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Physicist Loses Degree for Data Falsification

Posted by michael on from the you-fail-it dept.

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'."

23 of 426 comments (clear)

  1. The merits of pHDs by Ckwop · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.

    1. Re:The merits of pHDs by 00420 · · Score: 4, Interesting

      While his thesis for earning his PhD may have been 100% true, it's quite obvious that he didn't understand what he learned in Science 101 about the scientific method. So I think the university's decision to strip his PhD is a sound one.

      --
      Have you tried Linux yet?
    2. Re:The merits of pHDs by Talez · · Score: 4, Interesting

      I mean that You can't strip someone of knowledge.

      But you can strip away the university's confidence in an individual thereby making the degree invalid.

      See that little stamp on the corner of your degree? Thats merely saying the University Council thinks that you're good enough for the degree in question. The uni can also decide to take away their approval and you're left with a worthless bit of paper.

      A degree is merely a university's endorsement of your knowledge. Nothing more, nothing less.

    3. Re:The merits of pHDs by Grizzlysmit · · Score: 2, Interesting

      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.

      Spot on, and the one thing I'd add to this is if anything universities don't do this enough, there needs to be a clear line step over it, bring disgrace on you're degree and university, then lose you're degree.
      --
      in my life God comes first.... but Linux is pretty high after that :-D
      Francis Smit
    4. Re:The merits of pHDs by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting
      Yes. But does this 'employer's viewpoint matter?

      If you are good enough to be hired by someone then it's no problem if nobody hires you. You just outcompete your competitors.

      On the contrary, if you cannot do that then how would like to hire such an idiot. A degree is worthless if it doesn't matter if you have it or not.

    5. Re:The merits of pHDs by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting
      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.

      Excellent point. As far as I know, the state of Texas is the only one to license Software Engineers. It is therefore illegal to call yourself a Software Engineer in the US unless you have a license from the state of Texas.

    6. Re:The merits of pHDs by Dictator+For+Life · · Score: 2, Interesting
      So rather than invoke supernatural entities, scientists invoke naturalistic explanations.

      Except that this begs the question: what if demons actually made the person sick? By his a priori rejection of the possibility, the scientist misses what really happened in such a case. I'm not saying that demons actually cause illness, mind you; I'm simply addressing your example.

      The existence and operations of the cosmos and of man must be explainable in purely naturalistic terms because only naturalistic explanations are actually testable.

      But your conclusion in no way follows from your premise. The fact that only naturalistic explanations are testable in no way implies that the cosmos and man have purely naturalistic explanations. This reminds me of that old joke/cliché, "To a man with only a hammer, everything's a nail." Well, Mr. Hammer-man may only have a hammer, but that doesn't make everything a nail; and the scientist may only be able to test certain kinds of things, but that doesn't mean that those things can explain everything else.

      --

      DFL

      Never send a human to do a machine's job.

  2. How can they revoke a degree...? by deft · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.
    1. Re:How can they revoke a degree...? by hweimer · · Score: 4, Interesting

      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?

      In Germany a doctorate is not a degree in the same sense as a diploma. A diploma allows you to enter certain professions related to that degree. A doctorate, however, does not grant such rights.

      The university law of the state of Baden-Württemberg (where he got his degree) says that any degree can be revoked if a person acts "unworthy" afterwards. It is important to note that Schön did not manipulate his doctoral thesis but the descision was based on the forgeries he committed later. However, he can sue against the decision.

      --
      OS Reviews: Free and Open Source Software
  3. So when... by BoneFlower · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Will George Ricaurte be stripped of his doctorate?

  4. Degrees with an expiration date by CA_Jim · · Score: 2, Interesting

    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.

  5. How about business administration? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    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.

  6. Re:strange by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I think that I'll never understand what is the purpose for data falsification.

    There's a novel written by Carl Djerassi called "Cantor's Dilemma". It touches the subject of motives behind data falsification, and also it is the very good literature.

  7. A reverse scenario by sakusha · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.

  8. thesis schmesis by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    >His thesis would have demanded more critical examination than a research paper.

    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? .001%
    An I wasting my time posting this to ignorant, childish, slashdotters?

  9. Publication pressure: publish or perish by ControlFreal · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.

    --
    Support a Europe-related section on Slashdot!
  10. Re:Embarrasment, not valid revocation... by Ed_Moyse · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I'm sorry but as respectfully as possible you have to consider that not all countries regard a PhD in the same way. For example, in Britain it is a degree. It indicates academic achievement (and therefore is worthy of respect), but not much more (I have a British PhD in physics)

    However long before this appeared I had a discussion with german colleagues, who said that in Germany a PhD is *also* an indication of moral worth. For example, people with criminal convictions cannot get PhDs

    I understand all the people on this thread who are shocked by the concept of a PhD being revoked but this is because they do not grasp that PhDs are NOT the same the world over. If the university hadn't done this, then I suspect that there would be serious questions being asked in germany.

  11. doubt it by Dayflowers · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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
  12. Re:Tattoo "loser" on his forehead, too by alhaz · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I mean one of those countries where you don't have to produce reliable science to be revered as a great scientist.

    Admittedly, we're running out of them, but I'm sure there's probably somewhere in the southern hemisphere that's just aching for cutting edge physics that just can't be replicated outside of one man's notebooks.

    --
    This is just like television, only you can see much further.
  13. My doctorate by Lulu+of+the+Lotus-Ea · · Score: 2, Interesting

    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...

    --
    Buy Text Processing in Python
  14. Moron by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    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.

  15. Re:This is bad for the university... by Keebler71 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    well, a president can be impeached even if they honestly 'earned' their presidency. Past achievements does not necessarily mean that the person in question meets a certain standard for the rest of their life.

    --
    "It takes considerable knowledge just to realize the extent of your own ignorance." - Thomas Sowell
  16. Re:When does by 09za+ · · Score: 1, Interesting

    insightful?
    this proves slashdot is full of liberals. Not even an example and they call it insightful.
    Hey Bush is Stupid!
    there now I'm insightful too.
    This site can be such a fucking joke sometimes. mod me flamebait...who cares? I and every THINKING person can see how lame an attempt you made at Bush bashing. Try again...You look stupid.
    too bad we have put up with idiots like you!