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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'."
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
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?
If he really knew his stuff he'd not have had to fit the results to his conclusion. He would have explained how his original hypothesis was wrong, and used the correct data to explain what actually happened.
I think he demonstrated just how little knowledge he actually has.
http://twitter.com/onion2k
Well, it probably merits a mention due to the nature of what the guy did. His work was exciting, the results he posted were exciting - exciting enough to dupe a lot of very qualified people. How many times was he published in Nature?
When the falsification claims surfaced there were an awful lot of mightily disappointed (and angry) people out there. Speaking personally, I'm happy that his Doctorate has been stripped, and I'm glad that someone took the time to post it here, as otherwise I don't think I'd have found out about it.
I mean that You can't strip someone of knowledge
Indeed but if you are fabricating data you are proving that you didn't have that knowledge in the first place.
I strongly suspect his thesis did not contain any errors
Fabricated data is very likely to mean data he made up = errors
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'.
Seriously, you don't know what you are talking about. You defend your thesis based upon the results you have gotten during research. This person appears to have defended is thesis based upon falsefied results. Of course he should be stripped of is PhD.
He is not the first, nor the last person to have done this, be it PhD thesis or not.
WRONG. he was probably widely ambitious, and falsified data to live that ambition.
If publishing a paper the "hey the star trek like replicators can exist" is way more career enhancing than "i thought star treck replicators could work, but i was wrong"
Cheating is not a sign of someones lack of skill. If you took that approach you'd have to Micheal Schumacher, Senna and Prost are a poor racing driver due to trying to knock other racing drivers off the road, infact they have something like 12 F1 world championships between them. If that doesn't prove that cheating comes from the desire to win not the lack of skill nothing does.
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:)
This guy was an extremely intelligent man; I work in his field and could not hope to understand the problems well enough to be able to fabricate data that fooled the academic community for years, and then provide a perfectly reasonable (and quite sexy!) explanation. You have got to remember he published this in the top journals in the world; their peer review process is extremely rigorous. He some how managed to work out what we wanted to hear, and produce the data to give us the answer. It is just a shame his efforts and ability was so misguided.
There are 10 types of people in this world. Those who understand binary, and those who don't.
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.
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#\ @ ? Colonize Mars
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What does a pHD actually mean?
A PhD is a Philosophical Doctorate. It says that you can think intelligently and help progress the knowledge of mankind.
Is it right for a discredited man to have his pHD removed?
It most certainly is. If it has been proven that he's fudging scientific data, then he's clearly not helping to progress the knowledge of mankind, and is indeed hindering progress. False answers to justify hypothesis is never right. Anyone who plagerizes material or makes up their own science has no right to be called a doctor of philosophy. It's about using your knowledge, not about bragging rights for having been in school for n years.
Is it right that popular opinion can determine how qualified someone is to make a statement in their field?
Popular opinion? You mean a review board at the institution which granted him the degree? Did you even read the article? It wasn't about public outcry or bad publicity. "A committee of 12 professors at his alma mater in southern Germany decided after its own review to strip Schoen of the doctorate in physics he earned in 1998." It was his peers who revoked his degree, not the public.
A PhD signifies that you have an understanding of the field, and that you have made a novel contribution, and are, therefore, capable of research.
If your thesis is based on forged results, the merit of your contribution may be nothing, or even negative. Moreover, it casts doubt on your ability to carry out research. Honesty is a necessary requisite of doing research, and your reputation counts for a lot in academia.
Your highschool diploma means that you have completed all your highschool courses. If someone were to find that you passed all your courses by shoulder-surfing or bribing the teachers or whatever, I fully expect that the institution should be able to revoke your degree.
--
#include <malloc.h>
free(your.mind);
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"
It is news because he won a lot of prizes and was even considered a potential Nobel prize candidate. And it is better than yet another article about SCO or the Brown Book.
Lars T.
To the guy who modded me down from perfect to terrible Karma - Apple haters still suck
Which is not much. Nowadays, there is such a number of research papers (most of which don't actually contain earth-shattering results) that they are not actually examined with that much detailed attention. Reviewers pay more attention to stylistic aspects (is it readable? understandable without too much efforts? are my buddies, who did research in the same field appropriately credited in the bibliography?) than to contents.
