Plastic Fantastic: How the Biggest Fraud in Physics Shook the Scientific World

by Eugenie Samuel Reich

This is the story of wunderkind physicist Jan Hendrik Schön who faked the discovery of a new superconductor made from plastic. A star researcher at the world-renowned Bell Laboratories in New Jersey, he claimed to have stumbled across a powerful method for making carbon-based crystals into transistors, the switches found on computer chips. Had his experiments worked, they would have paved the way for huge advances in technology--computer chips that we could stick on a dress or eyewear, or even use to make electronic screens as thin and easy-to-fold as sheets of paper. But as other researchers tried to recreate Schön's experiments, the scientific community learned that it had been duped. Why did so many top experts, including Nobel prize-winners, support Schön? What led the major scientific journals to publish his work, and promote it with press releases? And what drove Schön, by all accounts a mild-mannered, modest and obliging young man, to tell such outra

Genres: Science, Nonfiction, Physics, History, Chemistry, Biography, Crime

272 pages, Hardcover

First published May 12, 2009

Reviews

[Beth · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you want to read this like a novel, consider this a SPOILER ALERT. However, since this is non-fiction and the outcome was published in the NYT, I'm going to proceed as though I'm not spoiling anything. The story is really in the details.

This book was fascinating to me in the way a particularly gruesome horror movie, or real life crime story is fascinating. You don't want to look but you can't look away.

Many areas of research, mine included, have physics envy and here is a story of a long running high profile, major research fraud at Bell Labs, a top notch research organization. This fraud fooled major scientific journals, excellent researchers, managers at Bell Labs and in general, lots of people that you might think should know better. The book brings out a many factors that contributed to perpetration of the fraud and to difficulty in detecting and stopping it. For me one of the scariest aspects is that every one of these factors I have seen personally, manifest in milder versions in my own research community. I find this very disturbing. Some of these factor seem very innocent or even positive at first glance and I have seen them shrugged off or accepted by other researchers.

For example, Jan Hendrik Schön the perpetrator of this physics fraud, was always a very agreeable person; very willing to agree with people, and tell people what they wanted to hear even if that meant altering the data. And he apparently didn't really get what science is suppose to be about, so it apparently didn't seem like such a problem to him. I had the misfortune to work with someone who while not anything close to as bright as Schön, was also happy to tell people whatever he believed they wanted to hear without worrying about the relationship to any facts. And this person also made a career (although a much less spectacular one) of being a fraudulent researcher (but unlike Schön, never got caught). My "co-worker" also didn't get what science was suppose to be about, and on one occasion gave a fabulous demo of this by running all the subjects of a experiment under the experimental condition and none as controls. He explained that this way we got more "real" data. Why wasn't my coworker fired? For many of the same reasons that Schön got away with his scam so long and so spectacularly. Political and economic pressures contribute, as do strong aversion to whistle blowing, ignoring critical reviews, and the fact that people just don't expect other researchers to commit full out fraud. And people thought both Schön and my co-worker were "nice". Read the book for more detail; how all the factors play out is fascinating and all the near misses in catching Schön makes for riveting reading.

The book sort of attempts a happy ending. The fraudster gets busted, and the (relatively) innocent collaborators are mostly okay. Bell Labs goes into decline, but it was headed that way for entirely economic reasons already, and science goes on and is not permanently damaged. However, I'm not feeling warm and fuzzy. Fields of research could be horribly damaged by this kind of scandal. I also feel concerned about the author's conclusion that science is not self correcting and requires people to be vigilant and suspicious. I am certain the author is correct about this, but I am not optimistic that my fellow researchers will rise to the task. I for one, have resolved to be an even nastier, more suspicious, picky, bad-ass reviewer than I already am, and to be VERY careful who I co-author with.

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For a fictionalized treatment of many of the same issues try "Intuition" by Allegra Goodman, which I also found to be a good read.

