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The man who almost faked his way to a Nobel Prize

Open on YouTube First HN thread

6 HN users recommended this documentary in 5 different months between 2022 and 2023.

2007–2026
3 strong recommendations 3 recommendations 3 citations HackerTube score 6

HN repeatedly recommends the series as a gripping account of scientific fraud, and cites it whenever research misconduct comes up.

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.

Pull quote: “amazing piece of documentary” (HN, 2023)

Also tagged: scientific fraud, jan hendrik schon, bell labs, research misconduct, nobel prize, physics

What Hacker News said

9 labeled comments from the HN archive; up to 20 are kept per video, favoring different commenters. Each one links back to the original thread.

Strongly recommends treesciencebot July 2023 under Room Temperature Superconductor Drama and Hope
Shows how science runs on trust and reputation, enabling fraudsters.
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]
Strongly recommends atrettel November 2023 under Stanford Data Science Handbook
Series on Schon's context and incentives to commit fraud.
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]
Three-part documentary on Schon's falsified data and Bell Labs fallout.
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 August 2023 under Origin of correlated isolated flat bands in LK99
First part of a three-part documentary on Schon.
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]

Citations, criticism and jokes

Documentary covering fallout of research fraud on students and postdocs.
Read the full comment
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]

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