Same thing goes for thesis, and I've heard of a thesis where the candidate "managed" to prove that sin(x)+cos(x)=1. Which is obviously false (... it lacks the square...), but this error escaped the attention of the doctorand's of his adviser and of his reviewers!
Thesis are rather large (> 100 pages), and reviewers have to read them in a limited amount of time (in France, it's just 2 or 3 weeks in bad cases, and some reviewers may be on the boards of more than one thesis!), so it's entirely plausible that even relatively gross errors go unnoticed.
And probably the only reason why this guy got caught was that his papers were of the rare kind that did indeed contain earth-shattering results (high temperature superconductors) which drew the attention of the crowd. If "exposed" papers contain such errors, how much worse must be the situation with the many dull and uninteresting papers?
Say no to software patents.
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!
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
Imagine if it he had a medical PhD and was working in a hospital - would you see this issue diferently then?
Not quite the same. What he would stripped of then would be his license to practice medicine, not his M.D.
I mean that You can't strip someone of knowledge
Indeed but if you are fabricating data you are proving that you didn't have that knowledge in the first place.
I disagree. The knowledge he received his PhD for the "knowledge" he fabricated are two different things.
Oh, don't get me wrong. His scientific reputation is, and should be, in the toilet permanently. He should never work in academia again. Period.
But trying to withdraw a PhD sends a misleading message about what a PhD means. It's a certification of having fulfilled certain requirements, not a grant of endorsement.
We cannot pretend to alter the past, and say someone did not accomplish what they did, even if we later decide we do not like him. It sets the troubling precedent that we may strip people of their academic credentials at will. That's a bad idea, even our reasons for doing so would be good ones in this particular case.
They should have stuck with an announcement censuring him.
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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.
I agree that cheating is not a lack of skill. I don't like Michael Schumacher as much as the next man, and didn't like Senna either, but I'm not sure you can call them cheats in the same way as, say, Darl McBride and the pump 'n' dumpers. I don't really believe they cheat to get success the majority of the time.
I agree that if they were so sure of being the best, they could surely have done it the 'proper' way, and I think in the majority of races they won on skill, not by cheating.
I agree that in some circumstances, the urge to succeed overrules the will to play fair, especially when the reward is sufficiently large. I don't suppose anyone has not cheated on something at some point of their lives. The difference is that success for most people is built on what they do 95% of the time, and only 5% when 'help' is required.
Personally I think that falsifying evidence/data is a BAD thing, regardless of whether it's a scientist or an officer of the law or a financial analyst. Making conclusions based on faulty input is going to lead to trouble for someone later down the line, and that's something I woudn't want on my conscience.
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.
I think you are all missing the point. A degree is not a simple cert of knowledge, it is a cert of compitence and a trust model. It tells others that you can do a job not that you are a simple waling encyclopedia. This is especially true in sci/engineering professions. It also reflects upon the issuing university, as their grads are their finnished product and their best advertising. If you are hiring for an engineering position for a bridge and you have 2 canidates, #1 got a degree from Acme Diploma Factory and #2 has a degree from MIT, what are you going to think. You see the logo of MIT and know quality, you have never heard of Acme or know anything of it. Your choice is clear. As such from a bnusiness standpoint MIT can say to possible students that it grads get the best work possible, as such they have a keen intrest in keeping their name squeeky clean.
Employers don't want walking encyclopedias they want projects finished on time and on budget for their clients. What I am trying to say is a degree is more than a cert in knowledge it is a cert in the abilities to get the job done and done right. A professional and ethical attitude and behavior.
please excuse any typos and such. It is very late and I have had very numbers of beers
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.
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.
I mean that You can't strip someone of knowledge.
But can you strip the moderators of their ability to mark shit like this +5 (well, maybe "Funny", but it was "Interesting" when I posted this)?
I mean, really... you can't have RTFA'd. The guy most likely did massive damage to himself, his university's reputation, the Scientific community that relied upon his results, and possibly his employer.
A PHD is given in exchange for the proper work done, knowledge demonstrated, and contribution made to the relevant community. It's not a Cracker-Jack prize for every lying asshole who has no problem wasting other Scientists' careers by having them run off on wild goose chases as a result of your faked numbers. The guy should have his ass sued and put in jail for what he cost everyone else in this mess. Losing his PHD should be the least of his worries.
