YouTube: The man who almost faked his way to a Nobel Prize

Once in a while, the YouTube algorithm would suggest an awesome video, and this is one of these times. The series about Jan Hendrik Schön from BobbyBroccoli is just awesome. The amount of research and work put into these videos are just mind-boggling. And the data visualisation used here is great (reminiscent of the Dorktown videos from Secret Base).

Jan Hendrik Schön was thought to be the next superstar scientist. He rose quickly through the scientific ranks, worked at the famed Bell Labs, and released a ridiculous amount of scientific publications. He claimed to observe well-known scientific phenomena on a new potential material for semiconductor: plastics. Schön betted that other scientists would perform additional experiments and confirm his findings. Unfortunately, those findings couldn't be replicated and it was soon obvious that he committed fraud.

I clicked on the first video just out of curiosity because of the clickbaity title and the high number of views. I thought that I would just watch the first 5 minutes to find out what the story is about, but I just couldn't stop watching and went through all 3 videos straight away. The scandal is just so outrageous but somehow inevitable. Enjoy!