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Physicist Loses Degree for Data Falsification
cheese_wallet writes "Jan Hendrik Schoen was stripped of his doctoral degree by his university for fabricating data in his research. From the article: 'Schoen, now 34, was fired by Bell Laboratories in New Jersey in September 2002 after an outside review committee concluded that he made up or altered data 16 times while working in the hot fields of superconductivity and molecular electronics'."
This raise alot of questions. The key question is What does a pHD actually mean?
If pHD is meant to be a sign of knowledge in the subject then this shows i surely
the counter example show this is not the case.
I mean that You can't strip someone of knowledge. It's true that he may have faked data but he certainly had
detailed knowledge of the field and I strongly suspect his thesis did not contain any errors. His thesis would have
demanded more critical examination than a research paper. So i think it's fair to say that he earned that pHD
Is it right for a discredited man to have his pHD removed? Is it right that popular opinion can determine how
qualified someone is to make a statement in their field?
These are questions I find hard to answer.
Simon.
You lie, your lie evenutally catches up with you and you pay the consequences [end of story]. Definately nothing to see here, move on !
I thought that a degree/diploma is something you get for things you did in your past, as in certain clases taken, grades acheived.... not a revokable license. If I go off in life and really suck, can I lose my high school diploma?
Even Dr. Evil gets to keep the "Dr." in his name, regardless of how many meteors he's tried to pull towards the earth with tractor beams.
There's nothing Intelligent about Intelligent Design.
If the University cannot find anything wrong with his work for his graduate program and doctorate research, then I don't believe they should take away something he earned.
I suspect the university is simply grandstanding. "We are ethically pure, so much so that we rescind doctorates from people who later on turn to the dark side."
On the other hand, it probably feels good to pull the rug out from under this guy.
-Adam
What a lightweight!!! You have to falsify data at least 50 times to keep a PhD.
Will George Ricaurte be stripped of his doctorate?
By revoking his doctorate, they are saying 'this guy can't be trusted with this stuff'.
If he claims to have the doctorate, and someone calls to verify, the Uni can say 'we revoked it for he does suck'.
That kind of crap got you marked way down in my high school chem and physics classes.
If i were older than the guy I'd be saying something along the lines of "What are they teaching kids these days?"
It makes sense because many Russian PhD's came to the US to drive taxi cabs and what not. Hence, in a way, the degree stayed in Russia. Clever, huh?
I really am not comfortable with the idea of going back in time to revoke someone's doctorate unless academic misconduct led to its granting in the first place. This is part of a general principle: Once you assign the degree, no post-degree behavior should alter your judgement that this person fulfilled the requiremens for the degree. I don't care if you turn out to be a dictator, a Communist, a conservative, a liar, a child molester, a monk, a mass murderer, or a plumber. You met the requirements and earned the degree -- it's that simple. Degrees are not a measure of your worth as a human being -- they are certification that you successfully met a series of requirements, none of which include being a decent and honorable person.
Now if you got the degree through academic malfeasance, that's a different matter -- but I checked the article and all of this guy's sins seem to have been post-graduation.
Make cheese not war 8:)
I agree with the grandparent. A degree isn't something you should be able to take away, unless it's proven you cheated to get the degree. If the degree was valid in the first place, what right do they have to take it away? I guess it's Germany, and you can argue, "but things are different there!". If so, I call bullshit. What's next, losing your high school diploma over a criminal charge?
This seems like a rather underhanded attempt on the part of the school to save face for handing out a phd to someone who was latter disgraced. They're afraid people will think they're letting people cheat their way through a doctoral (or that they're not give enough moral education, I guess at the phd level that crap matters).
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I don't know how it is in the US, but in Germany you can get your PHD revoked when you misuse it for unethical purposes. You know that when you get it, it is in all the documents you get and sign.
Since the PHD is a certificate that you are able to conduct scientific research, falsifying your data would certainly contradict this ability.
***Quis custodiet ipsos custodes***
AT THE height of his career in 2001, Hendrik Schön was producing papers at the remarkable rate of one every eight days" New Scientist: With hindsight, it was a hell of a lot of papers
The Hoaxes of Jan Hendrik Schoen
I'm doing a PhD in civil engineering field - numerical simulations of behaviour of concrete and reinforced concrete. And also I've done a lot of research in granular materials field.
I think that I'll never understand what is the purpose for data falsification. Every, I say EVERY, scientist knows, that experiment that yields unexpected/bad results is a GOOD experiment. It gives new insight into how things work, it forces you to revise your model and change it. It leads you to change your model into a better one, and also it helps you in learning how to conduct scientifically correct experiments. Without failures and mistaken indeas humanity wouldn't learn anything.
Lust for changing results moves science BACKWARD instead of forward. is of course childish, on no-one benefits from that, even the lier does not benefit.
sorry about the rant, but I was really upset, and had to say that.
#
#\ @ ? Colonize Mars
#
he has a secure future in politics at least
Considering he didn't make Linux - just stole it from Santa and the Tooth Fairy?
