Jan Hendrik Schön
Encyclopedia
The Schön scandal concerns German physicist
Jan Hendrik Schön (born 1970 in Verden) who briefly rose to prominence after a series of apparent breakthroughs with semiconductor
s that were later discovered to be fraudulent. 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Prize in 2001 and the Outstanding Young Investigator Award of the Materials Research Society in 2002, which was later rescinded.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 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.
and nanotechnology
. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Konstanz
in 1997. In late 1997 he was hired by Bell Labs
, located in New Jersey
, USA. Here, he worked on electronics in which conventional semiconducting elements (such as silicon
) were replaced by crystalline organic materials. Specific organic materials can conduct electrical currents, and in a so-called field-effect transistor
(a refined implementation of the transistor effect, which was pioneered in 1947 in the same laboratory) the conductance can be switched on or off, a basic function in the field of electronics. Schön however claimed spectacular on/off behavior, far beyond anything achieved thus far with organic materials. His measurements in most cases confirmed various theoretical predictions, for example that the organic materials could be made to display superconductivity
or used in laser
s. The findings were published in prominent scientific publications, including the journals Science
and Nature
, and gained worldwide attention. However, no research group anywhere in the world succeeded in reproducing the results claimed by Schön.
In 2001 he was listed as an author on an average of one newly published research paper every eight days. 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.
A key element in Schön's claimed successful observation of various physical phenomena in organic materials was in the transistor setup. Specifically, a thin layer of aluminium oxide
which Schön incorporated in the transistors using lab-facilities of the University of Konstanz
in Germany
. Although the equipment and materials used were commonly used by laboratories all over the world, no one succeeded in preparing aluminium oxide
layers of similar quality as claimed by Schön.
, noticed that two experiments carried out at very different temperature
s had identical noise
. 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.
In May 2002, Bell Labs set up a committee to investigate with Professor Malcolm Beasley
of Stanford University
as chair. 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.
On September 25, 2002, the committee publicly released its report. 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.
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 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.
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. Even before the allegations had become public, several research groups had tried to reproduce most of his spectacular results in the field of the physics of organic molecular materials without success.
Schön returned to Germany and took a job at an engineering firm.
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". Schön appealed the ruling, but on October 28, 2009 it was upheld by the University. 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 meaning that Schön can keep his doctoral degree. In November 2010 the University moved to appeal the court's ruling. The state court ruled in September 2011 that the university was correct in revoking his doctorate, and since no appeal is possible, the doctorate remains revoked.
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.
withdrew eight papers written by Schön:
On December 20, 2002, Physical Review
withdrew six papers written by Schön:
On February 24, 2003, Applied Physics Letters
withdrew four papers written by Schön:
On May 2, 2003, Science
withdrew another paper written by Schön:
On March 20, 2003, Advanced Materials
withdrew two papers written by Schön:
On March 5, 2003, Nature
withdrew seven papers written by Schön:
The retraction notice from March 20, 2003 in Advanced Materials mentions concerns about another paper written by Schön:
Physicist
A physicist is a scientist who studies or practices physics. Physicists study a wide range of physical phenomena in many branches of physics spanning all length scales: from sub-atomic particles of which all ordinary matter is made to the behavior of the material Universe as a whole...
Jan Hendrik Schön (born 1970 in Verden) who briefly rose to prominence after a series of apparent breakthroughs with semiconductor
Semiconductor
A semiconductor is a material with electrical conductivity due to electron flow intermediate in magnitude between that of a conductor and an insulator. This means a conductivity roughly in the range of 103 to 10−8 siemens per centimeter...
s that were later discovered to be fraudulent. Before he was exposed, Schön had received the Otto-Klung-Weberbank Prize
Otto-Klung-Weberbank Prize
The Otto-Klung-Weberbank Prize is an annual German science award for young scientists in Germany.The prize is awarded annually, alternating between Chemistry and Physics. From 1973 to 2000, it was known as the Otto-Klung Prize, taking the current name when Weberbank began sponsoring the prize in 2001...
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 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
Peer review
Peer review is a process of self-regulation by a profession or a process of evaluation involving qualified individuals within the relevant field. Peer review methods are employed to maintain standards, improve performance and provide credibility...
