The man who almost faked his way to a Nobel Prize
Why Hacker News recommends it
HN repeatedly recommends the series as a gripping account of scientific fraud, and cites it whenever research misconduct comes up.
What it is
BobbyBroccoli's first of three parts on Jan Hendrik Schon, the Bell Labs postdoc whose fabricated organic semiconductor results nearly won a Nobel Prize. It covers his rise and the context around Bell Labs.
Recommended by 6 HN commenters across 5 different months, 2022 to 2023.
What Hacker News said
Strong rec asmor · 2023-07 · on “‘A very disturbing picture’: another retraction for controversial physicist”
Schön got away with it for years. One of my favorite video essays is a long exploration of that case: [this video]
Strong rec treesciencebot · 2023-07 · on “Room Temperature Superconductor Drama and Hope”
This reminds me an amazing piece of documentary[1] I've watched a couple months prior about a man who tried to "scam his way onto a Nobel prize". It really goes into showing how the majority of the system is based on trust and reputation and without well skepticism fraudsters can thrive. [1]: "The man who almost faked his way to a Nobel Prize" -- [this video]
Strong rec atrettel · 2023-11 · on “Stanford Data Science Handbook”
For those unfamiliar with the story of Jan Hendrik Schön, I suggest watching this excellent series of videos by BobbyBroccoli on YouTube [1-3]. The series does a good job breaking down the context and the situation that Schön was in, along with the incentives that encouraged Schön to commit fraud. [1] [this video] [2] [LINK] [3] [LINK]
Recommends jhallenworld · 2022-01 · on “Royal Society cautions against censorship of scientific misinformation online”
>Most research is flawed or useless, Also the research could be downright fraudulent. A very interesting case is the Schön scandal, involving organic semiconductors. [LINK] There is an engrossing set of videos about it: [this video]
Recommends mustacheemperor · 2023-03 · on “Allegations of Scientific Misconduct Mount as Physicist Makes His Biggest Claim”
It reminds me of Jan Hendrik Schön, who looked like physics' next emerging all-star wunderkind until his "discoveries" of crystalline semiconductors won him so many awards and attentions it was discovered his entire career had been built on falsified data. A huge embarassment for Bell Labs and a black mark on the final years of more than one great physicist's careers there, since so many people thought they were helping a great new mind succeed when they were in reality perpetuating his fraud. There's a great 3-part documentary on youtube about it, which argues Schön was probably a contender for the Nobel Prize in Physics before everything collapsed: [this video]
Recommends lucubratory · 2023-08 · on “Origin of correlated isolated flat bands in LK99”
Oh yeah, he is absolutely fucking wild. There's a great documentary on him, here's part one, the other two parts of the documentary are also on YouTube on the same channel: [this video]
Cites rasz · 2022-06 · on “The first high-yield, sub-penny plastic processor”
My mind immediately went to Bell Labs Jan Schön superconducting plastics almost landing him a Nobel [this video] (spoiler alert - it was all a scam)
Cites bjourne · 2023-07 · on “Harvard ethics prof fabricated multiple behavioral science studies”
Fabricated data and fraudulent results are not unknown to the hard sciences either. See f.e [this video] A professor manipulating data for an amusing pop-psychology result is small potatoes in comparison to what has rocked the physics world.