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"The thing about the Schon case is this: he might have got away with all..." But could Schon have gotten away with it? I somehow doubt it. I was going to menti

"The thing about the Schon case is this: he might have got away with all..." But could Schon have gotten away with it? I somehow doubt it. I was going to mention the Schon case and you beat me to it. I recall when news of this case broke, it then led me to read some of his papers that contained the fabricated data. I've never fully understood why Schon faked the data or what he stood to gain by doing so. First, I've not read Samuel Reich's account of the Schon case you mention, in fact I didn't know it existed or I definitely would have done so. It's now for me to follow that up. It seems to me there are multiple reasons for why a researcher would fabricate data or commit scientific fraud including those you've mentioned. However, the problem I have is that I find it almost inconceivable that anyone who commits such fraud would actually believe that they could get away with doing so and not get caught. If the perpetrator simply believed that the fraud would never be discovered during his/her career or lifetime - or perhaps never even after death and thus there'd never be a stain on his/her reputation then I'd reckon we ought to question how he/she became a researcher in the first instance. Such woolly thinking doesn't smack of having much intelligence. Surely, every researcher knows that even if he/she managed to fool the peer review process with fabricated data (which is quite possible with new research that's not well understood) that this situation wouldn't remain so forever. Once published in widely circulated journals this fabricated data would live on for centuries and the fact that it's fraulent would eventually be discovered. Moreover, a researcher who intends to fabricate data would also know (or ought to know) that once errors in scientific papers are discovered it's usually not hard to distinguish between fabricated data and actual errors, mistakes, etc. It's a long while since I've read some of Schon's papers but I recall that at the time it was clear even to me who hadn't worked as a researcher in that field that his results were just a little too clean and neat. Sure, by then I had the hindsight of knowing that parts of those papers contained fabricated data but even so it was pretty obvious. Thus, to my mind, the question remains why he undetook such risks with his career. (Perhaps Samuel Reich's book answers that so I'm looking forward to reading it.) Incidentally, the matter of scientific fraud has never been far from my mind since a somewhat trivial event occurred to me during my student days - although it wasn't trivial at the time (I've recounted this previously). At the end of a chemistry lab experiment the tutor accused me of fabricating the results of a titration and that I adapted my work directly from the textbook, as he reckoned my results were too good to be true. I was absolutely furious and I insisted that he stay back with me in the lab over lunchtime whilst I repeated the titration which he did. The results were that several of the measurements were even closer to the theoretical than the earlier experiment. That incident led me to not only question and be suspicious of my own data and experimental setups but also those of others. This brings me on to the matter of the replication crisis but I won't elaborate on that further here except to say that Schon must have been worried that others wouldn't be able to replicate his work, that is - as you've mentioned - unless he was pretty certain others would be able to do so, thus his motive.

photochemsyn 5y ago
The book is pretty illuminating, but at times is kind of grim reading for anyone with past academic experience. What really sank Schon was the failure to replicate his work, but there were a lot of grad students and postdocs who wasted several years attempting to do so, ending up with nothing to show for it. Even so, there was a reluctance to admit that fraud had taken place. From the book: Following the exposure of a major scientific fraud, senior scientists sometimes voice concern about the possibility of harm to the public image of their field. News reports and transparent investigations sometimes seem to be making the problem worse. But in practice, the scientists most seriously affected by Hendrik Schon's claims were more affected by the reality of fraud than the bad appearance that followed its exposure. Leading journals like Science and Nature are also reluctant to withdraw papers for similar image reasons, and Schon was a consummate con artist: "He knew it was important to be friendly towards reviewers, and to thank them generously for their valuable comments. He was not to shy to solicit editors politely for their support." He also would go to senior scientists, ask for their opinion on what kind of data would be expected if his imaginary devices worked, and then fabricate data according to their estimates. Initially, there was also a major pushback against fraud claims by Bell Labs managers, up to giving poor performance reviews to some of Schon's co-workers who questioned his behavior on the basis of them 'not being good team players'. So, yes, if people had managed to replicate his work, even partially, he'd likely have gotten away with it, and would now be some top scientist in some prestigious institution.