, 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 physicsCondensed matter physics
Condensed matter physics deals with the physical properties of condensed phases of matter. These properties appear when a number of atoms at the supramolecular and macromolecular scale interact strongly and adhere to each other or are otherwise highly concentrated in a system. The most familiar...
and nanotechnology
Nanotechnology
Nanotechnology is the study of manipulating matter on an atomic and molecular scale. Generally, nanotechnology deals with developing materials, devices, or other structures possessing at least one dimension sized from 1 to 100 nanometres...
. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Konstanz
University of Konstanz
The University of Konstanz is a university in the city of Konstanz in Baden-Württemberg, Germany. It was founded in 1966, and the main campus on the Gießberg was opened in 1972. As one of nine German Excellence Universities today University of Konstanz is counted among Germany's most prestigious...
in 1997. In late 1997 he was hired by Bell Labs
Bell Labs
Bell Laboratories is the research and development subsidiary of the French-owned Alcatel-Lucent and previously of the American Telephone & Telegraph Company , half-owned through its Western Electric manufacturing subsidiary.Bell Laboratories operates its...
, located in New Jersey
New Jersey
New Jersey is a state in the Northeastern and Middle Atlantic regions of the United States. , its population was 8,791,894. It is bordered on the north and east by the state of New York, on the southeast and south by the Atlantic Ocean, on the west by Pennsylvania and on the southwest by Delaware...
, USA. Here, he worked on electronics in which conventional semiconducting elements (such as silicon
Silicon
Silicon is a chemical element with the symbol Si and atomic number 14. A tetravalent metalloid, it is less reactive than its chemical analog carbon, the nonmetal directly above it in the periodic table, but more reactive than germanium, the metalloid directly below it in the table...
) were replaced by crystalline organic materials. Specific organic materials can conduct electrical currents, and in a so-called field-effect transistor
Field-effect transistor
The field-effect transistor is a transistor that relies on an electric field to control the shape and hence the conductivity of a channel of one type of charge carrier in a semiconductor material. FETs are sometimes called unipolar transistors to contrast their single-carrier-type operation with...
(a refined implementation of the transistor effect, which was pioneered in 1947 in the same laboratory) the conductance can be switched on or off, a basic function in the field of electronics. Schön however claimed spectacular on/off behavior, far beyond anything achieved thus far with organic materials. His measurements in most cases confirmed various theoretical predictions, for example that the organic materials could be made to display superconductivity
Superconductivity
Superconductivity is a phenomenon of exactly zero electrical resistance occurring in certain materials below a characteristic temperature. It was discovered by Heike Kamerlingh Onnes on April 8, 1911 in Leiden. Like ferromagnetism and atomic spectral lines, superconductivity is a quantum...
or used in laser
Laser
A laser is a device that emits light through a process of optical amplification based on the stimulated emission of photons. The term "laser" originated as an acronym for Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation...
s. The findings were published in prominent scientific publications, including the journals Science
Science (journal)
Science is the academic journal of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and is one of the world's top scientific journals....
and Nature
Nature (journal)
Nature, first published on 4 November 1869, is ranked the world's most cited interdisciplinary scientific journal by the Science Edition of the 2010 Journal Citation Reports...
, and gained worldwide attention. However, no research group anywhere in the world succeeded in reproducing the results claimed by Schön.
In 2001 he was listed as an author on an average of one newly published research paper every eight days. In that year he announced in Nature
Nature (journal)
Nature, first published on 4 November 1869, is ranked the world's most cited interdisciplinary scientific journal by the Science Edition of the 2010 Journal Citation Reports...
that he had produced a transistor
Transistor
A transistor is a semiconductor device used to amplify and switch electronic signals and power. It is composed of a semiconductor material with at least three terminals for connection to an external circuit. A voltage or current applied to one pair of the transistor's terminals changes the current...
on the molecular scale. Schön claimed to have used a thin layer of organic
Organic compound
An organic compound is any member of a large class of gaseous, liquid, or solid chemical compounds whose molecules contain carbon. For historical reasons discussed below, a few types of carbon-containing compounds such as carbides, carbonates, simple oxides of carbon, and cyanides, as well as the...
dye molecules to assemble an electric circuit that, when acted on by an electric current
Electric current
Electric current is a flow of electric charge through a medium.This charge is typically carried by moving electrons in a conductor such as wire...