Roses are #FF0000, violets are #0000FF, all my base are belong to you
In certain European Universities (and I don't know how common this is), there is an oath that one takes at matriculation , stating something along the lines of "for the rest of my life, I shall uphold the honour and welfare of the university".
If he originally took such an oath, then he has clearly broken it, and the university is justified in revoking the degree it awarded to him.
[HR]: Impressive resume, I see that you have 16 different PhD's.
[Schoen]: Yes, Yes. All those degrees are a result of doing the same thing I did at Bell Labs.
I'm sure he got the majority of his figures correct, he probably just filled the rest in so "it looked right". Worked for my physics lab...
The actual news article is brief and did not mention any academic fraud, so I am forced to assume that the degree is being recinded due to his actions since being awarded the degree. Do degrees "expire"? This is seperate from Medical degrees, at least in the US, as one can have a Medical Degree and still not be able to practice medicine due to medical licence requirements. Having a medical licence revokes does not remove the degree. This recall of advanced degrees leads to some interesting ideas. Will PhDs be revoked in other fields? What if someone has a degree in English. Then it's finally proved or disproved that William Shakespeare didn't write his plays. Do we fire a lot of English professors? Economics seems to be another field open to political modes and fads. Does a change in political parties and their ideas on what's best for the economy suddenly invalidate lots of peoples advanced work? Then 4 years later, when the voters have enough and switch back, a package with a letter, "Sorry, here's your degree back." Of course, no situation is without some silver lining. Think about lawyers. Loose a case, loose the law degree. Except for public defenders, lawyers would have to charge a lot per hour to justify the risks to their career. Sounds like SCO's legal team there.
This is about a University that is emabarrased by one of its alumnus. Period.
They either found his doctoral thesis flawed recently and are afraid to admit it or they are simply heaping pain on the alumnus. If it is the former, then come clean and admit they were flawed in the doctoral review or get over the new charges.
This is just the type of politics that makes me question the value of academia.
"... but you can love completely without complete understanding." - Norman Maclean, "A River Runs Through It"
Ok, this being slashdot and so on - I know lots of people like to make claims without checking any background first. Many people here claim the retraction of his PHD title is either insignificant or not justifified. In fact this is a pretty large science scam. I challenge you to actually read some background information:
Comprehensive background information
Falsifying data is for high school and undergrad physics labs. Past that the data and lab procedure actually become important.
Oh, and please don't tell my physics teacher I said that...
You dound like someone working hard towards the degree and sincerely being afraid that you will not be given that if your girlfriend finds out about that other girl, or something... ;-)
;-) -- they are generally "better" than regular ones, but still have more of a symbolic status...)
In The Real Life (TM) degrees are needed to a) make yourself/your parents proud and b) get employment in certain places/positions which do require this IF they like you otherwise.
Do you think anyone will be hiring THE guy any time soon on a position like this (even if he would formally have his degree)?
It is more of a symbolic jesture, really, and if you do that bad in scientific community you quite deserve this. (As an example of the opposite trend, think about the Honorary Degrees -- I guess Linus has one of those
Paul B.
The reason why it's foolish to do so is:
1. The premise of experimental oberved science is that it should be reproducible. At some point of time - and especially if your work gets noticed - someone, somewhere will duplicate your experimental coniditions and figure out that the results aren't there.
2. This is more of a personal thing, but the fun of research is really the process not the results. If you're in it for the fame alone, buddy, you're in the wrong job!
Wow, what a spectacularly, ah, interesting translation--no offense intended to those associated with the writing of the translation engine. One of the machine translation pitfalls I hadn't previously considered was the problem of identifying and handling proper names that are also in the dictionary of the original language. Schoen == beautiful, or beautifully, so "Jan Hendrik Schoen" gets translated to "January Hendrik beautiful," and multiple references to "Schoen" in the text get morphed into, well, "beautiful" phrases. I guess he's fortunate, to some extent; we can all think of less complementary examples....
I also like how the translation refers to him as "it". Like "The physicist January Hendrik beautiful (33) must return its doctor title after substantial falsification reproaches to the University of Konstanz." or "Recently it acted as a candidate to the Nobelpreis".
;-)
It will apply the lotion now!
Making up data is an extreme case of fraude, but bad statistics is another form of bad science.
As I know from writing my thesis, you can bend the truth in certain directions if you want to. So should all people who use statistics to their advantage and not to proof something hand in their diploma an live in shame?
The whole science community isn't so "clean" and doesn't work that accurate.
Harvard take back George W Bush's MBA? I think one can find more than 16 cases where he used wrong or very misleading data, and that those cost way more than mere millions in terms of a increase national debt
How many examples do we have where a person holding a PhD in business administration has faked corporate accounting data, hurting thousands of investors, stock owners, employees, customers and the market economy in general?
How many of them lost their academic status?
I rest my case.
One danger of this approach of a "plethora of punishments", if tied to mere ethics without a tangible set of conditions, is that e.g. in the countries where he did his research, on either side of the pond, many different kinds of behaviour would widely have been considered "unethical" at one point in time and perfectly acceptable at others (due to grave changes in public opinion even within the "product lifetime" of a degree).
