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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.
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?
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.
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?"
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 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
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.
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.
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
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***
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...
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....
Perhaps Bush needs an extra Science Advisor?
stuff
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.
I realize you're joking, but first of all Linus only has a Masters degree. Furthermore (AFAIK, please do correct if I'm mistaken) in Finland degrees can't be revoked; there was a case a while back where one politicians thesis was found to be very blatant copying from another work - yet he got to keep his PhD.
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.
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.
Please read up on the issue before stating nonsense. Schoen simply re-used the same data for >10 totally different experiments. That's not filling gaps, it's simply fraud. (Filling gaps is wrong, too -- after all, an experimental scientist is not supposed to figure what should be, but reproducably measure what is actually there.)
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.
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.
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!
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.
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.
"... 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.
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
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.
Who the heck can publish a paper every eight days! That alone should start to turn heads, no?
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
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.
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..."
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
...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