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I now present a case of fabrication and fraud, from my area of expertise, that was investigated in
great detail. This case drew a lot of attention, and the penalties that followed included ex-post-facto
penalties, and can be termed as providing ‘closure’.

During the period 2000-2002 there were nine papers in Science, and seven in Nature, from the Bell
Labs, Lucent Technologies with J.H. Schön as the first author. During this period there were in all at
least twenty-eight papers published, with him as the first author, in various high visibility journals.
These papers enthralled condensed-matter physicists because they reported organic materials
behaving as superconductors, as lasers, as Josephson junctions, and as single-molecule transistors.
Popular physics magazines ran news stories reflecting the enthusiasm amongst researchers in the area,
but the experimental techniques described were at the cutting edge. As other research groups were
unable to reproduce the results, it was believed that maybe the techniques were too difficult to master.
But soon there were rumbles of disbelief and questions were raised on inconsistencies in the limited
data reported in the papers. There were similarities in the figures, graphs, or plots, shown for different
materials. Very similar data was noticed as attributed to different materials in different papers. These
led to murmurs that the data being shown in some of these papers was not as it was claimed to be.
Accusations of falsification of data resulted.

Researchers also noticed a high level of precision in the data in some papers, with signal-to-noise
being uncharacteristically high. What was more intriguing that the background noise spectrum, in
different plots in different papers, appeared identical. This led to accusations of fabrication of data.
Soon Bell Labs formed a committee to investigate, “the possibility of scientific misconduct”, and the
report of the Committee is now in public domain. The report is very educative about the norms that
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must be followed in the compilation and archiving of experimental data, but that is beyond the scope
of this chapter. The penalties imposed went beyond retraction of all these 28 papers; the papers were
all listed as withdrawn. Schön appointment at Bell Labs was discontinued. He had received instant
recognition and prizes for his contributions during this period. The prizes awarded based on these
publications were later rescinded. Schön had received his Ph.D. from the University of Konstanz in 1997.
The University of Konstanz revoked Schön’s doctoral degree in June 2004, even though none of the
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research reported there had been questioned.

Since the university investigation concluded that Schön had not committed misconduct while at the
university, Schön appealed in court against the revocation of his degree. The University order was
overturned, but there were appeals and it went to three higher courts! But unlike the Panjab University
case, all three courts ruled in favour of his degree being revoked; the highest court noted that Schön
could still find work as a physicist without a Ph.D. title! Therefore, in addition to penalties being
imposed through ex post facto laws that may aggravate the offence by bringing it into a more severe
category than it was in when it was committed, the revocation of the Ph.D. title definitely asserted that
misdemeanours can even affect past events during which no offences may have been committed!

A much bigger fallout of this episode was on the responsibility of the co-authors. While all of Schön’s
co-authors were completely exonerated of scientific misconduct, the committee was bothered by
the absence of widely-accepted standards of behaviour, or of the responsibilities of co-authors. The
latter has been corrected subsequently by some publishers who insist on an explicit statement on the
role played by each authors in the research process. This has, inter alia, also reduced the presence of
honorary authors!

The committee considered the responsibilities of co-authors, specifically in preventing fabrication and
falsification, as follows:

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