For example, even a number of German intellectuals would have condemned the idea of a fellow academic converting to Judaism before 1945; and some in the West may find becoming a follower of Islam offensive these days. For centuries, living as an unmarried couple (let alone cases of not hiding an openly homosexual orientation) might have been an "indignity for a 'Doctor'", just as would have been abolitionist or communist beliefs throughout the years.
Therefore, unless the option of revoking degrees is limited to cases of obvious malpractise in the very same same field of science, which also taints the reputation and integrity of the doctoral thesis itself (and the institution which awarded it) in some considerable way, putting holders of a PhD etc. at the constant risk of having to comply with "higher" moral standards could also make academics risk-averse in their conduct, for they will have to adopt and adapt to society's expectations of conformity - which would most possibly be detrimental to the progress of science.
If too much weight is given to "general" morals in science, in either case, a few colleagues or competitors may even feel "compelled" by their "patriotic (or Christian, or moral, or socialist in another place and time) duty" to alert the authorities to "indecency" or "subversive elements", although suspecting that this entails drastic or dreadful consequences for the alleged "black sheep" they were "pointing out from the herd." (BTW e.g. Germany rather early in its dark ages did ban Jews from holding a chair at universities or practising in the legal profession IIRC... and remember McCarthy?)
from the perspective of a degree as an object, something to be obtained, it is hard to fathom that it can be "revoked." however, if instead a degree is conceived as not merely a thing to be held, a possession, but rather a state of being (e.g. I am a doctor, as opposed to I have a doctorate), then a revokation here seems entirely justified, for in his falsification he undermined his claim to the status.
Yes, but your reputation is established by making a giant stride in your field, and establishing a reputation is vitally important for a young researcher, leading to research money, subordinates, fame and power--all useful, even if all you want is to continue your research. Schoen claimed to be the first to work out how to make several things that are the major goals in their areas, including single-molecule transistors and organic field-effect transistors, and to discover fundamental physical properties of avant-garde materials, such as superconductivity in polymers and fullerines. Had he reported that he had just concluded a series of experiments that did *not* produce superconductive tetracene, for example, no one would know of, or care about, him. If he could get the paper published at all, it would be in some second-tier publication, not on the cover of Nature.
you'll lose your drivers license as well, because obviously you're using the benefits which come with it irresponsibly. It doesn't matter that you passed the test years ago.
A few years back on of my friends came to me and said "can you rewrite this from scratch and give me the results?" I told him sure, but its trvial I can can reuse code and he said no, use real data and rewirte it but don't use existing stuff. Aince the problem was simple enough, i did it from scratch and got his results. My code showed that the orginal stuff was bogas. This was about fractal dimention and the early work was a bit fudgeded but no one ever checked orginal work but kept dealing with the scam and/or wrong data.
The scary thing is what happens when your PhD advisor happend to do his papers on this subject.
the day teachers normally devote to explain how bad is cheating. How plagiarism, copying and lying will not only get you expelled from the university but ruin your reputation forever?
... y Dios vio que Linux era bueno... Genesis 99.666
i bet you blame your clients/users when your code is bad
The bad Dr. Schön (aka Schoen) and his forged data were discussed on /. two years ago, when Bell Labs sacked him for the same reason.
Lots of commentary on the ethics of the university being able to revoke a past PhD even though it was not related to the guys actions.
Note that in some other fields this can happen, not for a PhD, but for other professional qualifications: e.g. in the UK, a Chartered Engineer, or a Chartered Patent/Trademark Attorney: you need to do work and meet exams and standards to obtain these qualifications, but if you act unethically or otherwise in the future, you could have these qualifications stripped.
On 4 July 2003, also the University of Konstanz reached the point: their committee submitted its report. It examined only that work of Schoen, which was accomplished in Konstanz. Their result: there were only a few minor errors, no data were manipulated intentiously, thus there was no "scientific misconduct". Thus the University of Konstanz believes to keep its coat white. The report was made publicly available end of September 2003.
a ud -27.htm
It is just simpler to say a stain of dirt does not exist, than washing oneself.
http://home.t-online.de/home/Bernhard.Hiller/fr
This story reminds me of a story I was told when I visited MIT long ago, maybe someone can verify it or fill in the details. There's a famous domed building on the MIT campus, a gymnasium I think, that was built on a geodesic frame with concrete cast over it, it was the first building of its type, built with plans carefully calculated by a PhD student of architecture. So a few years later, another PhD student comes along and as his thesis, does calculations on the building that showed there was a miscalculation in the original plans, and the dome would start to crack down the center within 10 years. The architecture faculty was furious, they had approved the prior PhD candidate's plans, they said there was no way there was an error in the design, and they rejected the poor guy's thesis, he never got his PhD and he left MIT.
So of course, about 10 years later, the dome starts to crack. The architecture faculty digs up the guy's thesis, he was proven correct, and they award him the PhD he sought, and conduct repairs according to his recommendations.
Now there was only one detail missing in this story as I heard it, what happened to the guy who designed the original plans? If there was any justice, he would have his PhD revoked.
>His thesis would have demanded more critical examination than a research paper.
