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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
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'.
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);
The reason for the revocation is not embarrasment, it is his unethical behavior. And the rules for getting and keeping your doctoral degree ( in German Promotionsordnung) clearly state that your PhD will be revoked if it is used for unethical or criminal purposes. So in this case the university really has no choice.
***Quis custodiet ipsos custodes***
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
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.
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?
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..
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)