[Daniel R. · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book chronicles the multiple year fraud perpetrated by Jan Hendrik Schon in the scientific community concerning his research around various new materials for transistors and nanotechnology. Unfortunately I found the bias of the author that the scientific method doesn't work as stated in the introduction tainted the rest of the material. Instead of laying out the facts and letting the reader draw their own conclusions about the scope and validity of the scientific method the book at times feels like a rant against it. The mixed chronological order that some of the material is presented in makes the timeline hard to follow. While I found the overall story interesting I suspect I'd appreciate another authors take on it more.

[Calum · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5/5. An interesting read with some decent insight. Occasionally bogged down with details and an usual amount of typing errors but overall a good read.

[Alicia · Rating 4 out of 5]

I think this is the nerdiest book I have ever read. Ever. Mostly because it deals with a LOT of physics and the explanation of experiments and materials used. Organic crystals, sputtering machines, pentacene crystals and particles changing from p-type to n-type (just to name a few). And this book is about 45-50% physics explanations. But it has to be, because it's about fraud that can be carried out in the scientific world.

The author makes a good point: Science is self-regulating. If someone makes a claim and it is false, that claim will eventually be proved so due to the inability of others to duplicate it. HOWEVER, the author also points out that until that happens, millions of dollars and years of time and energy can be wasted to prove these theories that are lies. And how do you give someone back a year of their life? (The author talks about some scientists that were turned off this kind of physics study solely based on their frustration, and chagrin at not being able to duplicate the false claims of the fraudster)

I think the author wants authority and others in position of power to not push so hard for "papers" to be printed. He thinks that the fraudster felt as though this was expected of him. And so he would print a paper as "fact" and then he hoped that others would prove his theories with their work. If he wasn't so pushed to print and publish, he might not have done what he did.

Due to the fact that most people that read this book won't be physics geniuses, I think the author did a great job making the ideas and experiments easy for the layman to understand. That's why it gets 4 stars. Also because it talks about Los Alamos Labs, and UIUC where a friend is studying for her physics PhD right now as I type. I hope she's not trying to prove any of this guy's false claims!

But seriously, this is a geeky book. ENJOY, MY GEEK FRIENDS!

[John Lum · Rating 3 out of 5]

Wanted a deeper dive

I sought out the book after seeing a very engaging video on the topic on YouTube by someone named Bobby Broccoli! As a materials science major in college and someone who now does health research and publishes in scientific journals, it seemed a bit shameful that I wasn't familiar with the story of this fraud.

Unfortunately, after a fairly strong start, the book bogged down for me. I was turned off by clunky writing and the recurring lazy explanation that this guy was able to perpetrate his fraud over a period of years mostly because of his personality.

I think the reality is that there was massive failure of oversight here that deserved a much deeper dive. In my line of research, the science does not rely on any techniques so secretive that they render findings potentially unreproducible. And while I'm willing to accept that voodoo technique (or the perception thereof) played a role here, I think the author could have found additional interview subjects for a deeper explanation of how and why so many of the researchers in this field allowed themselves to be duped.

[Steph · Rating 4 out of 5]

Está bueno el chismecito 🥵. Pero sí tiene muchas faltas de ortografía. Te deja una sensación de mucho suspenso pues sabes que algo horrible va a pasar en 2002 pero los últimos meses de 2001 pasan un tanto lentos y repetitivos. Muy técnico quizás, pero se aprecia la atención al detalle. En un momento hace una analogía del fraude científico con un abuso sexual y eso me pareció muy fuera de lugar. Al final, te pone en estado de alerta y sugiere que es mejor siempre estar sospechando que confiar en que la ciencia se va a auto-corregir. Quizás se pueda tomar como moraleja el siempre ser muy cuidadoso y organizado con su trabajo, así como no tener miedo al debate, a compartir y colaborar.