.001%
wrong. It would take too long, and require too much effort to review thesi in detail. Case and point, my brother put a bunch of bogus data and equations in his thesis and it was not found, he is now a PHD. How many programmers read knuth all the way through?
An I wasting my time posting this to ignorant, childish, slashdotters?
Of course we all know what a BS degree really means.
PHD is just a continuation along the same path of BS.
Though this fellow's degree may have been revoked, he may enjoy a bright future in American Politics, where the distortion of scientific data has evolved into a self-serving profession, and one which is tacitly accepted by the sensationalist traditional media.
While this person commited a "crime against science" that cannot be justified in any way, I think two comments are in order.
First, there is an enormous pressure to publish in the academic world: the phrase publish or perish is heard a lot. The main reason for this is, that at a certain moment, people higher up in the management and funding chain wanted to know whether their money is spent well (or, equivalently: whom to give the money to).
So, what people do to grade the quality or research, is to count publications. Generally, this count is weighted by the "impact factor" of the journal you publish in (if you publish in Science or Nature, the impact is much higher than when publishing in the Local Journal on BlaBla). Now, counting publications is of course a hideous way to grade science. But it gets worse: a whole new field of research (that is not worthy of the name) has been founded: Citation Analysis. Basically, a database is made of who references whom, and the quality-estimate for your research is based on that.
Now, since the amount of money a professor gets depends on the publication-"score", he will put pressure on his people to publish. Again: publish or perish. This has given rise to the practice in which to try to smear one or two ideas over two or three publications: two or three low-impact pubs score higher than one medium-impact one. This, in turn, has given rise to a many many (very) low-pact journal that, frankly, contain mostly rubish; only to satisfy the bean/pub-counters and the funders.
All this, is in no way whatsoever, reason enough to falsify data. But to all the people that started shouting about "hey, this guy broke the scientific rules so he's a piece of shit", I'd like to say: This publication pressure, rather than the person's ethics, likely is the problem.
The second point I'd like to make is about the stripping of the doctoral degree: Even though it might be just, it's not necessary whatsoever; This guy is not getting a job in science anymore, degree or not. There are two things that spell doom on any scientific career: Faking, and Plagiarism. That's the end of your career, regardsless of the number of degrees you hold.
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Jan Hendrik Schoen just been served!
Seriously though, I think he got what he diserves. The fact that he had a PhD, and falsified data means he did'nt respect power a PhD gave him. He thought he was above the system.
Most people aren't thought about after they're gone. "I wonder where Rob got the plutonium" is better than most get.
In real science such as physics or math there is no place for liars to hide. They should go tampering law instead or doing politics, where truth is of no value...
There you are, staring at me again.
"... working in the hot fields of superconductivity and molecular electronics"
Better to bust your ass all day in the fields of superconductivity than the mines of gravity or the factory of photons...
(It's 6:45am and i haven't gone to bed yet. be kind)
I had a sucky sig.
If you falsify data you're not a scientist, it's as simple as that. In order to be a scientist you have to be able to embrace failure.
Being incorrect in your hypothesis is a step that takes you toward your ultimate goal. If you can't grok that, you're in the wrong line of work.
You can't just forge ahead in the face of data to the contrary. That's the dark ages. You may as well start believing that the sun orbits around the earth purely because it suits you for it to do so.
Bell Labs should sue him for fraud in addition to firing him. It's disgusting. It's an insult to humanity.
Kick his ass, then send him to some country where they like pseudoscience.
This is just like television, only you can see much further.
god save the world!
Anyhow, this is not totally surprising. Once my friend asked me if I knew what the world's best method is to obtain sexy results in any experiment that needs noting down values. I had no clue.
His weapon of choice was "vi".
Russian PhDs have a lot less difficulty finding employment in their field. After all, it is usually through such employment that they were able to leave Russia in the first place. And with the high quality of Russian education (well, it used to be, at least in the big cities), they would likely be preferred over US candidates.
...a very interesting page about Electron Band Structure In Germanium.
Surely the University REALIZED that this former PhD is a DANGEROUS MAN, and will surely SELL HIS SERVICES to TERRORISTS, NAZIS and the KKK. A physicist, especially with knowledge of NUCULAAR PHIZZIKS, could thinks of DIRTY BOMBES and other diverse devices.
;-) for the humor-impaired. ]
Since no one else will employ him, his only recourse is to work for organized crime! Why won't someone think of the children!
[
Dude, you're just being alarmist. And that's coming from me, a card-carrying alarmist.
You're fabricating issues where there are none. You're wringing your hands about universities being buffetted by social and political trends that somehow get enmeshed in the the university academic philosophy, which then results in some kind of retroactive backlash against degree holders that don't hold to this new philosophy. First, and most importantly, that's not what happened in this case. Second, even if you were speaking hypothetically, universities tend to be exceptionally resistant to trends. This is one of the merits of the tenure system. Third, the principles that govern the conferral of a degree are internal to academics--that is, they are a set of principles about proper academic conduct per se, and aren't burdened by additional philosophies external to the practice of academics. So there aren't a set of "general" morals in science as you call them that invoke patriotism, religion, etc. Rather there's a scientific method and a principles of academic conduct that are divorced from these other moral domains.
