A cold eye on a hot young physicist

Baltimore Sun ^ | June 9, 2002 | Michael Stroh

[Cincinatus' Wife]

In four short years Jan Hendrik Schon went from scientific nobody to one of the most talked-about young physicists in the world. His competitors had any number of reasons to be impressed.

There was his jump from a little-known German university to Bell Labs in New Jersey, one of the most storied research centers in the world. There was his seemingly tireless ability to crank out scientific papers - 76 with his name since 2000, a pace that leaves many physicists in awe.

[maxwell]

Graphs in several of Schon's papers looked oddly similar though they illustrated very different experiments.

Sometimes very different experiments can have similar results.

/experience

[weikel]

I've never understood how cold fusion could be real though fusion produces energy and much of that would come out as heat.

[dr_lew]

Freedom, Wealth, and Peace, Francis W. Porretto Visit the Palace Of Reason: http://palaceofreason.com

Well, at least you're not out robbing liquor stores :-)

[mj1234]

Sorry it took so long for me to respond,--First the deception of falsified data can be found at several sites-- Anxietycenter.com...SEPP.org....OISM.org--thousands of scientisits claiming the goverment is not following scientific anlysis of data. #2 Antartica, that data has been gleaned from NOAA's own raw research--that antartica's mean temperature has fallen...since global warming supposedly has occrurred (all over the planet) except in Antartica???!! How does any scientist not ask for more data and more observations before PROCLAIMING global warming. #3 NASA could not explain why their weather satelites showed a total temperature drop (over a 20 year span of data recording) They have since publicly stated that satellites were wobbling--not in perfect geosynch orbit- guess what most scientists would do - START overwith this experiment!!--NOT NASA (maybe the budget wasn't there)- they FUDGED temperature observation with current identified satellite wobble?! Voila they assume some temp. increase (within acceptable parameters)!How can anyone argue with this logic--no one has argued...keep repeating after me ....don't question,don't ask

[eno_]

The Milliken thing is especially ironic since he probably discovered particles with fractional charge. In high school I did the Milliken experiment in a physics lab and found what appeared to be fractional charges. We used microscopic plastic spheres, which gave a much larger data set. It was humorous. At the time this was "unknown" and the results we attributed to a sphere with higher physical resistence to the medium, etc.

The moral: trust yourself more, the experts less.

[Lonesome in Massachussets]

Sometimes very different experiments can have similar results.

I think I said that. My point was that if he did cheat he was massively incompetent or lazy or arrogant, since it's so easy to avoid detection by this means. If he didn't cheat his results should be repeatable. I still think his future is peddling climate models to the EPA, dealing seconds in Kansas railroad hotels and writing screeds against Nuclear Power. NYT Standing Head:

NUCLEAR POWER VERY BAD Acclaimed Physicists Says
Dr. Schon, who was forced out of his job at Bell Labs after he went public with views on nuclear power, says that nuclear power is very bad and that if only everyone would listen to him we'd all be alright.

Dumb sumbitch's problem was he got caught before he had tenure.

[Lonesome in Massachussets]

Alright, let's. Do you have evidence that data have been faked?

I wouldn't say faked, but misused. The models don't seem to predict the past very well, so why should public policy be based on their predictions of the future? Also, the methodology seems ad hoc, if sensor data doesn't support the theory, discount the sensors. Etc.

There is simply no way to tell what the future holds. Until the models can predict (postdict?) the past and the advocates indulge in a little more intellectual honesty, I'll remain in the camp of the skeptics. Any sincere and intellectually honest advocates of global warming are harmed by the fervor with which their meagre results are peddled by the Luddite Left (Gorism) and the dismissive tone they themselves assume towards contary evidence and credible dissent within the scientific community.