Scientific integrity and the ethics of 'utter honesty'
The best autopsy of Jan Hendrik Schon case is &quot;<i>Plastic Fantastic: How the Biggest Fraud in Physics Shook the Scientific World</i> (2009)&quot;, by Eugenie Samuel Reich.  It explains a lot of the questions asked in this article, such as &quot;how 16 fraudulent papers could have made it through the peer review process of the two premier science journals in the world&quot;.<p>The thing about the Schon case is this: he might have got away with all of it if it had turned out that such electronic devices made with organic plastic crytals had actually been capable of being created with that era&#x27;s technology.  Imagine a scientist who guesses about the outcome of a particular experiment, but just isn&#x27;t good enough to get the data - so they engage in fabrication of data, so that they can be &#x27;first to publish&#x27; and hence get the credit.  Others come along with more skill and essentially replicate the fraudulent results. The original fraudster gets the credit for the discovery.<p>The actual practical result of that case, by the way, was that now anyone publishing in that field has to submit electron microscopy images with their report as proof that they actually did fabricate some kind of device, rather than just inventing it all.  Schon didn&#x27;t do that, but now everyone has to.  That&#x27;s progress, at least.<p>As far as this quote: <i>&quot;Sometimes doing the right thing may mean not being completely honest in a larger social setting in order to prevent a great harm.&quot;</i><p>How does that work out in practice if you&#x27;re a researcher in an academic department and discover your colleague down the hall is fabricating data in this manner?  Most won&#x27;t say a word, and their rationale is that (1) they&#x27;ll be in the position of being the whistleblower, with all that entails, and (2) the fallout will make their institution look really bad and might hurt the ability of other researchers in that department to get grants.  So it&#x27;s not implausible that everyone in the department knows of the fraud, but they ignore it for years in the name of &#x27;being good colleagues.&#x27;