The recent scandals in high-profile physics research have done nothing to improve the image of science

There is a joke about an accountant and a physicist arriving in heaven at the same time. The physicist is given a bicycle and the key to a basic house in a distant, unfashionable part of heaven. As he cycles off he looks over his shoulder and sees the accountant being led to a chauffeur-driven limousine that will take him to the finest accommodation that heaven has to offer. The physicist then cycles back to the gates of heaven to ask Saint Peter why the accountant is being treated so well. “Well”, says Saint Peter, “we’ve had lots of physicists in heaven before – but he is the first accountant.”

Once upon a time the joke was funny, and recent events at Enron and WorldCom have done nothing to change that. But physics has faced its own series of investigations and scandals over the past few months, and the joke is not funny anymore. In June we reported that Bell Labs, one of the most famous physics establishments in the world, had set up a panel to investigate suspicions of data fabrication by one of its employees (see Molecular electronics claims called into question and Physics World June p5 and p15, print version).

Now an equally prestigious laboratory, the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California, has fired one of its staff after an internal investigation found that data purporting to show the discovery of a new element with an atomic number of 118 had been fabricated (see Element 118 disappears two years after it was discovered and page 7 of print version). The Berkeley lab announced last year that it was withdrawing its claim to have discovered element 118, but news of the firing only became public when the official retraction was published last month.

What both these episodes have in common – beyond the reputations of the labs involved – is that the research in question had an extremely high profile. The Berkeley group had reported the creation of what would have been the heaviest element ever, while the physicist at Bell Labs was making a seemingly endless series of breakthroughs with organic materials. In both cases the doubts only came to light when other groups were unable to reproduce the results.

As experiments that do not make headlines are less likely to be repeated, it is impossible to say whether fabrication is extremely rare – although one example is one too many – or if it is more widespread. The physics community has tended to be complacent about scientific misconduct. However, it only took a few widely reported examples of misconduct in the life sciences for physicists to think that it was not their problem. The news from Berkeley confirms that this is no longer the case.

Meanwhile a good old-fashioned argument is developing in the world of optics about materials with unusual electromagnetic properties (see Doubt cast on ‘left-handed’ materials and pages 8-9, print version). There is no suggestion of any misconduct whatsoever, but the two sides certainly do not see eye to eye. Researchers in San Diego and at Imperial College believe that they have created a material with a negative refractive index and that such a material could, in theory, be used to make a “perfect lens”. Physicists in Madrid and at the University of Texas disagree: both the theory and the interpretation of the experiment are wrong, they argue. A flurry of critical comments and electronic preprints has ensued. Both sides cannot be right – although both could be wrong – but the argument, however unseemly, is preferable to the sorry tale of element 118.

Letter to the editor: Debate is seemly

The editorial in the August 2002 issue of Physics World described the on-going debate about materials with negative refractive indices and perfect lenses. Under the headline “Reputations at risk” the article describes how a group of scientists, which includes myself, is embroiled in “an unseemly argument”. This comment appears under several paragraphs describing the scandalous misconduct at Lucent. The Web version of the article also contains the following standfirst: “The recent scandals in high-profile physics research have done nothing to improve the image of science.”
Recent work by my colleagues at the University of California at San Diego and myself has attracted a great deal of attention and stimulated many papers, the bulk of which agree with our work. At the last count some 80 papers were published on this subject in the year 2002. There have been two critical papers in Physical Review Letters, and we have responded to both of these with Comments. I would describe this as a professional debate between scientists, and the published record of debate has been serious and considered. Disagreement is the stuff of scientific life and is a thoroughly respectable activity. It must be conducted in a seemly way and, so far as I am concerned, it has been.
John Pendry
Imperial College, London

Editor’s note The article “Reputations at risk” described an ongoing debate about materials with unusual electromagnetic properties as “unseemly”. The use of the word unseemly in an article that also discussed scientific misconduct was unfortunate and is regretted. The published debate has indeed been conducted in a seemly manner and, as the article made clear, there was “no suggestion of any misconduct whatsoever in this debate.”