University physics professor helps to discredit questionable research

For the past two and a half years, Jan Hendrik Schon of Bell Labs was the poster boy for productivity in physics research. During that time, Schon was the lead author of 89 papers. This practically superhuman pace averages to a paper every 10 days.

However, after more than 100 laboratory groups have been unable to reproduce his results, and members of the physics community discovered startling errors in many of his papers, all of Schon's work is now under suspicion as fraudulent.

As the papers were published, more and more groups of scientists set themselves to verifying Schon's results or using his research as a starting point for projects of their own. But when these groups were unable to make progress, suspicions arose.

Much of the work done to uncover the extent of the fraud in Schon's research was done by Lydia Sohn, an assistant physics professor at the University.

Schon's research dealt with the possibility of using organic compounds in electronics, from semiconductors and superconductors to lasers, a field with which Sohn is somewhat familiar.

Sohn earned her Ph.D. in physics from Harvard University in 1992 and after gaining experience with techniques of nanotechnology in Europe did her post-doctoral work at Bell Labs — though her tenure did not overlap with Schon's time. She was alerted to the possibility of foul play by some of her colleagues there.

Her colleagues pointed her to two specific papers, published at different times on different topics. Surprisingly, the papers contained an identical figure.

"You could take these two different figures [one of a single molecule, the other of a layer of thousands of molecules], and there you could see that the two curves were identical," Sohn said. One experiment was conducted at room temperature — 20 degrees Celsius — and the other was conducted at one degree Kelvin — -272 degrees Celsius.

At best, this was a case of confused figures, an accident by Schon in putting the papers together. However, the coincidence of repeated figures with the irreplicability of Schon's results have led many to believe there was intentional fraud, said two experts in the field of nanotechnology.

"As an experimentalist in this field, you would have strong suspicions on a second glance," Sohn said. "The data that he got were just too clean. It was too perfect, literally too perfect."

As a result of the questions raised by Sohn and others, Bell Labs convened a committee of renowned scientists to fully investigate the issue.

"We take this matter very seriously," Bell Labs spokesman Saswato Das said. "Scientific integrity is very important to us. That is why we appointed this independent committee. We are providing them all the access they need."

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Though committee leader Malcolm Beasley, a physics professor at Stanford University, was unable to comment on the validity of the work — since the committee's report had not yet been released — he did say that, if true, "the implications of the work were really quite substantial."

The committee said in a report released yesterday that Schon had committed scienfitic fraud. Bell Labs, who had continued to employ Schon pending the results of the investigation, fired him yesterday.

"One of the interesting things about the whole sequence of work, he was really careful not to discover anything radically new," said Philip Anderson, an emeritus physics professor and Nobel laureate. "He never violated anything so strongly that you had to check up on him in some way."

Anderson said another reason Schon was able to work so long without being questioned was the reputation of his supervisor, Bertram Batlogg.

"If it had been anyone but Batlogg, I wouldn't have believed it," Anderson said.

But the biggest tragedy, Sohn said, is the money, time and energy wasted.

"There was a lot of money, a lot of post docs, a lot of grad student years tied up in what looks like a dead end," Sohn said. "I feel bad for all those post docs and grad students."