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Eugenie Samuel Reich

Plastic Fantastic: How the Biggest Fraud in Physics Shook the Scientific World (MacSci) Hardcover – May 12, 2009

by Eugenie Samuel Reich (Author)

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Part of: MacSci (24 books)

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This is the story of wunderkind physicist Jan Hendrik Schön who faked the discovery of a new superconductor made from plastic. A star researcher at the world-renowned Bell Laboratories in New Jersey, he claimed to have stumbled across a powerful method for making carbon-based crystals into transistors, the switches found on computer chips. Had his experiments worked, they would have paved the way for huge advances in technology--computer chips that we could stick on a dress or eyewear, or even use to make electronic screens as thin and easy-to-fold as sheets of paper. But as other researchers tried to recreate Schön's experiments, the scientific community learned that it had been duped. Why did so many top experts, including Nobel prize-winners, support Schön? What led the major scientific journals to publish his work, and promote it with press releases? And what drove Schön, by all accounts a mild-mannered, modest and obliging young man, to tell such outra

Print length

272 pages
Language

English
Publisher

St. Martin's Press
Publication date

May 12, 2009
Dimensions

6.5 x 0.9 x 9.5 inches
ISBN-10

0230224679
ISBN-13

978-0230224674
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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.

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

Review

“A brilliant study of scientific fraud.” ―Financial Times Book of the Year

“Plastic Fantastic offers a compelling, timely and well-written dissection of our era's most outrageous scientific fraud, and of what it means for science today.” ―American Scientist Magazine

“Reich's account is meticulously researched, based on interviews with over 120 scientists, friends and editors. It is gripping stuff: a surprising page-turner that is well worth reading.” ―New Scientist

“…a wonderful piece of forensic writing.” ―Financial Times

“Reich pursues this affair in depth…does an excellent job of dealing with the facts of the Schön case” ―Martin Blume, Nature

“Reich's readable account of a fairly recent science fraud, is valuable chiefly as a close look at the "kitchen" where scientific results are assembled and validated--and whence occasionally comes forth something that should not have seen the light of day.” ―John Derbyshire, The Wall Street Journal

“Eugenie Samuel Reich offers an inside look into how the scientific establishment deals with human imperfection. Plastic Fantastic is a transfixing cautionary tale of how easily wrongdoers can hide and thrive in modern science.” ―Jörg Blech, author of Inventing Disease and Pushing Pills

“In a warts 'n all expose of the scientific process, Eugenie Reich investigates the world's greatest scientific fraud. Fascinating, startling and highly readable. If you thought science was as pure as the driven snow, prepare to be shocked.” ―Justin Mullins, consultant editor, New Scientist

“A riveting tale of scientific detective work, and a story about an important issue in science that is often overlooked. A well researched page-turner.” ―Amir Aczel, author of Fermat's Last Theorem

About the Author

Eugenie Samuel Reich is a former editor at New Scientist. She has written for Nature, New Scientist, and The Boston Globe, and is known for her hard hitting reports on irregular science. Several of her reports have resulted in institutional investigations. She lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ St. Martin's Press; 1st edition (May 12, 2009)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 272 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0230224679
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0230224674
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 15.6 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.5 x 0.9 x 9.5 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #516,017 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #87 in Solid-State Physics (Books)
- #206 in Scientific Experiments & Projects
- #302 in Electromagnetism (Books)

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Alan Tomlin

How research scientists and the media can trap themselves

Reviewed in the United States on March 2, 2019

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By wishing for something to be true (in this case invention of "plastic transistors" to replace silicon electronic components), but then only superficially digging into the evidence can cause the misdirection of vast amounts of scarce funds and precious time of other scientists. The failure of Shon's supervisors, journal editors, peer reviewers, and even the mainstream media to heed some skeptics' concerns led to this disastrous scientific scandal. This was a very compelling read for me as a now retired research scientist and research manager who occasionally had to deal with non-replicable scientific claims during the course of my career, albeit in a smaller arena with smaller stakes. One can only imagine the fall-out should another massive current scientific enterprise, postulated anthropogenic climate warming, be eventually shown to be a natural cyclical process rather than induced by emissions of green house gases.

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Dan B

An important and engaging book on scientific fraud

Reviewed in the United States on October 31, 2009

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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.

9 people found this helpful

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Bruno Ullrich

The unfortunate downfall of Bell Labs

Reviewed in the United States on December 22, 2016

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I think the discussion of Schoen’s character is overshadowing several things in science. a) The address where the paper is coming from is the most important thing, b) the “system” (expectations) corrupts the people, and c) the political influence on the award of the Nobel Prize.

Ad a) I worked at WPAFB and then I moved to UNAM. Suddenly it was much more difficult to publish things because they came out of Mexico. My guess is - just for the sake of argument - if somebody would “invent” Schoen’s results south of the Rio Grande none of them would fly specifically not in Nature. As a result, not the content counts but the geographic origin of the work. I call this bad business.