[c. · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 rounding down to 3, picked this up after it was referenced in bobbybroccoli's video on schön. the topic itself is really interesting and I think reich was able to lay out the entire timeline clearly. the book probably needed like one or two more rounds of editing though; for a ~250 page book not including notes/references information is repeated too often. I understand the audience for this book is probably not very knowledgeable of technical details and scientific terminology but like, I Got It the first time it was explained, you know? with that being said I did enjoy reading it

[Megan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Bench research is full of urban legends. I have worked in five different labs in three states, and at each one I have heard some variation of the following things:
1. Someone's cousin, like, totally DIED when they didn't balance the centrifuge and the rotor, like, FLEW out of there like that weapon, I forget what it's called, that Xena threw around? In her show? The Xena Show? So, like, BALANCE the FUGE.
2. My advisor's brother worked with a grad student who totally sneezed on a plate when he was sick but didn't realize it and grew it overnight and it was actually drug-resistant aerosolized HIV and it killed the whole lab so don't sneeze on your plates and, oh yeah, work near a flame.
3. Back in my old lab there was, like, this guy who got in the habit of drinking the ethanol? Like, the 100% ethanol? But then one day he was drunk and he got the bottles mixed up and he drank the methanol and he totally DIED and EHS made us go to all this safety training after that.

So, naturally, I am filled with awe and glee to read a book that exhaustively documents one of the urban legends I have heard of: Herr Doktor Shoen, a physicist at the Mighty Bell Labs (praise be unto them and their totally bitchin' lasers), who did what we researchers only talk about in discreet whispers: He Faked His Data. FAKED.

I completely recommend this book. Part mystery, part expose, part helpful cautionary tale (mental note to self: document EVERYTHING), it's a quick and fascinating read.

[Neri · Rating 3 out of 5]

'Plastic Fantastic' offers minimal surprises if you're already acquainted with the scandal of Schön’s meteoric rise to stardom and subsequent demise. The prose lacks the gripping quality one might hope for, and the non-linear timeline adds a layer of confusion. Nevertheless, this book stands out as a noteworthy piece of investigative journalism, as the author reaches out to key players and meticulously compiles publicly available information to paint a complete picture of the greatest scam in the history of physics.

In 2023, a staggering 10,000 research papers were retracted, raising serious concerns about integrity in the scientific community. 'Plastic Fantastic' serves as a historical reminder of past mistakes, spotlighting the need for scientists to grapple with the taboo topic of research misconduct in order to elevate the reliability of scientific knowledge.

[Chris · Rating 5 out of 5]

Scientific fraud was perpetrated at Bell Labs - the personality, pressures and environment that created and enabled the fraud to spread to the pages of the august journals "Science" & "Nature" is discussed. The question is posed, "is science self-correcting?". The author provides the answer as "yes", but notes that the corrections are made by scientists that do not take science's self-correcting nature for granted. Excellent case-study in ethical conduct of scientific research.

[Lukerik · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fascinating story, really well told. An addictive read. What really interested me was Schön’s motivation. These things are complex I suppose, and we have to guess. The author has interviewed many of the people involved but not Schön really. He must have known his deception would be discovered? Surely he knew, right? There must be something going on psychologically. It takes at types, after all. He appears to have had some sort of obsession with order and conformity, wanting to make his ‘experimental’ results match with theoretical predictions. I wonder if finding himself at Bell Labs amongst Nobel Prize winners and not really knowing what he’s about he’s tried to conform by pretending to make astounding scientific advances.

I think it’s fifty years before they reveal the names considered for the Nobel Prize, so we have a while to wait before we find out of he was considered. Embarrassing for all involved. What stuck me was the cost to other scientists. People who had to abandon their PhDs because their theses were based on experiments that had never taken place. Or poor Christian Kloc, plucked from obscurity after so many years. ‘Improving’ his crystals on feedback from Schön only to discover they had just been thrown away unused.

My three pieces of advice:
1. Read the footnotes. Most of then reference Schön’s papers. So many of them note ‘This paper has been retracted’ that it becomes a running joke.
2. Take a look at Bell Labs’ investigative report. Reich briefly explains the science for a general audience. If you want the science the report’s a must. Much of it is technical but because Schön used graphs his deceptions can be followed by non-scientists.
3. There’s a good Bobby Broccoli documentary up on utube at the moment that uses this book as one of it’s sources. Worth a watch if you want to see what everyone looks like.

