This was a story I think I missed at the time (late 2001) because our family was moving from Berkeley to Oregon and I was trying to re-configure the UofO probe lab which was in a bit of a mess, because the previous staff person had left about 6 months prior and the students, well you know.
But recently I came across a book (Plastic Fantastic) in my office bookshelf which I probably bought some time later when I started teaching a freshmen seminar on critical thinking called "Weird Science". Well I finally got around to reading it and it's an absolutely fascinating (true) story about one of the biggest cases of scientific fraud, and in the physical sciences!
I mean, we all know about various medical science frauds (e.g., cloning, vaccine toxicity) but in the physical sciences? And this was at Bell (Lucent) Labs, a highly regarded research institution.
Anyway, here is a link to the wiki page on the scandal:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sch%C3%B6n_scandalThe book (Plastic Fantastic) is very much worth a read. Head spinning how he got away with the deceit for so long.