Why are you letting these clowns ruin our country?
The difference here was a mistake vs. deliberate falsification. Even doctors make mistakes. As long as it doesn't get into the incompetence area (almost takes effort), it's a totally different area than falsification.
In your example: Student 1 made a mistake. Student 2 caught mistake and tried to use it as thesis. Faculity fails to properly check research, and improperly rejects work. So when work is validated, they had to credit Student 2. Student 1, hopefully knowing better now, has been designing boring buildings & bridges for years with no problems.
I don't read AC A human right
scientists of nowadays are very fearful people. they are mostly afraid of being wrong.
if someone is writing papers of little importance, or that do not contain any really shocking info, then you are probably safe (assuming you reference everyone who ever breathed the subject so that no one gets a feather up their ass and tries slandering you). so thats what most grad students do, because they dont want to spend 10 years getting their PhD.
but this process doesnt end once someone has gotten their PhD...in fact this constant fear of being found "uncredible" has caused scientific research to become marred by political bs. fellows like this guy from the article are meant to be examples for everyone else, and to solidify this notion through fear.
Blech....how would you like YOUR doctor to falsify your test results for cancer to 'prove' a theory? With this guy's integrity he wouldn't even tell you.
[SIG] Remember Mattel handheld games?
Not as true as you'd like though.
If you are hiring an engineer, generally, you want a certified engineer, a degree is not enough (or even strictly necessary). You want someone who has passed the local (regional, whatever) professional engineering exams, and is certified by the local professional engineers association. THAT is an engineer. Someone who just has a degree in engineering is someone who studies engineering, but not an engineer.
Similarly, if you want a lawyer, you want someone who has passed the local Bar exam, and is recognized by all the other lawyers (and the legal system) as a lawyer.. NOT simply someone who has a PhD in Law.
The same goes for Doctors, etc.
There is NO WAY a university can know that a person will, later in life, cheat. If the person is competent enough to get through the process at the university, then the university should stand by their original decision. The person's own record will speak for itself.
You're too kind.
Frankly, I agree wholeheartedly that the university should have publicly dissociated themselves from him, censured him, held a big press conference where they denounced him as a big fat jerk, taken away his library card, egged his house, given his email address to the Spammer's Union Local #97, sent him dead flowers, whatever.
But a PhD is a certificate of an accomplishment. It doesn't make sense to say it's rescinded unless it turns out that his actual dissertation had falsified data.
Frankly, I feel somewhat sorry for him. Reputation is everything in academia. We have a status system that makes Hollywood look like a socialist commune by comparison. I am just starting my own scientific career, and I can tell you, when you are considered "hot talent", you are treated quite well, but the pressure to produce is tremendous. Everyone is expecting great things of you, and when the promising lead you were chasing doesn't pan out, it can feel like *you* have failed.
NOTICE: This notice will appear at the bottom of all my slashdot posts.
Probably something like the -log [deuterium].
Ph.D. = doctor of philosophy.
Human genome = 3 billion base pairs = 6 GBit. Windows + Office = 20 Gbit. Which is more impressive?
I am a full-time research scientist with the U.S. government; my performance reviews are based almost entirely on publishable research, so I very much understand the pressure to publish or perish. To heighten the sense of urgency, I am still in a three-year probationary period. I have to respectfully disagree with your statement that the issue is pressure to publish rather than personal ethics. The issue is entirely one of ethics: he was under an intense amount of pressure to publish, and he chose an unethical way to achieve that goal. There was no outside agency that forced him to make the decision that he did. He looked inside of himself and decided that cheating was acceptable. What is that, if not an ethical judgement?
One of the things a PhD student is supposed to learn is scientific ethics. At my university, all students must take ethics courses. What makes a university great? The reputation of it's graduates, scientifically and ethically. If graduates go on to be bad scientific citizens, this demonstrates that they have NOT learned what the university was trying to teach them. I believe that's why they feel justified in taking away his PhD.
What I'd like to see is an investigation of the teaching methods of that university.
What a PhD means is that a few other PhDs think that you have been trained in the gathering of observables and can be trusted to dessiminate conclusions based on those observable is an honest and relatively objective fashion.