- hilbert42 5y ago
  Thanks for that info. As mentioned, it's been a long time since I looked at the Schön case in any serious way. I made my earlier comment from my smartphone, this one is from my PC as I recall archiving a number of documents on disk about the case years back, so I went looking for them here (it also accounts for why Schön is now spelt correctly—the PC speller insists his name includes the umlaut). So far, the most relevant document I've turned up from my archives is Report Of The Investigation Committee On The Possibility Of Scientific Misconduct In The Work Of Hendrik Schön And Coauthors, September 2002 - Lucent Technologies† Malcolm R. Beasley et al (aka, Bell Labs Beasley Report), [PDF]. Although not immediately to hand, I know that I'll still have physical copies of Schön's Science articles as I've kept my old issues of this and other scientific journals. It's all slowly coming back to me now—when examining Schön's papers (as published in say Science, Nature, Physical Review, etc,) one could also have a running commentary on what was wrong with them if one read them in conjunction with the Beasley Report. It provided comprehensive instances of the fraud from the published documents. In effect, Beasley provided an annotated guide to Schön's papers. As I've just been reminded, the Beasley Report is very detailed, it is 129 pages long including appendices one of which includes a table that lists 25 papers by Schön and cohorts that the Beasley Committee investigated. Schön is the only author to appear on all 25 papers and the type of fraud is listed for each paper, these include: 'Data Substitution', 'Unrealistic Precision', 'Contradictory Physics', 'Unusually Good Results', and 'Unusual Fabrication or Procedures'. Presumably I'm not providing you with any additional information here as I'd expect that Samuel Reich would have detailed all this and more in his book. In addition to the aforementioned chemistry incident the reason that I took an unusual interest in the Schön case was that I'd had reasonable experience in working with field effect transistors, so when the news of his research fraud broke the subject matter piqued my interest. Also, my professional experience in electronics made the Beasley Report easy to understand. Reckon you're right about leading journals like Science, Nature etc. being reluctant to withdraw papers for image reasons. In hindsight that's now very clear. In the long run, the failure of those running the scientific journals and the scientific community generally to get fully on top of the Schön matter and other instances of scientific fraud has turned out to be very detrimental for science and scientific research. Even 'soft' scientific fraud, such as the never-ending exaggerated claims made by research teams about the effectiveness of their research (usually for the purposes of obtaining funding and general PR), has dramatically compounded the problem. Together, they have had a serious and detrimental effect on the way many of the population perceive science in that over recent decades huge swathes of them have turned away from or have been turned off science, many no longer believe what scientists say and or that they dismiss their comments with a gain of salt. Take the instance of climate change alone (there are many more). We only have to look at the millions of its skeptics and their widespread disbelief in climate science to know that they hold little respect for the subject, the same also holds for much of other science. To make matters worse, many now hold such disrespect and contempt for science and scientific institutions at levels that border on zealotry—that is, they hold attitudes of distaste for science that are more akin to the hatred and furor one often observes between warring religious groups. There is little doubt that science no longer commands the very high respect from the population that it once did decades ago. Whilst no doubt there are many reasons, cultural and otherwise, that have contributed and combined to produce this downturn in science's popularity, it is nevertheless clear that exaggerated claims and mixed messages that have come from scientists and technocrats over the past 50 or so years have been largely responsible for creating these negative attitudes. One only has to look at cancer research to witness the problem. If every instance of the many, many thousands of optimistic pronouncements about cancer made by researchers since WWII had actually contributed to curing the disease even to, say, the tiny extent of just 0.1% improvement per pronouncement then the disease would have been wiped out many years ago. Yes, whilst researchers have made progress over those 70-plus years, cancer is still the second biggest killer of humankind—and the population is only too well aware of the fact—and also the fact that scientists have failed to live up to their promises in that they've failed to deliver a cure. It's little wonder that the consequences of such skepticism and disbelief have morphed into other areas of health management—such as the failure of many to heed important messages about COVID; the unreasonable fear and loathing of chemicals—even benign ones—and the chemical industry per se, — views that are held by a huge percentage of the population—and so on, and so on. The irrational fear of chemicals among so many of the population alone illustrates the absolute abject failure of science education. It seems to me that science needs to completely rebrand itself, and it needs to begin with not making promises that it cannot keep—if in doubt science should say absolutely nothing. Clearly, part of that rebranding ought to be aimed at cleaning up all aspects of scientific fraud, not just extreme instances such as the Schön matter. Scientific fraud has been with us for eons and it will probably always be so but we're now long past the days of Charles Dawson's Piltdown man-type hoaxes, which, incidentally, took over 40 years to conclude conclusively that it was a fraud. We now have multiple techniques for detecting fraud such as Benford's Law (aka First Digit Law), etc., these need to be combined with truly effective policies to ensure that scientific ethics and standards are maintained—if necessary, even to the extent of making them an adjunct or an addition to the Scientific Method if it would ensure that scientific research would become more honest and ethical. No doubt, in the next few years we will also see a huge enhancement to the detection of scientific fraud when AI begins to scan millions of existing research papers. No doubt it will find many more past instances of fraud. Finally, if you think my comments about science's falling out of favor and grace with a significantly large part of the population is grossly exaggerated then it's worth spending eleven minutes on the Internet Archive viewing the short film Why Study Science? This rather corny documentary from 1955 was made to encourage US high school kids to take a positive interest in science and the study thereof. However, what's truly relevant about the film for us today is that it oozes with the then existing ethos that everyone in society was interested in and or understood the importance of science no matter what their profession was or what other values they held: https://archive.org/details/WhyStudy1955_2 https://archive.org/details/WhyStudy1955_2. (In my opinion, this film ought to get a wider coverage than it has at present if for no other reason than it gives us a clear reference point from which to measure changes in society's attitude towards science.) There is no missing the fact that this documentary conveys par excellence the zeitgeist of the mid 1950s. It clearly shows that back then society did value science in ways and to the extent that we have not seen exhibited for many decades. Having an appreciation for science was the de facto ethos of those days, which may seem surprising given that the 1950s was also the peak period for nuclear weapons development. Despite that, people's faith in the value of science and scientific research didn't waver. Furthermore, I can attest that this positive attitude towards science still prevailed with just about everyone that I came in contact with a decade or so later when it became my turn to study science in high school. This positive attitude towards science wasn't a matter that most people even consciously thought about let alone questioned—as it was the accepted norm. It wasn't for another decade or so in the late 1970s to mid 1980s that the anti-science rot began to set in and take hold. ____ † BTW, I've just done an online search for the Beasley Report and some websites are still hosting it, here's the first one that I came across: https://w.astro.berkeley.edu/~kalas/ethics/documents/schoen.pdf https://w.astro.berkeley.edu/~kalas/ethics/documents/schoen....

