BobbyBroccoli
6 HN recommenders · recommended in 6 months, 2022–2023
42:30 · 4.2M views · Aug 6, 2020
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.
HN repeatedly recommends the series as a gripping account of scientific fraud, and cites it whenever research misconduct comes up.
9 comments from Hacker News
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
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]
Schön got away with it for years. One of my favorite video essays is a long exploration of that case: this video
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
>Most research is flawed or useless, Also the research could be downright fraudulent. A very interesting case is the Schön scandal, involving organic semiconductors. [LINK] There is an engrossing set of videos about it: this video