, behaved as a transistor. The implications of his work were significant. It would have been the beginning of a move away from silicon
Silicon
Silicon is a chemical element with the symbol Si and atomic number 14. A tetravalent metalloid, it is less reactive than its chemical analog carbon, the nonmetal directly above it in the periodic table, but more reactive than germanium, the metalloid directly below it in the table...
-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
Moore's Law
Moore's law describes a long-term trend in the history of computing hardware: the number of transistors that can be placed inexpensively on an integrated circuit doubles approximately every two years....
for much longer than is currently predicted. It also would have drastically reduced the cost of electronics.
A key element in Schön's claimed successful observation of various physical phenomena in organic materials was in the transistor setup. Specifically, a thin layer of aluminium oxide
Aluminium oxide
Aluminium oxide is an amphoteric oxide with the chemical formula 23. It is commonly referred to as alumina, or corundum in its crystalline form, as well as many other names, reflecting its widespread occurrence in nature and industry...
which Schön incorporated in the transistors using lab-facilities of the University of Konstanz
University of Konstanz
The University of Konstanz is a university in the city of Konstanz in Baden-Württemberg, Germany. It was founded in 1966, and the main campus on the Gießberg was opened in 1972. As one of nine German Excellence Universities today University of Konstanz is counted among Germany's most prestigious...
in Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
. Although the equipment and materials used were commonly used by laboratories all over the world, no one succeeded in preparing aluminium oxide
Aluminium oxide
Aluminium oxide is an amphoteric oxide with the chemical formula 23. It is commonly referred to as alumina, or corundum in its crystalline form, as well as many other names, reflecting its widespread occurrence in nature and industry...
layers of similar quality as claimed by Schön.
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 UniversityPrinceton University
Princeton University is a private research university located in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. The school is one of the eight universities of the Ivy League, and is one of the nine Colonial Colleges founded before the American Revolution....
, noticed that two experiments carried out at very different temperature
Temperature
Temperature is a physical property of matter that quantitatively expresses the common notions of hot and cold. Objects of low temperature are cold, while various degrees of higher temperatures are referred to as warm or hot...
s had identical noise
Noise (electronics)
Electronic noise is a random fluctuation in an electrical signal, a characteristic of all electronic circuits. Noise generated by electronic devices varies greatly, as it can be produced by several different effects...
. When the editors of Nature pointed this out to Schön, he claimed to have accidentally submitted the same graph twice. Professor Paul McEuen
Paul McEuen
Paul McEuen is an American physicist. He received his B.S. in engineering physics at the University of Oklahoma , and his Ph.D. in applied physics at Yale University . After postdoctoral work at MIT , he became a professor at the University of California, Berkeley...
of Cornell University
Cornell University
Cornell University is an Ivy League university located in Ithaca, New York, United States. It is a private land-grant university, receiving annual funding from the State of New York for certain educational missions...
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
Lucent Technologies
Alcatel-Lucent USA, Inc., originally Lucent Technologies, Inc. is a French-owned technology company composed of what was formerly AT&T Technologies, which included Western Electric and Bell Labs...
(which ran Bell Labs) to start a formal investigation.
In May 2002, Bell Labs set up a committee to investigate with Professor Malcolm Beasley
Malcolm Beasley
Malcolm Roy Beasley is an American physicist. He is Professor Emeritus of Applied Physics at Stanford University. He is known for his research related to superconductivity...
of Stanford University
Stanford University
The Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University or Stanford, is a private research university on an campus located near Palo Alto, California. It is situated in the northwestern Santa Clara Valley on the San Francisco Peninsula, approximately northwest of San...
as chair. 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.
On September 25, 2002, the committee publicly released its report. 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.
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 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.
Aftermath and sanctions
Schön acknowledged that the data were incorrect in many of these papers. 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
Delft University of Technology
Delft University of Technology , also known as TU Delft, is the largest and oldest Dutch public technical university, located in Delft, Netherlands...
and the Thomas J. Watson Research Center
Thomas J. Watson Research Center
The Thomas J. Watson Research Center is the headquarters for the IBM Research Division.The center is on three sites, with the main laboratory in Yorktown Heights, New York, 38 miles north of New York City, a building in Hawthorne, New York, and offices in Cambridge, Massachusetts.- Overview :The...
have since performed experiments similar to Schön's. They did not obtain similar results. Even before the allegations had become public, several research groups had tried to reproduce most of his spectacular results in the field of the physics of organic molecular materials without success.