Ad b) Schoen was misused as the “messiah” with the expectation to save the basic research group of Batlogg. One should not underestimate
the beguiling stimulation of repetitive positive feedback and praise from the chief and colleagues in research…Schoen’s contribution to the disaster was that he was falling for it…

Ad c) The Nobel Prize 1998 – with all due respect to the scientists involved – was, in my opinion, to a large portion a politically motivated attempt to maintain the fainting glory of Bell Labs and probably to prevent its lingering disappearance. I mean to give the Nobel Prize for the fractional quantum Hall effect after the Nobel Prize for the quantum Hall effect in 1985 is a bit like you would give the Nobel Prize to Ford for the invention of the car and to Daimler as well a few years later for the considerable improvement of Ford’s initial concept.

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Luca turin

How science actually works, made clear by one of its failures

Reviewed in the United States on December 14, 2017

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Quite simply the best book on scientific fraud ever written: meticulously researched, beautifully written, driven by both a deep understanding of the workings of science and a fine, scientific intent to understand before judging.

One person found this helpful

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Dr. Michael J. Storek

It is a very well written book

Reviewed in the United States on September 23, 2011

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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.

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Lord Byron

A good read but a bit repetitive

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on February 22, 2010

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This book tells the story of fraud in scientific research. A post-doctoral researcher from Europe working under contract at Bell Laboratories in the USA claimed major scientific breakthroughs. The problem for other researchers was that none of them in the field could reproduce the claimed results; and some gave up in despair and found other jobs, convinced that scientific research was not for them with the likes of the postdoc as a competitor. When the postdoc discussed a piece of research with fellow researchers at Bell and they pointed out holes in the work, he followed their suggestions for ways to fill in the holes. He worked hard at fabricating results. Respected scientific journals fell overthemselves to publish the postdoc's papers. He won major prizes, and was mentioned as a possible Nobel prize winner. Even though other researchers began after a while to suspect the results, none of them wanted to accuse the postdoc of fraud. It's not the done thing, you see. In the end an accusing finger was pointed at him, and he was found to have fabricated his results. Careers of those who believed almost to the end in the postdoc, even if they were not ruined, were dented badly when the truth emerged. It helps when reading the book if you can follow the basics of science (set out in the book) behind the fraud; but even if you can't follow those basics the book is still a good read. If you want to know how to perpetrate a fraud in scientific research then this is a book for you. The book is rather long for the story it tells. If it were reduced by a quarter it would do its job just as well.

Choo-choo-shoe

Good book

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on April 4, 2020

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Interesting stuff, nicely written. Some of the physics escaped my grasp, but total understanding of underlying physics problems was not necessary to follow the book.

RODERICK MACKENZIE

Good book.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on September 14, 2015

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Good book a page turner. Esp for those in the field.

H. Mitterer

a must read about how science works

Reviewed in Germany on August 27, 2009

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This book is a documentary and a thriller at the same time. At some points you are really eager
to learn how the plot develops (even though the title pretty much gives away how it has to end;
if the "protagonist" would not have been found out, we wouldn't know about an fraud).

There are some chapters which might have been a bit shorter, but that's easy to overlook. The strength of the book is that it does not try to find a scapegoat. The author resisted the temptation to blame exclusively "the system" for promoting scientific fraud as well as the temptation to portray the deceiving scientist as a psychopathic cheat. Instead he shows how systemic factors and a morally lacking mind-set that is too eager to please interacted to produce a series of basically "made up" papers could end up in the best scientific journals.

This book has made me more aware of the process of science that I previously was. Now I should add that I am a scientist in pretty much the same stage as the protagonist of the book -- post Ph.D. in search of a tenured job -- and I find it difficult to judge how this book reads for someone outside science. But it seems to me that it will be good read anyway. And a must read if you are in science.

3 people found this helpful

K. K.

日本でも起きてしまった。

Reviewed in Japan on March 25, 2014

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本書を読了したのは2010年7月である。内容は，精密科学の中で最も精密な実験を求められる物理科学でデータの改ざんによりスターにまで上り詰めたシェーン博士の事件の顛末を描いていた。再現実験も出来なかったし，試料の提供もなされず，データの提出を求められたらパソコンがクラッシュしたとかいろんな情けないエピソードが出ていた。私がここに改めて感想を書く理由は，もっと多くの人，特に著名な研究機関に勤める高い地位にある人に読んで欲しいと思うからである。この度発覚した小保方氏の栄光と挫折は，シェーン事件よりはるかにはやく収束しようとしている。しかし，思い出すべきは，シェーン事件により栄光のベル研究所は今や別会社の子会社となりはてたことである。理研の関係者はこの事実とどう向き合うのか。本書は，我が国では私の知る限り科学関係の雑誌や科学に関連する学会誌の書評に取り上げられることなく無視されてきた。その結果こんな事件が起きたのだろうか。

2 people found this helpful

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Plastic Fantastic: How the Biggest Fraud in Physics Shook the Scientific World (MacSci) Hardcover – May 12, 2009

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