this seems pretty unusual to me, bwthdik...
"July 9, 2002
Lucent Panel Broadens Inquiry to Superconductor Papers
By KENNETH CHANG
[http://www.nytimes.com/2002/07/09/science/physical/09BELL.html]
A panel investigating possible scientific fraud at Lucent Technologies' Bell Labs has broadened the range and scope of its inquiry to include at least four papers on novel superconductivity experiments.
Editors at Nature, the journal that published the papers, were told of the decision on June 24. "Bell Labs called and alerted us the three superconductivity ones were also subject to the investigation," said Karl Ziemelis, an editor at Nature.
The panel is also examining at least one superconductivity article in the journal Science.
In May, Bell Labs set up the independent panel, led by Dr. Malcolm R. Beasley, a professor of applied physics at Stanford University, after outside scientists had noticed that identical graphs had appeared in several Bell Labs papers, even though they supposedly described different experiments.
The lead author of the three superconductivity papers, like the articles questioned earlier, is Dr. J. Hendrik Schön, a scientist at Bell Labs in Murray Hill, N.J., who is the focus of the investigation. Dr. Bertram Batlogg, a former director of solid state physics research at Bell Labs and now a professor at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, is an author of two of the papers. Dr. Batlogg is also an author of several of the other papers, which described transistors and other electronic devices built out of organic molecules.
Dr. Schön declined to comment. Dr. Batlogg has not returned calls.
The investigation has put in limbo an offer to Dr. Schön by the Max Planck Institute for Solid State Research in Stuttgart, Germany, to become director of one of its departments. The institute sent Dr. Schön a letter of intent in March, before the investigation started.
"This is at the moment canceled, and we wait for news to come from Bell Labs," said Dr. Bernd Wirsing, a spokesman for the Max Planck Society, the umbrella organization that runs the institute. "He has not yet received a contract from the Max Planck Society."
In the superconductivity articles, published in 2000 and last year, Dr. Schön and other Bell Labs researchers described how they had varied the behavior of several superconductors — materials able to carry electrical current with almost no resistance — by applying an electric field to add or remove electrons.
Scientists were initially excited about the technique, because it promised to allow them to study superconductors in more careful detail than had been possible. But other researchers had not been able to duplicate the experiments.
The Bell Labs scientists published one paper about calcium copper oxide, an exotic high-temperature superconductor that is not well understood, and another about soccer-ball-shaped molecules known as buckyballs that act like traditional superconductors.
"The mechanisms for superconductivity in the two cases are obviously different," said Dr. Philip W. Anderson, a professor of physics at Princeton University.
Scientists noticed that the curves that described how the superconducting temperature changed with the number of electrons added or removed were "surprisingly similar," Dr. Anderson said.
"If the data came up that way," he said, "you would notice it and be it a little amazed. But it wouldn't be impossible. But when there's suspicions, this is another amazing coincidence, if you like."
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