Don't be fool by the story. Its a nice story and all that, but I sincerely doubt it to be true.
:)
;)
I like to believe Civil Engineering is a field that tries its best to bridge the gap between RL and science. Its really really hard to predict a structure's behaviour, and even more so to predict how that behaviour will change over time. Civil Engineering deals with alot of uncertanties, so anything one says about the expected behaviour of a given structure should always be considered as a "rough estimate", nothing more.
Let me explain it a bit further.
When designing a reinforced concrete structure, as you would expect, there are some saffety coefficients involved, to make sure the structure doesn't collapse, even if it is subjected to loads greater than you would expect in a worst case scenario. But if you look at those coefficients, you'll see something interesting: they're all impresively high. Just look:
# We study the concrete's resistante to compression (fck) and determine what is the minimum resistant strength that 95% of the samples can achieve. As you can imagine, the average sample's resistant capacity is well above that.
# That resistant capacity is now divided by a 1.5 factor (gamma-c) so we now have fcd = fck/1.5
# When calculating the structure, we multiply that capacity by 0.85. This is because in some circumstances, that resistant capacity tends to decrease over time. so we now have 0.85fcd for our calculations.
# We make an estimate for the loads the structure is expected to handle. We then multiply those loads by 1.5 if they have a negative effect on the structure and we don't even count them if the effect its positive.
* So now we have: 1.5 * (worst case scenario loading pattern)
* for a: 0.85 * fcd (the expected minimum resistant capacity 95% of the samples divided by a 1.5 factor)
# for the steel things are a bit different. The control of the production is much tighter, so the variance of the resistant capacity is much lower, so we just use a coefficient of 1.15 (gamma-s)
* so for steel we have: fsyk / 1.15 (where fsyk is the expected minimim resistante to uniaxial traction strength that 95% of the samples are expected to achieve)
Well.. as you can see, there are lots and lots of uncertainties. Simplifications are a dime a dozen. And though you can better approximate reality with Finite Elements Analysis and Discrete Elements Analysis, its still way off. Just think, how can you accurately predict the behaviour of a structure where the composition is heterogenous in nature, where that composition varies within the structure (i.e. the ammount of steel varies with the expected loads, therefore some areas will have more steel and with different arrangements than others), and where you can't accurately know the resistant capacity of the materials you used.
Anyways... I know its off topic. And to embrace the spirit of slashdot, I must sai IANACE (I'm actually still a student). But I just had to write this
Please forgive my english and any errors that I might have made (along with the simplifications).
Have fun!
I am a speak english. Do you not? - Saroto
Right....and other political party members NEVER do that. Idiot.
[SIG] Remember Mattel handheld games?
Academia is far from as pure as the public might imagine. It is troubled with the same problems as the rest of society.
For those who don't know of him, George Ricaurte is the NIDA scientist which recently had to retract a severly flawed paper on MDMA neurotoxcity. Part of the problem is that NIDA is in the business of sustaining the War On Some Drugs, a multi billion business. It is in their interest to sustain funding for research that confirms the basis for this "war". Researchers which come up with results that are contrary to this cause (ie. which debunks common myths of toxicity and other perceived dangers) are committing career suicide.
The MDMA neurotoxcity paper by Ricaurte came under heavy fire for flawed methods when it was first released (mostly from partisan researchers with nothing to lose). The paper has since been used to push anti-MDMA legislation (like the RAVE act), both in the US and in other countries. The main reason the paper was retracted was the discovery that Ricaurte and his team hadn't even used MDMA in their animal toxcity experiments, but a completely different chemical. A small error (as Ricaurte claims) or evidence of very foul play? The company which supplied the chemicals claim that such a mixup is absurd and extremely unlikely.
Still, this has only put a small dent in Ricaurte's reputation, since he is working for the "good cause". The science behind it doesn't seem to be important, it's the underlying goals. He is now involved in new NIDA research with the same goals as before, to "prove" that MDMA is an inheritly dangerous and evil chemical.
For more information about the retraction, see the retraction itself and the response from MAPS.
Science is the a very good method to make the world understandable, but the public would do well to be a tad more sceptical and understand that a scientific degree is no automatic proof of pure intentions or valid results, there is almost always bias. Especially when there are large sums of money involved.
I think he overqualifies for a DoD or DoS position, especially one responsible to report on WMD capabilities of foreign (potential members of the axis of evil) countries!
Does anybody know if they hire?
Yam, yam, uga booga, yam, yam, yade, yade, uga booga, yam, yam, yade, yade
I think it's legitimate to strip him of his degree IF he faked the data for his doctoral dissertation, as that would call into question his qualifications. I think it's dishonest of the university to strip him of his Ph.D. for actions taken after he legitimately earned his Ph.D. Yes, the guy is scum, he's dishonest, and he probably won't ever work in research again. But his later dishonest behavior has no bearing on whether or not he did actually fulfill all the requirements for a Ph.D. and produce a legitimate dissertation.
