Education

Finally, Weve Caught Hendrik’

In his glory days, Jan Hendrik Schön published one scientific paper a week. Last week, he was found guilty of fraud.Nanotechnology’s coming man, they called him.

Jan Hendrik Schön won one scholarship after another, publishing a large number of important breakthroughs in the research field of organic molecules (polymers) behaving as conductors and transistors. Schön seemed headed straight for the Nobel Prize. Until last week.

A research committee at Bell Laboratories, where Schön worked, concluded that 16 of the 25 scientific papers they investigated were fabricated, and a further six papers of Schön%s were deemed suspicious.

The blow is numbing. Schön gave experimental physics its own September 11th, Delft Nanoscience professor Teun Klapwijk told the Dutch press earlier this week. Physicist David Goodstein of Caltech, an authority on research ethics, agreed. %Sin in the form of faking scientific data seemed to be reserved to biology and related sciences, not physics”, he writes in a yet to be published commentary.

Professor Leo Kouwenhoven, of TU Delft’s Nanosciences department, calls the Schön mishap an ‘industrial accident’ that should sharpen the senses: ,,A publication is just the first presentation of results and claims. It takes many discussions and the reproduction of results before something becomes accepted. Schön’s results have never become widely accepted. But it was terribly hard to prove he was faking.”

Kouwenhoven was there when the cracks began to show. ,,Already in the Fall of 2001 rumors started. People were always gossiping about Hendrik,” Kouwenhoven says. Bell Laboratories carried out an internal inquiry of Schön’s work, and Kouwenhoven’s colleagues formed an email group, exchanging information about everything that was wrong with Schön’s work. “On May 10th, I got an email entitled, ‘It is all over for Hendrik. Take a look.’ Paul McEuen, my former Postdoc advisor, found seven figures that were duplicated in different papers. The data sets were exactly the same. Only the labels at the axis were changed. It was a shocking discovery.”

One day later, McEuen informed the head of Schön’s research group: ,,I remember McEuen was mostly concerned that Schön would harm himself. Fortunately, he didn’t. I do hope he tells us one of these days why he did all this.” For now, Schön has other things on his mind. Not only did Bell Labs fire him on the spot,

but he must also leave the USA. Without a job, his green card is invalid.

According to Caltech ethics expert Goodstein, fraudulent scientists often mean well, but are too impatient. Schön probably “knew” what research results to expect. He simply lacked the patience to wait for them.

Critical

Indeed, research suggests that scientific fraud is widespread. Ina comprehensive study involving 4,000 researchers from 100 faculties, a University of Minnesota research team found that one in three scientists sometimes plagiarize, and that 22 percent

of all researchers admit to sometimes handling research data carelessly. Another 15 percent admit to occasionally withholding unfavorable data.

Fraud seems most likely to pop up in the research of unmonitored scientists who are working alone on irreproducible research. That’s why life sciences are more prone to fraud than physics and chemistry. But that doesn’t mean fraud is restricted to it. Hounded by the ‘publish or perish’ adage, even physicists sometimes turn sour. According to Kouwenhoven, preventing fraud is particularly hard when new materials are used that nobody has ever worked with before. %Schön worked with a device containing some special aluminum oxide. Rebuilding these devices is not a matter of two weeks. It might take a year.”

Schön claimed that his devices could contain large voltage differences, several times larger than anyone else%s devices. This is why he could claim he had observed several new effects. Nobody, therefore, could prove something was wrong for a long time. Schön’s results were beautiful and not obviously in

contradiction with any fundamental law,” Kouwenhoven says.

Details

At DUT, there are approximately five researchers working on molecular electronics, which is also Schön’s field of study. One of them is Alberto Morpurgo, of the Nanoscience Department. ,,I started studying the electronic properties of organic molecular crystals shortly after Schön’s first publications appeared.”

Initially, Morpurgo trusted the (scant) details given by Schön in his papers. ,,Gradually we became suspicious about many aspects of Schön’s results,” Morpurgo says.

But that doesn’t mean Morpurgo has been wasting research time, he emphasizes: ,,It’s important to distinguish between Schön, who has committed fraud, and the field of molecular electronics, which still needs to be explored and is full of interesting scientific questions % and actually more so now than before, since Schöns results are false. The field of molecular electronics existed before Schön. And it will continue to exist after.”

