Plastic Fantastic: How the Biggest Fraud in Physics Shook the Scientific World by Eugenie Samuel Reich, a science writer, tells how a young physicist named Jan Hendrik Schoen, working at Bell Labs on making electronic devices from organic materials, managed to fool the physics community for several years, publishing many papers with made-up data in Science and Nature. This podcast summarizes the story, with the new detail that after his disgrace — even his Ph.D. was revoked — Schoen managed to get a job as an air-conditioning engineer in Germany.
I enjoyed the book, partly for the drama, partly for the physics, and partly for the light it sheds on the culture of physics and Bell Labs. When anyone says “science is self-correcting” I’m amused because, as the speaker must know, the amount of fraud that goes uncorrected is unknown. It may be far larger than the amount that is detected.
So Seth, the basic point is that scientific peer review is the same as in the liberal arts: garbage in, garbage out. Scientific peer review consists of reviewers performing a reasonableness check: assume the underlying data and data collection methods are correct and the paper will be good if the scientific method is applied appropriately?
Since we know that science is largely about signaling, why wouldn’t up and coming institutions invest heavily in institutionally mandated internal controls on research and data collection methods? Hire young, promising researchers, wait a few years for everything to ferment, and then climb the rankings.
so is the conclusion that individual scientists are immoral and corrupt or is the system corrupt?
Bell Labs is famous for inventing the transistor. But according to Wikipedia, it wasn’t invented there at all. It was developed there, building on publications and a patent by an earlier worker, all reference to his achievements being suppressed from the Bell Lab publications and patent applications. I first read this fairly recently and confess to being Shocked about Shockley. And the buggers bagged a Nobel for it!
OT, I see your pal Leonard Mlodinow has collaborated with Stephen Hawking on his new book, out this week.
https://www.amazon.com/Grand-Design-Stephen-Hawking/dp/0553805371
vic: Couldn’t it be both? But scientific crooks are made, not born. Nobody becomes a scientist intending a career based on deception; deceptiveness is much more richly rewarded in other fields. The institution defines an environment in which deception is rewarded more than it should be, and where scruples are valued less than they should be. Each person responds to this differently. Some thrive despite it, some thrive because of it, others languish or move on.
Just a random thought: This reminds me of the notion of always including a professional magician as part of any scientific team investigating claims, esp. those that are fringe. The thought is not only will they notice intentional misdirection, they also >think tricky