Customer Reviews

Plastic Fantastic: How the Biggest Fraud in Physics Shook the Scientific World

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This book is an impressively competent description of the shameful events that occurred at the turn of the century at Bell Labs, the pride and glory of the 20th century American science. Reich masterfully recreates the atmosphere in the physics community, both inside the Lab and outside of it, while the scientists tried to cope with stunning, often confusing and contradictory, breakthrough reports from Hendrik Schoen, once an intern, later a postdoc and finally a "member of technical staff", a title designating a permanent position at Bell Labs. Eventually found guilty of fraud by a panel of outside experts, Schoen was the only player in this drama ever to face disciplinary sanctions, as the panel exonerated his multiple co-authors and managers without giving them even as little as a slap on the wrist. Such a clemency was met by the community with a murmur of understanding that "the old boys network" did not wish to punish their own for something that appeared to "only" be bad judgement and administrative incompetence. The book unfolds the full scope of the events unavailable to date to everybody but a select few.

The character of Schoen is the most intriguing. Fresh from graduate school with no record of accomplishments and unburdened with any serious knowledge of physics he seems to be possessed by the desire to conform to the wishes of his superiors. Bell Labs, in financial dire straits after the dot-com burst and strapped for cash, was craving for a scientific breakthrough that could be favorably reported to shareholders. Fraudulent "discoveries" came cheap on Schoen's computer. "In a time of scarce resources, Schoen must have seemed like a manager's dream." His modus operandi was uncomplicated. Having overheard of yet another effect known to occur in ordinary semiconductors, he familiarized himself with the subject (from discussions with colleagues as well as from textbooks) and quickly baked similar data for organic crystals (he later included plastics and superconductors into his resume). Yet, his utter ignorance about physics of various types of materials and nuances that should have been present in thin films (which he allegedly was dealing with) very often raised eyebrows as he failed to recognize why traditional textbook stuff was not fully applicable for his samples.

The fraud would not have happened without Schoen's postdoc supervisor Bertram Batlogg, a star expert in superconductivity. With the field of high temperature superconductivity slowing down significantly (Reich came up with an excellent word "domestication"), and Batlogg moving into the management and further into the category of "has been hot" scientists, he was understandably reluctant to meet Schoen's claims with the criticism they deserved. Quite the opposite, he basked in the glory, using his hard-earned reputation and massive presentation skills to sell to the community the "data" he never bothered to witness being taken (or even to exist in lab notepads). With the amazing number of papers published within a very short period of time in the most prestigious journals "Nature" and "Science", Schoen, Batlogg and Bell Labs were firmly on track to admiration, conference invitations, media attention, prizes.

In retrospect, the gullibility of Schoen's supervisors -- John Rogers, Federico Capasso, Cherry Murray (in ascending order) -- is beyond reason and is actually quite comical. With the "productivity" peaking at seven papers written by Schoen in November 2001 alone (!) the managers did not raise a simple question of how the data acquisition could fit into this busy schedule, but instead "had talked with Schoen about the need to slow down the pace of his research claims".

With some outspoken critics (Nobel prize-winner Laughlin) crying fraud, others (Monroe) pointing to clearly doctored experimental curves, with the failure of numerous outside groups to reproduce even a single Schoen's claim (out of astoundingly many), his direct boss John Rogers had had little reservation in getting onto the patent application with Schoen. Capasso had helped Schoen with fighting critics during his research presentations and with refuting critical comments from IBM researchers, which they submitted to Nature. Top this with the VP for physical sciences Cherry Murray being informed of Schoen's bold handling of "data" (that never existed in the first place) -- she even later claimed Schoen was reprimanded for that (which does not seem to be true according to the book) -- and it becomes clear that the Bell Labs management was much more concerned with the possibility of Schoen leaving Bell Labs than with an old-fashioned truth-seeking.

The tension peaked on February 21 2002 when Bell Labs hosted Buckley prize symposium to honor Bob Willet, the 2002 winner. Despite protests from Willet, Capasso had asked Schoen to speak at the symposium. With all other speakers being former or current Buckley prize recipients the symbolism of Schoen giving the final talk was not lost on the audience -- the Lab was marketing him as the future prize contender.

At last, the king was called naked when a postdoc of Willet (Lynn Loo) noticed that the sets of data supposedly measured for different systems and published in different papers were in fact identical. The wunderkind was so dumb and complacent that did not even bother to bake separate datasets for separate "discoveries". With the inquiries now pouring in from all directions the management had had no other choice but to appoint an investigation panel and eventually fire the fraudster.

