 63, 245201 (2001)]". Phys. Rev. B. 66: 249903. doi:10.1103/PhysRevB.66.249903. {{cite journal}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
  14. ^ Schön, J. H. (2003). "Retraction: Efficient organic photovoltaic diodes based on doped pentacene". Nature. 422 (6927): 93. doi:10.1038/nature01468. PMID 12621444. {{cite journal}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)

Further reading

  • Eugenie Samuel Reich, Plastic Fantastic, 2009. ISBN 9780230623842
  • Physics and Pixie Dust, David Kaiser – Book review of Plastic Fantastic.
  • Dan Agin, Junk Science: How Politicians, Corporations, and Other Hucksters Betray Us, 2006. ISBN 0-312-35241-7.
  • Gianfranco D'Anna, "Il Falsario", a plausible reconstruction (Mursia, novel, to appear July-2010), ISBN 978-88-425-4197-4 (in Italian).[verification needed]

External links

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