Schön is gone, let the science continue. Still, can fraud ever be prevented? ,,You can’t blame the peer reviewers. They never know how the researchers acquired the data,” Kouwenhoven says. ,,But the people from Bell Laboratories could have walked in every time

Schön was supposedly doing an experiment.”

Infamous Frauds

1912: First Briton

In Piltdown, Sussex, archaeologist Charles Dawson unearths two ancient humanoid skulls and claims that ‘Piltdown Man’ proves humanity originated in the UK after all. It wasn’t until 1953 that it was proven that ‘The First Englishman’ was just a dull, medievalskull, with the jaw of an Orangutan attached to it.

1926: Bad Frogs

Hailed as the new Darwin, the brilliant biologist Paul Kammerer sees his career come to an end when Nature magazine accused him of tinkering with pictures of evolving frogs. The accusation is still unproven, but Kammerer was so severely discredited that he put a bullet in his head.

1996: Shrink Copies Shrink

Scientific fraud makes headlines in Holland, when popular psychologist René Diekstra (Leiden University) is accused of plagiarism. Diekstra is said to have copied entire pages from other researchers % and even from himself. Oddly, Diekstra also copied autobiographical details from others. Diekstra is suspended and loses most of his freelance assignments.

1997: German Scam

Germany is shocked to learn that two prominent cancer researchers, Marion Brach and Friedhelm Herrmann, have been concocting research results for years. In perhaps the biggest scientific fraud scandal in Europe to date, the two researchers are accused of faking data in at least 12 publications.

2000: Caught In The Act

Japan’s most respected archaeologist, Shinichi Fujimora, is caught on film while reburying ancient stone tools he had earlier uncovered. Fujimora is fired, and Japanese history books are suddenly outdated.

2002: No 118

California’s prestigious Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory woefully admits that one of its scientists has fabricated the discovery of two new chemical elements: elements 118 and 116. The researcher, Victor Ninov, is fired. The embarrassing stain remains, however. How could a sole researcher fake the discovery of something so massively important as two new elements? (MK)

In his glory days, Jan Hendrik Schön published one scientific paper a week. Last week, he was found guilty of fraud.

Nanotechnology’s coming man, they called him. Jan Hendrik Schön won one scholarship after another, publishing a large number of important breakthroughs in the research field of organic molecules (polymers) behaving as conductors and transistors. Schön seemed headed straight for the Nobel Prize. Until last week.

A research committee at Bell Laboratories, where Schön worked, concluded that 16 of the 25 scientific papers they investigated were fabricated, and a further six papers of Schön%s were deemed suspicious.

The blow is numbing. Schön gave experimental physics its own September 11th, Delft Nanoscience professor Teun Klapwijk told the Dutch press earlier this week. Physicist David Goodstein of Caltech, an authority on research ethics, agreed. %Sin in the form of faking scientific data seemed to be reserved to biology and related sciences, not physics”, he writes in a yet to be published commentary.

Professor Leo Kouwenhoven, of TU Delft’s Nanosciences department, calls the Schön mishap an ‘industrial accident’ that should sharpen the senses: ,,A publication is just the first presentation of results and claims. It takes many discussions and the reproduction of results before something becomes accepted. Schön’s results have never become widely accepted. But it was terribly hard to prove he was faking.”

Kouwenhoven was there when the cracks began to show. ,,Already in the Fall of 2001 rumors started. People were always gossiping about Hendrik,” Kouwenhoven says. Bell Laboratories carried out an internal inquiry of Schön’s work, and Kouwenhoven’s colleagues formed an email group, exchanging information about everything that was wrong with Schön’s work. “On May 10th, I got an email entitled, ‘It is all over for Hendrik. Take a look.’ Paul McEuen, my former Postdoc advisor, found seven figures that were duplicated in different papers. The data sets were exactly the same. Only the labels at the axis were changed. It was a shocking discovery.”

One day later, McEuen informed the head of Schön’s research group: ,,I remember McEuen was mostly concerned that Schön would harm himself. Fortunately, he didn’t. I do hope he tells us one of these days why he did all this.” For now, Schön has other things on his mind. Not only did Bell Labs fire him on the spot,

but he must also leave the USA. Without a job, his green card is invalid.

