The man who almost faked his way to a Nobel Prize on HackerTube: recommended by 6 Hacker News commenters across 5 separate months, 2022–2023.
documentary · evergreen
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.
HN repeatedly recommends the series as a gripping account of scientific fraud, and cites it whenever research misconduct comes up.
“amazing piece of documentary”
9 Hacker News comments link this video. Each one links back to its thread.
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]
in “Stanford Data Science Handbook” · View on HN
Schön got away with it for years. One of my favorite video essays is a long exploration of that case: ▶ this video
in “‘A very disturbing picture’: another retraction for controversial physicist” · View on HN
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
in “Room Temperature Superconductor Drama and Hope” · View on HN
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
in “Origin of correlated isolated flat bands in LK99” · View on HN
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
in “Allegations of Scientific Misconduct Mount as Physicist Makes His Biggest Claim” · View on HN
>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
in “Royal Society cautions against censorship of scientific misinformation online” · View on HN
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.
in “Harvard ethics prof fabricated multiple behavioral science studies” · View on HN
This documentary series comes to mind [1], where in the end they go over the fallout and all the collective research years wasted and budding careers stunted (including people outright leaving research) because as students/postdocs trying to replicate the work of a scientist who was considered to be a potential nobel laureate, they couldn't possibly question the work they were trying to replicate. I feel this aspect of research fraud is even worse than the other established scientists who had their research impacted. In the mentioned case, the established scientists were essentially unharmed, while the PhDs and postdocs suddenly found themselves unable to list most of their experience on their CV, despite the established scientists being the most qualified to verify the fraudster's work. Especially for someone in a leadership position at a university, I wonder how that doesn't eat them up inside. [1] ▶ this video
in “Stanford president resigns over manipulated research, will retract 3 papers” · View on HN
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)
in “The first high-yield, sub-penny plastic processor” · View on HN