Rogers, Capasso and Murray moved on to take professorships at prestigious universities with Cherry Murray even collecting along the way the American Physical Society 2005 management prize "for overseeing Bell Labs at an important time in its history". Bell Labs history ended right there -- within a few years the famous Lab all but ceased to exist.

The book while very entertaining yet suffers from some shortcomings. Though typos abound, this is not a big issue, but the absence of graphics is likely to render the book too technical for non-specialists -- if you do not know what the field-effect transistor is you will probably not figure it out from the book. Pictures of the main players would also have been quite interesting to the reader.

As a final note, while Reich demonstrates an unusually high level of understanding of physics for a journalist she drops the ball in the Epilogue. Describing recent advances of organic electronics, and graphene, in particular, she writes: "The carriers of charge in graphene turned out to be massless particles that moved as fast through the material as light would, a cosmological surprise more profound than anything Schoen claimed." Ironically, this statement is as "fantastic" as any "plastic" made by Schoen. Charge carriers in graphene, while indeed massless, still move three hundred times slower than light (about as fast as in most mundane metals), and there are absolutely no "cosmological surprises" there.

I read this book with interest because I used to be in condensed matter physics. Tangentially, we dealt with Bell Labs, which was indeed one of the best places for research in this field. It is unusual to see a book like this, presumably directed at a general audience. The level of physics detail is not what is typically offered.

The sociology of research, and specifically in this field of physics, can be fascinating. Grad students and researchers in many sciences should be able to relate to the happenings here.

As far as a rogue researcher in a large group being able to fabricate results, this is not unknown. Especially when the group leader doesn't have the time to parse everyone's work in detail. A similar event happened in molecular biology in Lee Hood's group at Caltech in the 90s. Though no book was written about it.

The problem with the current book is the paucity of diagrams and photos. Not a single photo of Schon! Why is that? Surely some must exist. Perhaps from Bell Labs publicity shots before the scandal broke. Or even from their archived web pages. For example, I just searched on the web, and found a photo of him from Wired. Reich or her publisher should have provided some image. Ironically, the book is heavily footnoted, not unlike a research journal article. So there has been no lack of research done on it.

By the way, you should ignore the subtitle about "shaking the scientific world". Even within physics, I doubt if the high energy or nuclear folks were much shook up. Instead, they probably looked at it in curiosity, just like other scientists.

The book describes how data is collected these days in labs. By computerised instruments, and thence written to files. I wonder. I got into physics at a time [1980s] when labs were transitioning from manual writing down of data points in lab books to this automated collection into computer files. It is certainly possible to fabricate handwritten data; there have been notorious cases. But to some extent, once the data has been written, it has some permanence. Short of tearing out the pages, which doesn't work too well if the pages are numbered, or surreptiously inserting or adjusting some numbers, the data is fixed.

However, computer files are malleable. Even when ostensibly timestamped by the operating system. If you have root access, you can temporarily change back the time, edit the file, and then reset the time to the current time. The book doesn't speak of this. But I do wonder if the ease of doing this played some part in Schon's frauds.

Few people outside the world of science may have heard of fraudster Jan Hendrik Schon, until Plastic Fantastic. Eugenie Samuel Reich has produced an intriguing factual "novel", based on a superior depth of research and pieced together intricately into a suspenseful story. You cannot help but be drawn into Schon's world, as you come to understand the process by which someone attains the coveted goal of "science fame" in the modern world. The story of Schon has been told before, as it was reported at the time just seven years ago when his fraud was unveiled, though it was never attributed a pivotal place in the history of science fraud, a fact Reich has possibly now reversed. But Plastic Fantastic is more than just a great piece of documentary writing. The author has recognised the almost mythical qualities of Schon himself, and given centre-stage to this enigmatic and fascinating character. Artfully weaving together background, fact and anecdote, Reich has produced a compelling page-turner, one which not only captivates the reader throughout, but leaves you pondering over it long after you put it down.

In this interesting book, the author describes the recent case of a young physicist who was found guilty of fraudulent behavior in his field of research. The field involved is condensed matter physics - in particular, work related to micro-electronics and nano-technology. It is clear that the author is highly familiar with the case and she is quite fluent in the scientific jargon of this field. The writing style is authoritative, fast-paced and very detailed throughout. Perhaps because of this last point, I found several passages in this book to be a bit dry, although some sections are really quite gripping. Many technical details are provided and specialized terms are usually explained, but not always. Unfortunately, the book only contains two figures (graphs); several more figures, including photographs of some of the main characters and perhaps of some of the equipment used would have been useful. Editorially, the book contains a fair amount of unnecessary repetition and a greater-than-average number of rather annoying typographical errors. Although a general reader can certainly glean a great deal from reading this book, those who are likely to enjoy it the most would include scientists working in this field, scientists in general as well as science buffs.

