THE physicist fired from Bell Labs in 2002 for falsifying data has now had his PhD revoked, despite a lack of any evidence of wrongdoing in his doctoral thesis. The move raises questions about the appropriate punishment for scientific misconduct.
The saga of Hendrik Schön began when scientists found inconsistencies in a number of papers he published on high-temperature superconductivity and nanotechnology during his time working as a physicist for Bell Labs, the research arm of Lucent Technologies in New Jersey. Although Schön maintained his innocence, a committee found him guilty of numerous instances of scientific misconduct (New…