This does not always mean that the conclusions are correct. What this does mean is that the conclusions are not maliciously misleading or fraudulent, which includes forgery to advance one career. To do so is to violate the purpose of the PhD. It can take years to correct an accepted fraudulent conclusion.
So no, the question is not hard to answer. The advancement of knowledge depends on the honesty of the men and women who participate it in. This is not high school. This is academia. This is why plagerism should result in immidiate expulsion. This is why any other sort of data falsification should result in immidiate expulsion. This is not popular opinion. This is nearly 500 years of process in the Western Civilization that had allowed great progress. If we were not serious about finding correct and usefull knowledge, most of you tech toys would not exist.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
I think you are missing the point. He wasn't stripped of the degree because he pissed someone(s) off through his fraud. He was stripped of his degree (pending his appeal) because he faked his data and that reflects badly on the institution that bestowed that degree, and by extension, cheapens others who have degrees from that institution. Not that I agree that its right, but that's the logic.
And as you tread the halls of sanity, You feel so glad to be, Unable to go beyond. I have a message, From another time..
Who the heck can publish a paper every eight days! That alone should start to turn heads, no?
The fact that he did this reflects nothing of his knowledge or competence in the subject area... it reflects upon his (likely) poor character and excessive personal ambitions, with perhaps some stress from corporate powers above thrown in.
Unless you can prove that he falsified research that led to his advanced degrees, or in some other way obtained them under false pretense, you should not be revoking a degree. Admonish him for what he did. Tells us about your new program to make sure your future PhD's are well grounded in ethics. But don't revisit a history that was not tarnished and declare it void because of events years later.
One of the requirements - in fact, the central requirement - for a PhD is making a meaningful contribution to your field.
That's what the dissertation is. It's meant to advance the field for which the doctorate is awarded.
If his dissertation fails to do that due to falsified data, then his doctorate itself is defective.
What has happened is that, retroactively, it has been determined that there was no PhD-earning accomplishment. He may still be a very good scientist in some other ways, but he hasn't demonstrated the ability to contibute to the field in the way that a PhD is expected to.
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.
Wouldn't one of those requirements have been collecting real data?
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.
I once used a very jittery meter in an electrical lab and almost none of the readings matched (not even close) the theoretical values. "Dodgy meter" was listed in my list of error sources and therefore I was not marked down. I suspect he knew the meter was screwed and was looking for tweaked data.
I would not fudge data with any equipment that was not my own. I probably still wouldn't, but... If by chance the prof is giving you equipment that he knows is dodgy and is expecting you to (properly) mark down the incorrect values, then giving "correct" values might just be improper.
He has deliberately poisoned the digital commons for his own selfish motives more than 16 times.
Just imagine the scores of researchers and man hours devoted to tracking down the problem.
It would be like not firing Jayson Blair of the New York Times for making up stories.
I think it's highly appropriate for this guy to lose his doctorate.
A degree isn't something you should be able to take away, unless it's proven you cheated to get the degree
This is total BS. Read the text of your degree and you'll notice a few things. "University Name" admits "Student Name" to the degree of "Whatever" with all the rights, privileges, duties and responsibilities thereof.
It can be very easily, and quite rightly, argued that faking data violates the duties and responsibilities of his degree. You can't have the one without the other. If he wants to benefit from the privileges of his degree, namely employment at a nice facility for a fat paycheck, he needs to excercise the responsibilities of his degree. I am overjoyed that his university is taking the required step in revoking his degree. If they don't revoke his degree, they aren't doing their job, which is certifying that Mr. Schoen was indeed a qualified PhD.
Karma: Excellent (Mainly due to Bill & Ted's Karma Adventure)
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
He was stripped of his degree (pending his appeal) because he faked his data and that reflects badly on the institution that bestowed that degree, and by extension, cheapens others who have degrees from that institution. Not that I agree that its right, but that's the logic.
You're saying that it's a bad practice to punish someone for fraud? What if he had falsified the data on his income-tax return? Should he get to keep the money?
More importantly, and bigger than a single institution, we don't want the scientific literature to become polluted with fraudlent data. That would diminish its value and waste money and effort in pursuing the wrong ideas. It also cheapens everyone who has a Ph.D., including me! I went to great pains to make sure my data was accurate, whether it helped my thesis or not.
Not only should this guy lose his degree, he should be prosecuted for fraud in a criminal court.
...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