Lucent Reexamines Breakthrough Research

s20451 writes "Bell Labs' claims to have manufactured transistors consisting of a single-molecule switch are being met with skepticism in the scientific community, following difficulties in reproducing the experiment. Now a panel has been formed to investigate research misconduct related to not only that claim, but others regarding organic transistors." We've run several stories about the extremely tiny transistors and the innovative ways of assembling them which Lucent has been working on. A reader's summary of a subscriber-only story on Science's website suggests that there is strong evidence that some of the data in the published papers was faked.

17

[spottedkangaroo]

I bought 17 shares of NYSE:LU when it was only $22/share... I figured it couldn't go any lower.

*sigh*

Re:it's happened before

[Anonymous Coward]

And he would have gotten clean away with it too if it wasn't for those mendel-in' kids.

Lucent!

[sulli]

You've got some 'splainin' to do!

They just need to do a demo

[Waffle Iron]

It's too bad these researchers are meeting so much skepticism. I'm sure they could prove their results if they would just pull out their single-molecule transistors and show them in action. Unfortunately, I bet that somebody just dumped the molecules into a desk drawer, and now they're hopelessly lost amongs the crumbs, dust and fuzzies at the bottom of the drawer...

Re:17

[bafu]

You should buy more! After all, it can't go any lower than this... err

Re:Before the bashing begins....

[teamhasnoi]

They have invented, among MANY other things... "the transistor, the laser and wireless technologies."

Unfortunately, these have all turned out to be hoaxes. Please stop using your computer, CD player, and cellphone now.

Re:Before the bashing begins....

[Jeppe Salvesen]

Actually, good friends tell good friends when they think they're fucking up. That is why Europe and America are currently being pretty damned good friends, and we would be good friends of Lucent to tell them to straighten up.

The problem arises when the friends can't figure out which one is fucking up, and get annoyed with each other.

This news just in....

[eyegor]

New York
(API) - Lucent Technologies today admitted that in addition to errors in recent breakthrough technologies, they have found that major technologies they have been selling for years are apparently impossible. "It's the damnedest thing" said Bob Sharp who is the head of Consumer Technologies, "The whole notion of data communications over fiber is based on something someong just made up without checking to see if it was possible. We plan to cease offering these technologies until we can figure out to make it work."

Bob Dobbs, the Senior Vice-President of Internet Operations at UUNET Technologies expressed concern: "They've been charging us out the wazoo for the past few years for something that apparently doesn't even work. Our legal team is currently negotiating terms of a full refund".

In the meantime, major Internet providers are scrambling to build out their network infrastructure to support CPIP (an recent biology-based transmission protocol) in accordance with RFC1149.

Lucent stock dipped slightly at the news, but investors express full confidence that things would work out in time.

Newsbreak

[MarkusQ]

...but physicists are voicing suspicions about the figures, portions of which seem almost identical even though the labels are different. Particularly puzzling is the fact that one pair of graphs show the same pattern of "noise," which should be random.

Lucent scientists today reported the remarkable discovery that, contrary to conventional wisdom and accepted scientific theory noise isn't random. Said one researcher, "We'd expected self-similarity, due to the fractal nature of noise, but this is amazing!"

Researchers estimate that there are actually less than a dozen examples of true noise, which are repeated endlessly through out nature. Some observers have expressed concerns over the fact that most, if not all of them are already copywritten by the RIAA.

-- MarkusQ