Like other academic fields, physics polices itself through a peer review system. When a physicist submits a paper for publication, the editor sends it out to be judged by specialists in the author's field. These referees recommend publication (sometimes with revision) or rejection. The system is designed to weed out substandard work, and to improve promising submissions and make them publishable. It's supposed to keep things honest.

Peer review also governs external funding. Experimental physicists need labs to work in, and the equipment in a typical condensed-matter physics lab costs about a million dollars. Further funds are required for upkeep, and scientists and their staff need salaries. Universities maintain a lot of the country's physics labs and pay much of the cost out of tuition and endowment income, but an important part of any physics professor's job is to look for additional funding. Corporations are one source, and in cases like Bell Labs, the parent corporation pays most of the researchers' bills.

Perhaps the biggest single source of funding for scientific research is the taxpayer. The federal government dispenses about $20 billion a year to scientists and mathematicians through numerous outlets. The National Science Foundation is the most abundant source, awarding about $5 billion annually. The Department of Defense also supports many a physics lab, as do NASA and the Department of Energy. How does the government decide who gets the money? It invites physicists to Washington to read their colleagues' grant applications and make the judgments. "There's a certain amount of trust in the physicists," said Jonathan Epstein, science advisor to New Mexico Sen. Jeff Bingaman, chairman of the Senate Science and Energy Committee. The peer review system is the means by which that trust is maintained.

The Schön affair has besmirched the peer review process in physics as never before. Why didn't the peer review system catch the discrepancies in his work? A referee in a new field doesn't want to "be the bad guy on the block," says Dutch physicist Teun Klapwijk, so he generally gives the author the benefit of the doubt. But physicists did become irritated after a while, says Klapwijk, "that Schön's flurry of papers continued without increased detail, and with the same sloppiness and inconsistencies."

Some critics hold the journals responsible. The editors of Science and Nature have stoutly defended their review process in interviews with the London Times Higher Education Supplement. Karl Ziemelis, one of Nature's physical science editors, complained of scapegoating, while Donald Kennedy, who edits Science, asserted that "There is little journals can do about detecting scientific misconduct."

Maybe not, responds Nobel prize-winning physicist Philip Anderson of Princeton, but the way that Science and Nature compete for cutting-edge work "compromised the review process in this instance." These two industry-leading publications "decide for themselves what is good science -- or good-selling science," says Anderson (who is also a former Bell Labs director), and their market consciousness "encourages people to push into print with shoddy results." Such urgency would presumably lead to hasty review practices. Klapwijk, a superconductivity specialist, said that he had raised objections to a Schön paper sent to him for review, but that it was published anyway.

Klapwijk points out that the duplicated figures were in separate papers that weren't necessarily sent to the same people for vetting. But as one physicist admits, "It's hard to criticize someone else's productivity without sounding like you're full of sour grapes."

Another reason for the breakdown is the hypnotizing effect of reputation. When the names of eminent people and places appear on the top of submitted papers, says Florida physicist Hebard, "reviewers react almost unconsciously" to their prestige. "People discount reports from groups that aren't well known," adds University of Maryland physicist Richard Greene.

"Part of the reason the work was accepted," says Greene, was because Schön's coauthor and one-time supervisor Bertram Batlogg put his imprimatur (and that of Bell Labs) on it. Batlogg has been a respected superconductivity physicist for more than two decades.

Batlogg left Bell Labs for a job in Switzerland before he became a cause célèbre. He now stands accused of harboring, if not abetting, scientific fraud. In his only public pronouncement about the scandal, in a German magazine, Batlogg said, "If I'm a passenger in a car that drives through a red light, then it's not my fault."

Most other scientists feel very differently. "People don't want to hear this. They want to hear a mea culpa. Batlogg allowed this to happen," says Art Ramirez of Los Alamos. "Batlogg signed on," Hebard says. "He's a collaborator, not a casual passenger. He's been benefitting all along, riding the public wave." Adds Princeton's Sohn, "If a young driver has a learner's permit, then who's responsible for him? Batlogg was the licensed driver, and Schön was the student driver."