(Although it should prompt a review of his dissertation research...)
Who the heck can publish a paper every eight days! That alone should start to turn heads, no?
Could have been worse; at least his name isn't Grosse...
A "Soviet Russia" joke that is actually insightful? That's it, the world has officially gone nuts!
He can have a PhD again in no time based on his "life experiences".
http://www.diplomaville.com/
If he was working in quantum physics....
I have a Ph.D. in Philosophy... and I fully expect they'll revoke it if I were to say something false. :-).
Ok... "true" story here: I got my doctorate degree from the once fine institution, the University of Massachusetts (no longer, thanks to our awful Republican governor... that's a different point).
Once I got the diploma itself, I did the following. I printed out my name (David Q. Mertz) in almost-but-not-quite the same Olde-English-ish font that was on the diploma from the school. I printed on white paper, rather than the beige of the school document; and used temporary tape to attach my trimmed printout onto the face of the document.
At my local copy shop, I made a color photocopy of the diploma, making sure that you could discern the color difference between the source paper stocks on a moderately close examination (but perhaps not at a passing glance). Then I sent the school diploma to my dad, who is somewhat sentimental about such things. And framed the copy in a frame, under glass... and that copy is hanging on my wall, right here in my home office.
I kinda wish, from time to time, that I wasn't a freelance at-home writer... then I could hang my framed diploma at a work place or the like. Ah well...
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So what's this guy's honorary title now? "Ex-Dr. Schoen" is plenty awkward, and "Dr. Emeritus" is misleading because it implies honorable retirement.
How about "Jan H. Schoen, Dr. Detritus in Physics"
phd = Power of HyDrogen :)
7 so he's NaOH ed.
Live your life each day as if it was your last.
it is hard to fathom that it can be "revoked."
The same way your citizenship or your driver's license can be "revoked" if you obtained them through fraud--you never really had them in the first place.
The toothfairy and the Easter Bunny were writing the papers, and Shoen was plagarizing.
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
As one who has both an MD and a PhD, I would say you have no idea how they differ.
Medical school is a trade school. You learn and regurgitate 'facts' such as anatomy, pharmacology, pathology, etc. There is no data to fake. Grades are, in the first two years, based on your ability to memorize and repeat (on exams) the knowledge base. The second two years are practical training and development of certain skills by repetition. Residency and fellowship are much the same.
Graduate school, at least in the Biochemistry Dept. where I spent 4 years, was purely research. One dispensed with the course requirements in the first year, while the rest was grant proposals, learning how to administer a lab, and experimentation. Plenty of opportunities to "dry lab" your results, if you were so inclined. The degree depended on independent research, reviewed by your thesis examiners as well as publications in the peer-reviewed literature, and sucess at obtaining funding from the NIH, etc. If you washed out, you could always get a Masters degree.
So, if someone faked their research, I agree the PhD could be stripped. That may be more a reflection on the oversight in the department, however. An MD, though, cannot be faked. You have to repeatedly demonstrate your skills to multiple examiners.
Not only tbat, but many Ph.D.'s (and other research projects) are replicated by other researchers seeking to add conclusions or experiments to your work.
While it's understandably part of the scientific method (replication, replication, replication), there's very little more frustrating than investing a large amount of time and energy into a project you hope to persue for a long time, only to find out that the original researcher's results are inaccurate or irreproducible.
In the case of falsifying data, especially data that appeared to be important and well published, hundreds of thousands of dollars could have been lost invested in research projects that never materialized, and hundreds of other scientists wasted important time from their careers gaining no benefits.
You're definately right about the "negative". Yech.
"clearly state that your PhD will be revoked if it is used for unethical or criminal purposes"
I am very much against the idea of revoking degrees for behaviour after the fact, but if the university had a policy that they can revoke degrees for bad behaviour then it was up to him to either A) to choose not to falsify data or B) choose another university that isn't as draconian about revoking degrees.
3dinfo@maficstudios.com
If he was being stripped of his degree for work since his dissertation and the dissertation itself was valid, then I'd agree with you.
That's the part that is unclear to me. Did the uni actually find that he had falsified data on his dissertation? Even if not, I think the point could be made that the later falsification cancels out the previous contribution, especially if much time and resources were devoted to testing and reproducing his claims. In that case he actually hurt the field and impeded progress and knowlege.
On the other hand, thank you for pointing out that PhDs are awarded for contributions and advancements to the field (in which the PhD s awarded). Mastery, knowledge, and compentence are recognized in a Masters degree.
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
Just plug in some numbers into the text book forumula, add some random errors to make it seem realistic and then go enjoy the rest of your lunch time!
I hope they don't strip me of my high school leaving certificate!
Just a reminder to check the return policy before you buy that mail order bride. Is it for a full refund or an exchange? What happens after 30 days? What happens if you are shipped damaged goods?
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
Watch Uni administrators battle grade inflation! (Don't hold your breath.)
Slashdot: Failed Car Analogies. Amateur Lawyering. Anecdote Battles.
The example I like to think of is a NASA scientist who worked with my advisor when I was a graduate student.
