Plastic Fantastic: How the Biggest Fraud in Physics Shook the Scientific World (MacMillan Science) [Paperback]

Eugenie Samuel Reich (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 27, 2010 | ISBN-10: 0230623840 | ISBN-13: 978-0230623842

Highly regarded science journalist Eugenie Samuel Reich recounts the case of wunderkind physicist Jan Hendrik Schön, who faked the discovery of a new superconductor at the world famous Bell Laboratories. Many of the world’s top scientific journals and experts, including Nobel Prize-Winners, supported Schön, only to learn that they were the victims of the biggest fraud in science. What drove Schön, by all accounts a mild-mannered, modest, and obliging young man, to tell such outrageous lies? Reich dives into the riveting world of science to examine how fraud perpetuates itself today.  Schön’s rise and fall will be an essential and fascinating account of the missteps of the scientific community for years to come. 

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Reich, a former editor at New Science, unravels the absorbing story of Jan Hendrik Schön, a researcher at the prestigious Bell Laboratories from 1998 to 2002, who achieved star status in cutting-edge materials technology-super-conductivity, lasers, nanotechnology-by falsifying data. A graduate of Germany's "low key" University of Konstanz, he dove immediately into "a demanding environment... known for big discoveries, ambitious expectations." When his papers on experiments with organic crystals were rejected, he manipulated data and made false claims; publication followed. When the tech bubble burst, Bell came under increasing pressure from parent company Lucent to justify its existence; short-circuiting the normal process of peer review, the lab turned to public relations, "press-releasing exciting scientific findings" to fool investors, customers and Lucent into believing Bell had "a sound long-term technological future." Reich's clear explanation gives general readers a real sense of the excitement generated in the scientific community by Schön's "discoveries," how he made them appear credible and how his ability to dissemble eventually failed him; he also raises profound ethical questions that resonate with current concerns over science and its place in the public sphere.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Booklist

Reich recounts the read-it-to-believe-it saga of physicist Hendrik Schön. At Bell Labs in the late 1990s, Schön’s apparent discoveries about atomic-scale devices called field-effect transistors earned him a stellar peer-group reputation—until his research was exposed as faked in 2002. While science’s self-correcting mechanism did dissolve Schön’s deceptions, its failure to catch the frauds sooner motivates Reich’s tenacious pursuit of the story. Along with failures in the peer-review process of journals like Science and Nature, which published some of Schön’s papers, Reich found a propensity within Bell Labs to believe Schön’s results, which, had they been real, could have commercially benefited the home of the original, macroscale transistor. Another crucial factor that Reich develops was Schön’s ability to allay tough questions with revised data, though when he began to manipulate and outright invent data remains mysterious, for on that he eluded Reich, too. Nevertheless, Reich’s journalistic persistence and technical thoroughness yield a largely complete, often dramatic account of Schön’s roguery and downfall. --Gilbert Taylor --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 272 pages
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan (April 27, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0230623840
• ISBN-13: 978-0230623842
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #673,632 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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39 of 43 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A must read for anyone interested in science and technology, June 13, 2009

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An (almost) impartial observer (USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Plastic Fantastic: How the Biggest Fraud in Physics Shook the Scientific World (Hardcover)

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.

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars how about a photo of Schon ?, June 30, 2009

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W Boudville (Terra, Sol 3) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Plastic Fantastic: How the Biggest Fraud in Physics Shook the Scientific World (Hardcover)

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.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Absorbing, disturbing, compulsive reading, May 21, 2009

By 

Amarante "Amarante" (London, UK) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Plastic Fantastic: How the Biggest Fraud in Physics Shook the Scientific World (Hardcover)

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.