[Bipasha · Rating 5 out of 5]

I bumped into this book while I was searching for some research paper on organic semiconductor crystals. First time when I was doing my master thesis but I did not want to read it. But second time when I just started my PhD. Very fortunately one of my professors were at Bell Lab just after Schön was fired. I asked him while I was reading the book that how it impact there and who to blame for that. He said to me that, the MTAs become so careful after that and seems like to me that it was a quite a learning process.
Since I know all the names more or less and met few of them in person during my study time, I found them very nice person. But being a part of science I really dont like Schön. Whenever I am thinking of him, I feel like while he was doing those data manipulation and investing his mind energy to do that he would have done the experiments. What a waste of time and energy, both of him and for the scientific community! Now a days I am looking into some people scientific publication from different point of view.
The writer tried to put a fictional flavor to his writing. However, he failed misearable to follow the timeline. He mixed things up and it was hard to find out what happen after what. The positive thing about the book that you can take the book again and start reading with the same enthusiam you left before you last left it. and here you will miss one thing is like tracking the timeline. Another additional negative thing about the book is, at the end the writer was trying to finish it as soon as he can. Otherwise, it was a pleasure to read. But somewhere I felt personally, I want to know and read more and more from inside. A psychological point of view as well which is also failed here.

[Azza · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a nice and reflective read over the holidays. The story on its own is an eye-opener into many aspects and taboos of science, and the author has done a good job of tracking facts and presenting them well to the reader (even though the language does get a bit too technical in some places). I care to share a few lessons learnt below (from a larger review I submitted for an assignment at the RUG- as part of a course on Scientific Integrity I'm taking).

I do agree with the opinion that Schön’s case remains as evidence that science can and does self-correct, though sometimes it may take longer than what one would hope for. However, to ensure this, one (and the scientific community at large) is helped by both: intuition (trust, but verify), and openness.

The bigger lesson I believe though, is that of flexibility and persistence. Integrity aside, to thrive in science, one needs to know when to have doubts about him/herself, when to reach to other scientists for clarification, and when to believe that the reported methods or their interpretation have been misleading, if not outright faulty. To the same lines, persistence is about re-examining the data at hand and changing the course of action based on evidence- as opposed to early quitting. It is indeed true that many scientists terribly suffering from following the wrong lead did flourish afterward.

Finally, networking is another valuable lesson from this case. Those who have been able to pin down the Schön case were not acting in isolation. They were able to connect with like-minded peers- an often overlooked part of success in academia and scientific careers in general.

[Leonid · Rating 5 out of 5]

Книжку читал на английском с айпеда, необычный метод среди подавляющей истории аудиокниг. Саму книгу часто упоминают в моем окружении, Тоби всем советовал, Сабина с ютуба, да и в недавней конференции о воспроизводимости результатов в физике твердого тела также упоминали. Не было в виде аудио, но был айпед и мотивации потестировать его как читалку. Теперь же к книге.

Написано лаконично, хронологически, все накручивается как снежный ком и показаны персективы с разных ракурсов. Я бы даже сказал что повествование несколько академическое, но мне такое было удобно читать. История почти без эмоций, просто факты, цитаты из переписки. Кажется удалось вплести несколько сюжетов в последовательности публикаций одного человека вверх по карьерной лестнице, начиная от реформации Bell Labs и заканчиная конкуренцией издательств Nature и Science в погоне за горячими результатами.

Я могу хорошо понять экспертов и критиков, которые замечали технические неточности в графиках, но не могли допустить подлога и отсутствия исходных экспериментов. Грустно, что многие группы потеряли время в воспроизводстве результатов, но были и пару ярких моментов, где в ответ на трудности были найдены необычные решения исходной задачи. Автор задается вопросом о самокоррекции науки и демонстрирует, как далеко может зайти человек, подобравший подход к системе и играющий на ее удовлетворение. Удивляет, как долго руководство закрывало глаза на отсутствие исходных данных эксперимента.

Поучительная история о научной этике и сложностях академической карьеры. Читать было интересно, хотя иногда теряешься в ответвлениях, к финалу все накапливается, так как происходит в параллели.

