Schön scandal

Who is Schön scandal?

The Schön scandal concerns German physicist Jan Hendrik Schön who briefly rose to prominence after a series of apparent breakthroughs with semiconductors that were later discovered to be fraudulent. Before he was exposed, Schön had received the Otto-Klung-Weberbank Prize for Physics and the Braunschweig Prize in 2001 as well as the Outstanding Young Investigator Award of the Materials Research Society in 2002, which was later rescinded.

The scandal provoked discussion in the scientific community about the degree of responsibility of coauthors and reviewers of scientific papers. The debate centered on whether peer review, traditionally designed to find errors and determine relevance and originality of papers, should also be required to detect deliberate fraud.