"If my student came to me with earth-shattering data, you wouldn't be able to pry me out of the lab," says Rice University's Douglas Natelson. "I'd be in there turning the knobs myself." Heath echoes this sentiment: "I'd sit down there to see how this is being done. I'd demand to see it several times."

Siegfried Grossman, head of a German research consortium, told a German publication that Batlogg is simply making excuses. Coauthors, Grossman said, must take full responsibility for the contents of their publications. Sohn says flatly, "I am responsible for what my students publish. If my name is going to be on a paper, I want to make sure it's right."

Batlogg recruited Schön while Schön was still a graduate student. He brought Schön into his lab. He sponsored Schön's experiments. And rather than formally withdraw any papers he might have considered suspicious, he gave many well-received talks at elite international conferences on the results. Wonders one American physicist, "What did Batlogg know and when did he know it? I don't see how he can work as a scientist any longer." Added Allen Goldman of the University of Minnesota, "Batlogg's going to take his lumps on this one."

What do we as a society expect from our scientists? We equate the scientific method with abstract inquiry, but as biologist Stephen Jay Gould was fond of pointing out, you have to be looking for something in the first place -- and your goal is bound to affect your search. Science, Gould suggested, involves a balancing act between objective methods and subjective goals.

There is one shining rule, though: no cheating. Science, like any academic field, demands scrupulous, rational honesty. "My goal may be to win a prize," says Nobel laureate Horst Stormer, "but my duty is to report what I have observed in the most objective way that I can. I say this in the strongest terms. This is what I expect from my colleagues, from my graduate students, at all levels of the field."

American intellectual culture hasn't exactly been showcasing that sort of rectitude and responsibility lately. Stephen Ambrose and Doris Kearns Goodwin, two historians who recently admitted to plagiarism in their books, have seen their individual reputations suffer for their acts, and they've tainted their discipline at the same time. Now we may have to make room for another in the public stocks. Schön, his colleagues say, is also risking the reputation of an entire field.

Physicists everywhere are relying heavily on the Beasley committee to set things right. Some hope to polish tarnished reputations. Christian Kloc, for example, is a chemist on the Schön team whose job was to supply tiny crystals for the experiments. Kloc's work appears to be unrelated to the disputed data, but as one physicist put it, "Who knows anymore?" But there is more at stake than the careers of individuals. If the accusations turn out to be true, says Cornell's Dan Ralph, "This is the biggest fraud in the history of modern physics."

McEuen, the man who helped to expose the problem, has confidence in the investigation. Beasley himself is more circumspect. Acknowledging that the physics community may be expecting more from his committee's report than its mandate suggests, Beasley says only that, "At the end of the day, we need to demonstrate that we took this very seriously and that we did a good job."

More immediately, Dan Ralph of Cornell remains concerned about the careers of younger physicists that may have been jeopardized, and by the unreliability the whole system now shows. "Checks and balances didn't work the way they should have," he said. As a result, "The fallout from this will hurt," according to Hebard. Many fear that Bell Labs will not recover. Because Schön's results are now suspect, Hebard and other scientists worry that funding for a highly promising area will now dry up. But Hebard sees the effect of the scandal extending beyond the matter of organic superconductivity. "We thought we were inviolate," Hebard said. "Scientists are easy to fool because you believe what your colleagues tell you. I would hope that the public wouldn't conflate this with Enron and WorldCom, but it is inflating the profit statement."

And when the news reaches the nation's high school physics classrooms? "Science is scientists," said William Wallace, teacher and head of the science department at Washington's Georgetown Day School. "It's a human activity." Still, Wallace concedes that "A little trust is chipped away every time something like this happens." Pointing to the "heroes I had growing up" -- like Richard Feynman, the maverick Nobel prize winner who inspired generations of physics students -- Wallace notes that now "there's an incredible amount of pressure on young and midcareer scientists. They always need to know where the next grant is coming from." The result is "careerism," not heroism or pursuit of the truth. And that leaves the teacher with a question: "In the end, if there isn't respect for scientific truth, then what have you got?"

This story has been corrected.

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