[Kimik Gibson · Rating 3 out of 5]

While this book was a riveting read from start to finish, it really should have focussed more on describing the mentality and thought-process of someone like Henrick Schoen. The author appears to attempt to provide some insight into Schoen's mild-mannered amicability, naive comprehension of certain scientific fields and his literal-mindedness (a trait typical for people hailing from Germanic cultures), but ultimately fails to sculpt a more useful profile of his motives. What are the traits one should look out for when investigating academic or scientific fraud?
Reich seems to be indicting the whole of the scientific community rather than providing insights into how to resolve these issues.

The timeline of how the events unfold also tends to bounce around too much. Given the short span of years, and the many months in which each extraneous piece of data are published or pushed forward, having a non-linear timeline added to some confusion.

In spite of these issues, I would recommend this book to anyone with an interest in Science and Ethical conduct in science and academia. This book does provide a valuable exploration into how easily fraud is perpetrated and how scientists must constantly question their own assumptions.

[Andrew Balog · Rating 4 out of 5]

A still relevant expose of the who, what, where, when, why, and how of one of the greatest examples of recent scientific fraud.

This book was recommended to me by a professor at Penn, and I think it really illustrates all the small actions that are needed to combine for scientific misconduct to occur. There's relevant lessons in here for graduate students, independent researchers, and managers, and makes you realize that fraud on much smaller scales is much more likely than we probably think.

My only gripe with the book is that the author didn't fully commit to a linear, chronological story. It felt at times like it was making small jumps and re-referencing things that had already happened, which made the final few chapters a little harder to follow.

[Parker Rose · Rating 3 out of 5]

the story has a really interesting fundamental snowball like effect where every decision in isolation seems reasonable but adds up to a giant disaster

a really interesting analysis of the cultural side of the institutions is let down in part by the book ending up in a weird middle-ground of technical detail where it is too much to bog down the narrative but not enough to be truly satisfying. i just wanted more detail throughout!

[Heba · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very interesting read, specially that I heard a lot about the events as the fraud has been committed in a closely related field to my studies. It's amazing to see all the details behind the scenes of such a major scandal. A great reminder of the flawed nature of the system around science, and how even the people whose job is to be critical thinkers sometimes are not so good at it.

[Juliana Vilacha · Rating 3 out of 5]

Nice book to show how scientific misconduct starts, is continued and how to handle it. The book goes very close to the boredom cleft, because of the amount of technical terms and "characters", but it is rescued by the curiosity of knowing what happened to the young German scientist.

[Fred · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reich did a great job of distilling the science in a way that anyone could appreciate Schon's misconduct. It was a great look at how the culture at bell labs and the rest of the community allowed Schon to get away with his fraud for so long.

[Emma · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lucid, detailed, fascinating. Absolutely loved it. Wish the author had a series.

True crime for people who don’t like reading about the horrible murder of women.

[Daniel]

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[Rory H · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really liked this book! However, felt a little bit too technical/long-winded at times. I recommend BobbyBroccoli's video essay on the subject, to be honest. Still very interesting!

[Meryl Wiratmo · Rating 3 out of 5]

after watching a youtube documentary about this, i already knew the gist of the story but i still felt a sense of dread for schon

wanted to love this but it’s okay

[Davide Sciacca · Rating 5 out of 5]

How can a single man fool everyone in the scientific world

[Josh · Rating 4 out of 5]

📚 bro really said “trust me” on dozens of scientific publications and it took like 3 years for anyone to call him out on his BS.

[Dominika · Rating 2 out of 5]

Poor piece of journalism

I highly dislike the writting style, kind of stiff and too complex. Lenghty digressions doesn't bring much to the story and are just distractions / fillers without much purpose.

[David · Rating 3 out of 5]

Science writer's recap of how a young German physicist working at Bell Labs fooled his scientific community with claims of remarkable breakthroughs. For about 2 years in the early '00's, he was the rising star, publishing at a rapid clip in Science, Nature, etc. until being exposed as a fraud. Others' inability to replicate his findings, and his own vague responses to requests for more technical details of his methods that might facilitate a better understanding of the nonreplications, aroused suspicion, and then the long arm of the law really encircled him when someone discovered implausibly close repetitions of data across multiple publications. Apparently he was making stuff up at such a pace that it became simpler to reuse old fake data graphs and such than to make up new plausible ones.