Our project was a suborbital rocket payload that would pop up above the atmosphere just long enough to snap about 300 pictures of the Sun in extreme ultraviolet (which doesn't penetrate the atmosphere); in some ways it was a prototype for the TRACE spacecraft that is in orbit today. Part of the project was finding a photometric calibration for our photographic film. We would expose our film to extreme ultraviolet that we made at a local synchrotron facility under controlled circumstances, then later measure how dark the film got.
This fellow, call him Mr. Electrolux, developed all the film that we calibrated that way -- but he seems to have failed to write down which processes were used on which piece of film. At the end of the day (we think) he simply wrote down a bunch of processes in a plausible order.
The result? Although he didn't get ridiculed at the moment, once we analyzed the data (three to six months later) we realized that we'd flushed nearly $100,000 and six months of our lives down the toilet because the calibration data didn't make sense and we had to redo the work.
I often marvel at the chutzpah/stupidity that goes with such a move: scientists are in the business of figuring out ground truth, and if you lie it will be uncovered.
Well, I wouldn't want to lose my Degree for Data Falsification either... because then I wouldn't be able to go around making right data, well, wrong. Maybe it's a degree field dealing with random numbers or encryption?
Second thought was: "He probably got his degree from one of those d1pl0ma spammers..."
Reading this comic.
To the parent of the person I'm replying to:
PhD is latin, something like "Philosopia Doctorate".
DPhil is what Oxford gives out, a English titled "Doctorate of Philosphy".
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Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
just another example of how the whole traditional degree system is nothing more than a good ole boy network and bragging rights.
"All your PhD are belong to us!"
/. discussion.
There, now we have a complete
Kewl! He'll be able to use SUSE Linux!
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
You mean like in "Die Hard /w a Vengeance", where one of the terrorists is named "Herr Krieg" (Krieg is the german word for war)?
Wow, that completely redefines Least Publishable Unit. By giving it a lower bound it cannot reach.
Laissez lire, et laissez danser; ces deux amusements ne feront jamais de mal au monde. - Voltaire
Hmmm... I'm not able to convey what I'm really trying to say. It just seems weird, almost that it's not newsworthy or should be kept quiet or something. I guess pulling 2 allnighters after half of your best friends are about to graduate will do this to you.
Berto
Don't Drink and Derive!
(ducks)
That's right. All your base.
That would, at most, mean that it would be illegal to call yourself a software engineer in Texas unless you had a license from Texas.
One of the most infamous charlatans was Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard. Courts of law all over the globe are well aware of this quack and his barratrous miscreants.
The educated world has zero tolerance for proven charlatans.
Eternity: will that be smoking, or non-smoking? I Corinthians 6:9-10
you have to take into account it will be built by people with a 6th grade education... Better double the number of connections in case it's being assembled on a Monday morning after an weekend-long bender.
--Rob
....made up or altered data 16 times while working in the hot fields of superconductivity and molecular electronics...
Man. no wonder he got canned. Even I know that you cant superconduct above 0 degrees...
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beware he who would deny you access to information, for in his mind he dreams himself your master
The PhD is more than just a 'rating' given to a person on completion of the required work, but is a 'stamp of quality' given to the person by the uni, and a direct reflection on the uni.
If they were to just laugh and not do anything, it could (and should) affect how others view the 'quality' of a doctorate from that institution. Their 'correcting' their bestowal of the doctorate on this person by removing their 'stamp of quality' should also reflect on how people view the quality of a doctorate they issue.
One last thing I'd like to mention is that my opinion(s) from the original SlashDot article in 2002 haven't changed.
Tomas
The man showed no humility for the term, "Ethics." Is he the first? No. Will he be the last? No.
He got caught attempting to become a Pioneer in his field due to his Egocentric Nature.
I pity him nor any one with his value system not.
Why didn't you just photocopy your diploma and hang it on your fucking wall?
Sounds like there were about 500 unnecessary steps in there. No wonder you're a Ph.D.
Piled Higher and Deeper. Completion of a Dissertation and publication is a rigorous process that is overseen by more then a handful of other PhD's. They're just pissed they were too stupid to catch it. Its that simple.
There is so much B.S. and white lies that fly around a "scientific institution". I once got sick during data collection and missed a few sampling points. I had my boss come up and tell me to enter about what it should have been. When I wouldn't he got pissed and I got "benched". There is SO MUCH PRESSURE TO PERFORM its incredible. That pressure leads to status quo and researching only what really is an obvious hit to begin with. If you go out on a limb and come up blank with a grant, you're less likely to get another one. So you play it close to the vest, take very few chances, and fudge if you have to. Its just like ANY OTHER JOB. It doesn't take a PhD to figure that out!
I totally disagree. Your doctorate is not just a certificate of knowledge; it's a membership card in a community and a honor granted by society. The fellowships and grants you received (in some fields, completely covering the cost of 5+ years of graduate education and living expenses), as well as the time spent by your advisors and mentors in training you, were an investment by the academic community intended to yield a new, well-trained contributor to the corpus of human knowledge. Yes, of course, you did a shitload of work and absolutely earned your degree. But the professors who invested their time in you didn't do it purely for your benefit; they did it for the benefit of their field and the academic community as a whole.
