As a young researcher at Lucent Technologies’ Bell Labs, Jan Hendrik Schön published a scientific paper every eight days on average. But two years ago his career crashed when an investigative panel found him guilty of scientific misconduct (see Physics Today, Physics Today 0031-9228 55 11 2002 15 https://doi.org/10.1063/1.1534995 November 2002, page 15 ).
Now Schön’s alma mater, the University of Konstanz in Germany, has revoked his PhD. In a review of Schön’s 1998 dissertation, a Konstanz commission found mistakes but no deliberate fraud. However, the university has used a law that allows a degree to be withdrawn if the holder behaves in an “unworthy” manner. “The case of Schön is the biggest misconduct scandal in physics in the last 50 years,” says physics department chair Wolfgang Dieterich. “Jan Hendrik Schön has severely damaged the credibility of science in the public eye.”
Schön is appealing the revocation of his...