No interview with the perpetrator, which detracts a lot from the effort to understand why he did it. She makes much of how various safeguards (postdoc supervisor, journal editing and peer review process....) failed, or almost failed, to protect the public [and other scientists who wasted their time trying to build upon this guy's work) by missing signs. I actually thought it unraveled pretty quickly and with a decisive conclusion. If someone's smart about covering their tracks, I could easily imagine such a fraud going on much longer.

Obviously this guy is a putz and lacks any integrity, but I must say a small percentage of my reaction was perverse admiration that he could, even with making up the data, crank out stuff that fast that people found believable. I am sure I could not get multiple papers a year in Science even if you let me skip the step of actually doing the research. Too bad he wasn't able or willing to use his smarts to do legit work.

Only thing that detracted for me from giving this a higher rating, maybe 4 stars, is that I didn't understand the science, so it became a speed reading game of scanning the page to see when the physics part would end and she would get back to what the lab chief thought of him, the audience reaction at a talk, etc. I suppose you could say that a science journalist writing a lay-audience book SHOULD be able to make it clear, but recalling my experience of 10th grade physics makes me think this disconnect may be on me.

[Josh · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book describes how Jan Hendrick Shön duped the scientific world with his supposed advances in organic semi-conductors. Schön fabricated data to support a wide variety of very interesting and groundbreaking experimental observations. Some have claimed that his eventual discovery as a fraud shows the power of science to correct itself; others have claimed that he went undetected far too long and that this raises troubling questions about science's ability to self-correct. Some interesting points were made by the book: first that the people who found Schön out were precisely those who did not believe science was self-correcting. Those who did believe in science's self correcting nature were least likely to notice Schön's duplicity. Second: Schön appeared to be giving people what they want. He was responding to very real pressures and incentives. Third: the place for corporate sponsorship of basic research was severely called into question. Schön worked at Bell Labs which was, and is, experiencing a lot of pressure over the inherent unprofitability of basic research endeavors. My own thoughts: 1) Too much prestige is granted to experimentalists who merely observe some unusual phenomena and do not explain or understand it. This is an artifact of our "first is better than thorough" system for attributing credit for scientific discoveries and patents. 2) Journals such as Science and Nature absolutely need procedural and experimental sections for their papers. No paper which does not describe in explicit detail how the results were achieved should ever be published in science. Especially not in the very prestigious journals. Nowadays. these technical sections could be published in online appendices, available for the technical reader and invisible to those who did not need such level of detail. This change alone would probably have revealed Schön's duplicity the fastest as he did not appear to have done any of his experiments and his results were completely irreproducible. The book itself was a very interesting account of exactly what happened in this affair and something that I may use in my classes somehow.

[Alex · Rating 5 out of 5]

Despite the author's somewhat uneven style, and despite the fact that some background in electronics and/or condensed matter physics certainly helps to make sense of what exactly Dr. Schoen did and what he did wrong, this story is one of the more poignant and thought-provoking bits of non-fiction I've read lately. Yes, scientists know how to deal with honest errors. They know an ambitious crank when they see one. But how could a regular guy, just trying to keep his job (as he understood it) do so much damage?

It started with a simple lie, a lie most every undergrad probably told at least once (including the author, as she confesses when discussing it.) Unfortunately, it turned out that far more than Schoen's marks were depended on that paper in an obscure journal. It landed him at Bell Labs. And so, it all clearly snowballed out of his control. It wasn't the kind of science where the correct answer is at the end of the textbook anymore. It was cutting-edge research where experiments fail for theoretically unforeseeable reasons (Like crystals crumbling from thermal stress way before their properties can be measured, as it happened when someone else tried to repeat one of his "experiments.") But he hadn't enough courage and integrity to withdraw until it was too late, and his lies grew so outrageous people started noticing. And not before it all resulted in funds and time wasted on futile research, and several careers of other scirentists seriously damaged.


And this makes you wonder: Just how many Schoens are there? What if it happened to you? Are we doing scientific research right? But answers to these questions aren't at the end of any textbook either.