photochemsyn 5y ago

The book is pretty illuminating, but at times is kind of grim reading for anyone with past academic experience. What really sank Schon was the failure to replicate his work, but there were a lot of grad students and postdocs who wasted several years attempting to do so, ending up with nothing to show for it. Even so, there was a reluctance to admit that fraud had taken place. From the book: Following the exposure of a major scientific fraud, senior scientists sometimes voice concern about the possibility of harm to the public image of their field. News reports and transparent investigations sometimes seem to be making the problem worse. But in practice, the scientists most seriously affected by Hendrik Schon's claims were more affected by the reality of fraud than the bad appearance that followed its exposure. Leading journals like Science and Nature are also reluctant to withdraw papers for similar image reasons, and Schon was a consummate con artist: "He knew it was important to be friendly towards reviewers, and to thank them generously for their valuable comments. He was not to shy to solicit editors politely for their support." He also would go to senior scientists, ask for their opinion on what kind of data would be expected if his imaginary devices worked, and then fabricate data according to their estimates. Initially, there was also a major pushback against fraud claims by Bell Labs managers, up to giving poor performance reviews to some of Schon's co-workers who questioned his behavior on the basis of them 'not being good team players'. So, yes, if people had managed to replicate his work, even partially, he'd likely have gotten away with it, and would now be some top scientist in some prestigious institution.

hilbert42 5y ago
Thanks for that info. As mentioned, it's been a long time since I looked at the Schön case in any serious way. I made my earlier comment from my smartphone, this one is from my PC as I recall archiving a number of documents on disk about the case years back, so I went looking for them here (it also accounts for why Schön is now spelt correctly—the PC speller insists his name includes the umlaut). So far, the most relevant document I've turned up from my archives is Report Of The Investigation Committee On The Possibility Of Scientific Misconduct In The Work Of Hendrik Schön And Coauthors, September 2002 - Lucent Technologies† Malcolm R. Beasley et al (aka, Bell Labs Beasley Report), [PDF]. Although not immediately to hand, I know that I'll still have physical copies of Schön's Science articles as I've kept my old issues of this and other scientific journals. It's all slowly coming back to me now—when examining Schön's papers (as published in say Science, Nature, Physical Review, etc,) one could also have a running commentary on what was wrong with them if one read them in conjunction with the Beasley Report. It provided comprehensive instances of the fraud from the published documents. In effect, Beasley provided an annotated guide to Schön's papers. As I've just been reminded, the Beasley Report is very detailed, it is 129 pages long including appendices one of which includes a table that lists 25 papers by Schön and cohorts that the Beasley Committee investigated. Schön is the only author to appear on all 25 papers and the type of fraud is listed for each paper, these include: 'Data Substitution', 'Unrealistic Precision', 'Contradictory Physics', 'Unusually Good Results', and 'Unusual Fabrication or Procedures'. Presumably I'm not providing you with any additional information here as I'd expect that Samuel Reich would have detailed all this and more in his book. In addition to the aforementioned chemistry incident the reason that I took an unusual interest in the Schön case was that I'd had reasonable experience in working with field effect transistors, so when the news of his research fraud broke the subject matter piqued my interest. Also, my professional experience in electronics made the Beasley Report easy to understand. Reckon you're right about leading journals like Science, Nature etc. being reluctant to withdraw papers for image reasons. In hindsight that's now very clear. In the long run, the failure of those running the scientific journals and the scientific community generally to get fully on top of the Schön matter and other instances of scientific fraud has turned out to be very detrimental for science and scientific research. Even 'soft' scientific fraud, such as the never-ending exaggerated claims made by research teams about the effectiveness of their research (usually for the purposes of obtaining funding and general PR), has dramatically compounded the problem. Together, they have had a serious and detrimental effect on the way many of the population perceive science in that over recent decades huge swathes of them have turned away from or have been turned off science, many no longer believe what scientists say and or that they dismiss their comments with a gain of salt. Take the instance of climate change alone (there are many more). We only have to look at the millions of its skeptics and their widespread disbelief in climate science to know that they hold little respect for the subject, the same also holds for much of other science. To make matters worse, many now hold