Bell Labs Fires Superconductivity Researcher

The committee concluded that Jan Hendrik Schon, 32, made up or altered data at least 16 times between 1998 and 2001 -- the first case of scientific fraud in the 77-year history of the Nobel Prize-winning laboratory, Lucent Technologies said Wednesday. Bell Labs is the research arm of Lucent, which makes telecommunications gear; the labs used to be part of AT&T.

The research involved work by Schon and other scientists in the fields of superconductivity, molecular electronics and molecular crystals, which could bring improvements to computers and telecommunications in a decade or more. The findings were published in several prominent scientific publications, including the journals Science, Nature and Applied Physics Letters.

The committee cleared about 20 other researchers from Bell Labs and other institutions who worked on the research or helped write reports on it.

"The evidence that manipulation and misrepresentation of data occurred is compelling," the committee said in a report made public Wednesday. Schon "did this intentionally or recklessly and without the knowledge of any of his co-authors."

In a response appended to the report, Schon wrote that he disagreed with several of its findings and conclusions, but "I have to admit that I made various mistakes in my scientific work, which I deeply regret."

Schon blamed some mistakes on the work's complexity or errors he did not notice before publication. But he said all the scientific publications he prepared were based on experimental observations.

A telephone message left at Schon's New Jersey home Wednesday was not immediately returned.

Malcolm Beasley, an applied physics professor who chaired the committee, said in an interview Wednesday that Schon's motive remained unclear.

Scientists began questioning the validity of the research because they could not reproduce the experiments.

In May, Bell Labs retained five prominent scientists and engineers to investigate. The committee's 125-page report, submitted to Bell Labs late Tuesday, concludes that Schon did not maintain proper laboratory records, and devices that might have been used to confirm his results were all either damaged or discarded.

Schon, a German native and a rising star in the field of nanoelectronics, or creating molecule-sized electronic components, cooperated with the investigators and continued his work at the lab until the firing.

The committee wrote that Schon's co-authors, while innocent of misconduct, implicitly endorsed the validity of his work. That shows the need for "clear, widely accepted standards" of professional responsibility to ensure the veracity of results with which researchers are associated, the report states.

"It's a very good thing for the various people and organizations in science to look at this," Beasley said. "It's not something that the community has thought through."

In 1997, Schon began working as an intern at Bell Labs, which employs 10,000 scientists, technicians and other workers worldwide. It is based at Lucent's Murray Hill headquarters.

Schon rose rapidly to scientific stardom by reporting apparent success in difficult experiments aimed at creating single crystals of organic material that could act as transistors and other fundamental elements of computers. His research appeared in top journals 16 times since 2000.

The research involved superconductivity, or efforts to develop materials that conduct electricity without loss of power from electrical resistance, as well as molecular electronics, a hot new field involving getting molecules to behave as transistors to develop better integrated circuitry. Schon also did more theoretical research on molecular crystals, aimed at better understanding how electricity flows through molecules such as carbon compounds.

Bell Labs spokesman Saswato Das said laboratory officials are taking several steps to prevent misconduct, including encouraging more internal discussion and peer review of new research before it is published and clarifying supervisors' responsibilities for reviewing all research papers.

"Scientific freedom, like all freedom, can be abused," Das said. "Bell Labs and the scientific community have an honor code that assumes honest and ethical representation of one's work."

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