I'm an undergrad right now; it's my dream to one day become a teacher and an active contributor to academia. Already I have a professor who is grooming me for grad school, taking time to meet with me over the summer break to work on a paper. Sure, he likes me; but do I really think he's spending time with me purely for the benefit of my delightful wit? No, of course not; he's making an investment in me that I owe back one day to the academic community in just the way I owe my scholarship back to the state in public service. To take 9+ years of education for free just so I can prepend "Doctor" to my name and get a cushy industry job would be the ultimate act of sleaze; to falsify data and contribute back spurious knowledge to the community for my own personal gain would be an utter ethical fuck-up. Sure, the dude in question possesses the knowledge required to be a PhD; but is he contributing back to the community? No, he's doing worse; he's hurting the community and pissing all over the work it did to make him what he is. It's the equivalent of an MD selling oxycontin prescriptions or intentionally killing patients. An MD who does such things doesn't deserve to be called Doctor anymore; why does a lying researcher?
MIT has been known to revoke degrees (temporarily) for non-academic reasons. See Chronicle of Higher Education.
My wife worked in a lab where a guy had just graduated with his PhD done on some esoteric measurements of semiconductor luminescence.
When my wife went to calibrate the spectrograph that he had used for taking single photon data, she found it was not really working at all. She discovered that when he had replaced the photomultiplier tube, he had not removed the black protective cover around it.
So the data he had taken was all random noise. She didn't have the heart to tell him, as he had already turned in his thesis.
He is now a professor at MIT, sad to say.
...and some of the other comments in response to this one, it would appear some people are saying, "No blood, no foul."
What if was in the field of pharmaceuticals and the data would be falsified? What would you do if you, family, friend, etc. were subjected to a medication which was passed as a product because of falsified data and severe problems developed? (How early would you go to wait in line to be the first one to sue?)
Along the same lines, what if your "doctor" cheated on a critical test, boards, etc. and you (et al) were diagnosed and treated incorrectly (and painfully)? What if your "mechanic" managed to get a job (by whatever means) and something was either overlooked or he mistakenly broke something which he didn't mean to do because of incompetence?
It can't matter in some situations and not in others.
We had a friend in high school who lacked practically all common sense. He wasn't retarded, feeble, or whatever adjective(s) you want to use. Working the usual fast-food joints, problems would ensue. Drop a piece of meat on the flooor, "oops!", pick it up, and finish making the sandwich. Accidentally drop plastic-handled tongs in the french-fryer. "Jack, where are the tongs?" "oops!". The grease melted the plastic and the plastic ended up clogging some of the conduits. Time to bring in a repair crew, yank everything out & figure out what happened & repair it. Not a cheap process.
"Not that big a deal."
It doesn't matter in some fields and not in others
why hating bush = liberal?
Is it not possible to be something else?
I hate way this country's politics are so polarized. I'd say it's black and white, republicans and democrats weren't the same damn thing.
A drivers license is a continuing permission from the state to drive a vehicle based on your health and history, or lack thereof, of drunk driving. You don't see Universities revoking doctorates from people no longer able to do research because of Alzheimer's or other diseases, the way glaucoma would with driving.
If a PHD is only kept based on your ability to further science, then why don't they take them away from people with Alzheimer's?
the dude looks like a perfect employee for microsoft ?
their apps alter the data and the specs on the run as needed and who would be a better supervisor for these kind of apps developement than the man that has a doctor degree in altering/manufacturing data ?
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as from the academical view, i'd draw all kind of academical titles from a "scientist" like that and condemn him to hell.
seriously, such dudes do more harm than good in anything that thay touch. go to microsoft! destroy the evil thing.
[...]
I'd tell you the chances of this story being a dupe, but you wouldn't like it.
Wow, you sure seem to know a great deal about the subject Mr.. uh... oh.
In the field of Quantum Physics I would like it to be known that I have created an algorythm that proves unequivicably that time travel, and wormholes can be created using these items:
a slightly used toothbrush
a toothpick
an old dogs frisbee ( note the frisbee age does not matter )
a bubblegum wrapper ( bubbilicious works best )
one cracker
an old on button Zenith remote control for a b & w tv
I will refrain from posting the algorythm since, the math I use to solve the equation may differ from the math you use to solve the equation.
I am Bennett Haselton! I am Bennett Haselton!
Think Ted Kacynski. He was a mathmatician, not a physicist, but if he were a physicist, then what better way to further a luddite agenda than to propagate and produce misleading information into acedemic information sources? What better way to neutralize someone than to waste their time? It won't even land you in jail.
Watch for universities to confuse politics and knowledge often, revoking the degrees of environmental optimists ( who later win nobel prizes for disproving global warming ) and others
A PhD indicates that you are a competant researcher in your chosen field. By falsifying data he demonstrates that he doesn't follow the scientific method. Hence he no longer deserves his PhD and the university was right to remove it.
"Physics is to math as sex is to masturbation." -R. Feynman