The discussion mainly concerned whether peer review, traditionally designed to find errors and determine relevance and originality of articles, should also be required to detect deliberate fraud.
During late 1997, he was hired by Bell Labs, where he worked on electronics in which conventional semiconducting elements (such as silicon) were replaced by crystalline organic (meaning carbon-based) materials.
His measurements in most cases confirmed various theoretical predictions, notably that the organic materials could be made to display superconductivity or be used in lasers.
The findings were published in prominent scientific publications, including the journals Science and Nature, and gained worldwide attention.
A major element of Schön's work claimed that successful observation of various physical phenomena in organic materials was dependent on the transistor setup.
Specifically, Schön claimed to use a thin layer of aluminium oxide which he incorporated into his transistors using laboratory facilities at the University of Konstanz.
However, while the equipment and materials used were common in laboratories all over the world, none succeeded in preparing aluminium oxide layers of similar quality to the ones claimed by Schön.
[5] Hsu and Loo had attempted initial experiments to gather evidence for their patent but relied on the scientific outcomes of Schön's work.
More research by McEuen, Sohn, Loo, and other physicists revealed a number of examples of duplicate data in Schön's work.
[7] The committee obtained information from all of Schön's coauthors and interviewed the three principal ones (Zhenan Bao, Bertram Batlogg and Christian Kloc).
Additionally, all of his experimental samples, working, and non-working devices had either been discarded or damaged beyond repair, so the committee was unable to conduct examinations of those.
[7] This caused widespread debate[9] in the scientific community on how the blame for misconduct should be distributed among co-authors, particularly when they share a significant part of the credit.
[3] Even before the allegations had become public, several research groups had tried to reproduce most of his spectacular results with respect to the topic of the physics of organic molecular materials, without success.
[6][10] In June 2004 the University of Konstanz issued a press release stating that Schön's doctoral degree had been revoked due to "dishonourable conduct".