Zero Gravity

Fabricate

These song lyrics concern the fate of Jan Hendrik Schön, who was considered a rising star in physics until it emerged that he had fabricated much of his data. The following should be sung to the tune of Cabaret!

What good is working alone in your lab
Don’t leave results to fate
Come and just Fabricate, young Schön
Come and just Fabricate

Or wipe all your fame away
Come and just Fabricate, young Schön
Come and just Fabricate

I knew a Prof with honesty and stature
Worked day and night but never got in Nature
She wasn’t what you’d call a CV power
With no Science pubs, her salary soon went sour.
When she lost her grants the big-shots came to snicker
“Well, compared to Schön, the NSF won’t pick her”
 
But when we heard of young Schön’s evil deeds?
She was the happiest Prof, you’d ever seen

Don’t make the journals wait
Come and just Fabricate, young Schön
Come and just Fabricate

Come fudge the lines
Draw points by hand
Get Nature pubs, start celebrating
Right this way, your Nobel’s waiting

And as for me, and as for me,
I made my mind up, with Science and Nature
To publish there, does not raise stature
Start by admitting inventing the points
Isn’t worth accolades
You lose when you Fabricate, young Schön
You lose when you Fabricate, young Schön
And we all lose, when you Fabricate!

Lyrics by Laura Greene. Printed with the author’s permission