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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'."
What a lightweight!!! You have to falsify data at least 50 times to keep a PhD.
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?
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
Depends what field you work in.
If he moved to politics, he'd probably have a successful career.
May contain traces of nut.
Made from the freshest electrons.
Every, I say EVERY, scientist knows, that experiment that yields unexpected/bad results is a GOOD experiment.
Or, in the case of undergraduates, it means your instruments weren't properly calibrated, or you were jiggling the table with your knee, or you messed up the experiment in any of a thousand ways.
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...
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....
Perhaps Bush needs an extra Science Advisor?
stuff
A degree is merely a university's endorsement of your knowledge. Nothing more, nothing less.
I always thought it was a receipt for $120,000 paid to my university (i.e. the most expensive piece of paper I'll ever buy)
I take it you don't have a marriage certificate then ;-)
"... 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.
Actually, based on my experiences with PhDs in the IT fields, it usually stands for Piled Higher and Deeper.
"Kick his ass, then send him to some country where they like pseudoscience ..."
... that would be ... America,
where almost half the population believe
in UFO abductions and more than 90%
believe in something they call "God",
which is actually less likely than the
thing about the aliens !
Let's see
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..."
I'm just glad I have an official, state-issued birth certificate, or I couldn't tell anyone my age, gender, or name.
Wow, you sure seem to know a great deal about the subject Mr.. uh... oh.