According to Caltech ethics expert Goodstein, fraudulent scientists often mean well, but are too impatient. Schön probably “knew” what research results to expect. He simply lacked the patience to wait for them.

Critical

Indeed, research suggests that scientific fraud is widespread. Ina comprehensive study involving 4,000 researchers from 100 faculties, a University of Minnesota research team found that one in three scientists sometimes plagiarize, and that 22 percent

of all researchers admit to sometimes handling research data carelessly. Another 15 percent admit to occasionally withholding unfavorable data.

Fraud seems most likely to pop up in the research of unmonitored scientists who are working alone on irreproducible research. That’s why life sciences are more prone to fraud than physics and chemistry. But that doesn’t mean fraud is restricted to it. Hounded by the ‘publish or perish’ adage, even physicists sometimes turn sour. According to Kouwenhoven, preventing fraud is particularly hard when new materials are used that nobody has ever worked with before. %Schön worked with a device containing some special aluminum oxide. Rebuilding these devices is not a matter of two weeks. It might take a year.”

Schön claimed that his devices could contain large voltage differences, several times larger than anyone else%s devices. This is why he could claim he had observed several new effects. Nobody, therefore, could prove something was wrong for a long time. Schön’s results were beautiful and not obviously in

contradiction with any fundamental law,” Kouwenhoven says.

Details

At DUT, there are approximately five researchers working on molecular electronics, which is also Schön’s field of study. One of them is Alberto Morpurgo, of the Nanoscience Department. ,,I started studying the electronic properties of organic molecular crystals shortly after Schön’s first publications appeared.”

Initially, Morpurgo trusted the (scant) details given by Schön in his papers. ,,Gradually we became suspicious about many aspects of Schön’s results,” Morpurgo says.

But that doesn’t mean Morpurgo has been wasting research time, he emphasizes: ,,It’s important to distinguish between Schön, who has committed fraud, and the field of molecular electronics, which still needs to be explored and is full of interesting scientific questions % and actually more so now than before, since Schöns results are false. The field of molecular electronics existed before Schön. And it will continue to exist after.”

Schön is gone, let the science continue. Still, can fraud ever be prevented? ,,You can’t blame the peer reviewers. They never know how the researchers acquired the data,” Kouwenhoven says. ,,But the people from Bell Laboratories could have walked in every time

Schön was supposedly doing an experiment.”

Infamous Frauds

1912: First Briton

In Piltdown, Sussex, archaeologist Charles Dawson unearths two ancient humanoid skulls and claims that ‘Piltdown Man’ proves humanity originated in the UK after all. It wasn’t until 1953 that it was proven that ‘The First Englishman’ was just a dull, medievalskull, with the jaw of an Orangutan attached to it.

1926: Bad Frogs

Hailed as the new Darwin, the brilliant biologist Paul Kammerer sees his career come to an end when Nature magazine accused him of tinkering with pictures of evolving frogs. The accusation is still unproven, but Kammerer was so severely discredited that he put a bullet in his head.

1996: Shrink Copies Shrink

Scientific fraud makes headlines in Holland, when popular psychologist René Diekstra (Leiden University) is accused of plagiarism. Diekstra is said to have copied entire pages from other researchers % and even from himself. Oddly, Diekstra also copied autobiographical details from others. Diekstra is suspended and loses most of his freelance assignments.

1997: German Scam

Germany is shocked to learn that two prominent cancer researchers, Marion Brach and Friedhelm Herrmann, have been concocting research results for years. In perhaps the biggest scientific fraud scandal in Europe to date, the two researchers are accused of faking data in at least 12 publications.

2000: Caught In The Act

Japan’s most respected archaeologist, Shinichi Fujimora, is caught on film while reburying ancient stone tools he had earlier uncovered. Fujimora is fired, and Japanese history books are suddenly outdated.

2002: No 118

California’s prestigious Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory woefully admits that one of its scientists has fabricated the discovery of two new chemical elements: elements 118 and 116. The researcher, Victor Ninov, is fired. The embarrassing stain remains, however. How could a sole researcher fake the discovery of something so massively important as two new elements? (MK)

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