Schön returned to Germany and took a job at an engineering firm.
In June 2004 the University of Konstanz
University of Konstanz
The University of Konstanz is a university in the city of Konstanz in Baden-Württemberg, Germany. It was founded in 1966, and the main campus on the Gießberg was opened in 1972. As one of nine German Excellence Universities today University of Konstanz is counted among Germany's most prestigious...
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". Schön appealed the ruling, but on October 28, 2009 it was upheld by the University. 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 meaning that Schön can keep his doctoral degree. In November 2010 the University moved to appeal the court's ruling. The state court ruled in September 2011 that the university was correct in revoking his doctorate, and since no appeal is possible, the doctorate remains revoked.
In October 2004, the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft
The Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft is an important German research funding organization and the largest such organization in Europe.-Function:...
(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.
Withdrawn journal papers
On October 31, 2002, ScienceScience (journal)
Science is the academic journal of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and is one of the world's top scientific journals....
withdrew eight papers written by Schön:
On December 20, 2002, Physical Review
Physical Review
Physical Review is an American scientific journal founded in 1893 by Edward Nichols. It publishes original research and scientific and literature reviews on all aspects of physics. It is published by the American Physical Society. The journal is in its third series, and is split in several...
withdrew six papers written by Schön:
On February 24, 2003, Applied Physics Letters
Applied Physics Letters
Applied Physics Letters is a peer-reviewed scientific journal that is published 52 times per year by the American Institute of Physics. Its focus is rapid publication and dissemination of new experimental and theoretical papers regarding applications of physics in all disciplines of science,...
withdrew four papers written by Schön:
On May 2, 2003, Science
Science (journal)
Science is the academic journal of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and is one of the world's top scientific journals....
withdrew another paper written by Schön:
On March 20, 2003, Advanced Materials
Advanced Materials
Advanced Materials is a weekly peer-reviewed scientific journal covering materials science. It includes Communications, Reviews, and Feature Articles on topics in chemistry, physics, nanotechnology, ceramics, metallurgy, and biomaterials.-History:...
withdrew two papers written by Schön:
On March 5, 2003, Nature
Nature (journal)
Nature, first published on 4 November 1869, is ranked the world's most cited interdisciplinary scientific journal by the Science Edition of the 2010 Journal Citation Reports...
withdrew seven papers written by Schön:
Further questionable journal articles
The retraction notices from February 24, 2003 in Applied Physics Letters relayed concerns about seven papers written by Schön and published in the Applied Physics Letters:The retraction notice from March 20, 2003 in Advanced Materials mentions concerns about another paper written by Schön:
See also
- Academic dishonestyAcademic dishonestyAcademic dishonesty or academic misconduct is any type of cheating that occurs in relation to a formal academic exercise. It can include* Plagiarism: The adoption or reproduction of original creations of another author without due acknowledgment.* Fabrication: The...
- Bogdanov AffairBogdanov AffairThe Bogdanov Affair is an academic dispute regarding the legitimacy of a series of theoretical physics papers written by French twins Igor and Grichka Bogdanov . These papers were published in reputable scientific journals, and were alleged by their authors to culminate in a proposed theory for...
- List of experimental errors and frauds in physics
- Plastic Fantastic: How the Biggest Fraud in Physics Shook the Scientific WorldPlastic Fantastic: How the Biggest Fraud in Physics Shook the Scientific WorldPlastic Fantastic: How the Biggest Fraud in Physics Shook the Scientific World is a 2009 book by American-based science reporter Eugenie Samuel Reich...
- Scientific misconductScientific misconductScientific misconduct is the violation of the standard codes of scholarly conduct and ethical behavior in professional scientific research. A Lancet review on Handling of Scientific Misconduct in Scandinavian countries provides the following sample definitions: *Danish definition: "Intention or...
Further reading
- Eugenie Samuel Reich, Plastic Fantastic, 2009. ISBN 978-0-230-62384-2
- 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, Milano July-2010), ISBN 978-88-425-4197-4 (in Italian).
External links
- Investigation Finds that One Lucent Physicist Engaged in Scientific Misconduct Physics Today, 2002
- NPR Science Friday report (10/18/2002) Author who interviewed 126 scientists and journal editors about Schön's frauds.