I found that the book moves at a good pace, because as events unfolded I kept asking: "how does Schon continue to pull this off?" and "how will he get caught?" As the excellent first review of June 13 described, his managers at Bell Labs we unable to discover or contain the fraud, took no responsibility for their lack of oversight, and, for the most part, suffered no repercussions.

How could Schon fool (nearly) everyone for 4 years? He was a mediocre student, with a poor grasp of the physics underlying his publications. Wouldn't other scientists pop into his lab to see the amazing devices that nobody else could replicate? Did nobody ever insist that he keep notebooks of his experiments, as well as the raw data collected. (Schon apparently kept everything in the Origin graphics package.)

How did he satisfy the colleagues? He used their knowledge against them. He showed them his fictitious data and solicited their suggestions for the next thing to do. He would then fulfill their expectations by manufacturing the data that he had been told to expect. If he were challenged, he would try to be accommodating, changing the graphics or description of the device, or falling back on the excuse that he didn't understand what was happening, but was just presenting data,

Certainly Schon was the wrong person at the wrong place at the wrong time (Bell Labs during breakup and rapid downsizing). His greatest ability is to tell people exactly what they want to hear, to get useful information from them for his next fraud, and -- always -- to hide his deceptions. Schon is a risk-taker; he lives for the thrill of his game -- manipulating others to get undeserved rewards (praise, fame, money). All his energy goes into planning and generating the next fabrication and deflecting criticism of previous fakes. Such a personality disorder is totally foreign to most scientists, who get their thrills from the real game, and for this reason very few scientists came to the logical conclusion that the whole thing was a con job.

Reich's publisher, Macmillan, did a poor job with the book. There are enough typos to make the book appear not to have been proofread. They used cheap paper, barely above the quality of newspaper. And there are no illustrations or photographs, as others have noted: illustrations to help explain the physics of the devices and show the graphics that eventually got Schon caught, and photos of the people involved.

Reich's treatment at the end of the book suffers because it has no discussion of the specific findings of the external committee that found the work to be fraudulent. This would have been a more satisfying conclusion than simply stating that Schon was fired as a result. But she does an excellent job laying out the problem of scientific misconduct, and the difficulty of its detection when the perpetrator is accommodating and actively deflects criticism. Ultimately, Schon was brought down because he couldn't restrain himself from publishing wild new fabrications on a nearly bi-weekly basis. So I had to wonder how long he might have remained undetected if his rate of publications had not been so frantic and in so many different specialized areas.

Finally, to really understand Schon's motivations, as well as the reasons for his success at Bell Labs, I would suggest the book "Snakes in Suits: When Psychopaths go to Work," by Babiak and Hare. Hare is the world expert in this personality type.

Reich does a great job explaining how Hendrik Schon was able to perpetrate the biggest [...]in physics history, duping the folks at Science, Nature and seemingly every prize committee on the planet. But more interestingly, Reich shows how the culture of science, especially the pressure-cooker, cost-cutting atmosphere within Bell Labs, allowed the [...] to happen, possibly promoted it, but ultimately uncovered it. This is an important, valuable book, and should be required reading for young scientists.

I saw an adaptation of this book on cable and going by the maxim never judge a book by its movie I ordered the book.

It is an interesting account of how a young scientist, Jan Hendrik Schon, was hired by Bell Labs and rose to dominate the field of organic transistors. At one point he was publishing a scientific peer reviewed paper every seven or eight days. He was making everyone else look like a dunce.

As it turns out he was faking data and cheating and he destroyed his own career and all these other people aren't dunces. It is fascinating, I had trouble with the science, but even if you don't know what a transistor is I think you will enjoy this book. It is more about how Schon got over on Bell Labs and how science is supposed to work.

In my opinion, Jan Hendrik Schon chose the wrong field. If he had been a researcher in global warming he probably could have won the Nobel Prize.

I highly recommend this book to everyone who wants to learn more about history of fraud in science, starting from days of Sir Isaac Newton and culminating in Jan Hendrik Schon's case, which is the main focus of the book. I have to admit I felt the end of the book was a bit too short - the investigation and the follow-up was not covered on as many pages as I would (and maybe some other readers as well) like.

This book is not only very entertaining but also an excellent description of the pressure that early career scientist feel to publish large quantities of high impact papers if they are ever going to get a job. The book is very insightful when describing scientific fraud, but also gives an accurate inside look into the postdoctoral research world.

This is a fascinating story about a real and quite sad event. Very well written, it is a book on how dangerous and expensive life can be whenever people do not function as they should (or they were supposed to function). It is sad that this happened in Murray Hill but I am sure this could happen everywhere. I do recommend it.