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Lucent Reexamines Breakthrough Research

Posted by michael on from the publish-and-perish dept.

s20451 writes "Bell Labs' claims to have manufactured transistors consisting of a single-molecule switch are being met with skepticism in the scientific community, following difficulties in reproducing the experiment. Now a panel has been formed to investigate research misconduct related to not only that claim, but others regarding organic transistors." We've run several stories about the extremely tiny transistors and the innovative ways of assembling them which Lucent has been working on. A reader's summary of a subscriber-only story on Science's website suggests that there is strong evidence that some of the data in the published papers was faked.

4 of 139 comments (clear)

  1. Lucent! by sulli · · Score: 5, Funny

    You've got some 'splainin' to do!

    --

    sulli
    RTFJ.
  2. They just need to do a demo by Waffle+Iron · · Score: 3, Funny

    It's too bad these researchers are meeting so much skepticism. I'm sure they could prove their results if they would just pull out their single-molecule transistors and show them in action. Unfortunately, I bet that somebody just dumped the molecules into a desk drawer, and now they're hopelessly lost amongs the crumbs, dust and fuzzies at the bottom of the drawer...

  3. Re:Before the bashing begins.... by Jeppe+Salvesen · · Score: 3, Funny

    Actually, good friends tell good friends when they think they're fucking up. That is why Europe and America are currently being pretty damned good friends, and we would be good friends of Lucent to tell them to straighten up.

    The problem arises when the friends can't figure out which one is fucking up, and get annoyed with each other.

    --

    Stop the brainwash

  4. Newsbreak by MarkusQ · · Score: 5, Funny

    ...but physicists are voicing suspicions about the figures, portions of which seem almost identical even though the labels are different. Particularly puzzling is the fact that one pair of graphs show the same pattern of "noise," which should be random.

    Lucent scientists today reported the remarkable discovery that, contrary to conventional wisdom and accepted scientific theory noise isn't random. Said one researcher, "We'd expected self-similarity, due to the fractal nature of noise, but this is amazing!"

    Researchers estimate that there are actually less than a dozen examples of true noise, which are repeated endlessly through out nature. Some observers have expressed concerns over the fact that most, if not all of them are already copywritten by the RIAA.

    -- MarkusQ