such disrespect and contempt for science and scientific institutions at levels that border on zealotry—that is, they hold attitudes of distaste for science that are more akin to the hatred and furor one often observes between warring religious groups. There is little doubt that science no longer commands the very high respect from the population that it once did decades ago. Whilst no doubt there are many reasons, cultural and otherwise, that have contributed and combined to produce this downturn in science's popularity, it is nevertheless clear that exaggerated claims and mixed messages that have come from scientists and technocrats over the past 50 or so years have been largely responsible for creating these negative attitudes. One only has to look at cancer research to witness the problem. If every instance of the many, many thousands of optimistic pronouncements about cancer made by researchers since WWII had actually contributed to curing the disease even to, say, the tiny extent of just 0.1% improvement per pronouncement then the disease would have been wiped out many years ago. Yes, whilst researchers have made progress over those 70-plus years, cancer is still the second biggest killer of humankind—and the population is only too well aware of the fact—and also the fact that scientists have failed to live up to their promises in that they've failed to deliver a cure. It's little wonder that the consequences of such skepticism and disbelief have morphed into other areas of health management—such as the failure of many to heed important messages about COVID; the unreasonable fear and loathing of chemicals—even benign ones—and the chemical industry per se, — views that are held by a huge percentage of the population—and so on, and so on. The irrational fear of chemicals among so many of the population alone illustrates the absolute abject failure of science education. It seems to me that science needs to completely rebrand itself, and it needs to begin with not making promises that it cannot keep—if in doubt science should say absolutely nothing. Clearly, part of that rebranding ought to be aimed at cleaning up all aspects of scientific fraud, not just extreme instances such as the Schön matter. Scientific fraud has been with us for eons and it will probably always be so but we're now long past the days of Charles Dawson's Piltdown man-type hoaxes, which, incidentally, took over 40 years to conclude conclusively that it was a fraud. We now have multiple techniques for detecting fraud such as Benford's Law (aka First Digit Law), etc., these need to be combined with truly effective policies to ensure that scientific ethics and standards are maintained—if necessary, even to the extent of making them an adjunct or an addition to the Scientific Method if it would ensure that scientific research would become more honest and ethical. No doubt, in the next few years we will also see a huge enhancement to the detection of scientific fraud when AI begins to scan millions of existing research papers. No doubt it will find many more past instances of fraud. Finally, if you think my comments about science's falling out of favor and grace with a significantly large part of the population is grossly exaggerated then it's worth spending eleven minutes on the Internet Archive viewing the short film Why Study Science? This rather corny documentary from 1955 was made to encourage US high school kids to take a positive interest in science and the study thereof. However, what's truly relevant about the film for us today is that it oozes with the then existing ethos that everyone in society was interested in and or understood the importance of science no matter what their profession was or what other values they held: https://archive.org/details/WhyStudy1955_2 https://archive.org/details/WhyStudy1955_2. (In my opinion, this film ought to get a wider coverage than it has at present if for no other reason than it gives us a clear reference point from which to measure changes in society's attitude towards science.) There is no missing the fact that this documentary conveys par excellence the zeitgeist of the mid 1950s. It clearly shows that back then society did value science in ways and to the extent that we have not seen exhibited for many decades. Having an appreciation for science was the de facto ethos of those days, which may seem surprising given that the 1950s was also the peak period for nuclear weapons development. Despite that, people's faith in the value of science and scientific research didn't waver. Furthermore, I can attest that this positive attitude towards science still prevailed with just about everyone that I came in contact with a decade or so later when it became my turn to study science in high school. This positive attitude towards science wasn't a matter that most people even consciously thought about let alone questioned—as it was the accepted norm. It wasn't for another decade or so in the late 1970s to mid 1980s that the anti-science rot began to set in and take hold. ____ † BTW, I've just done an online search for the Beasley Report and some websites are still hosting it, here's the first one that I came across: https://w.astro.berkeley.edu/~kalas/ethics/documents/schoen.pdf https://w.astro.berkeley.edu/~kalas/ethics/documents/schoen....