Sch? received his PhD from the University of Konstanz in 1997. In 2002 Sch? was fired from Bell Labs after his work was found to contain fraudulent data; it was the first case of fraud in the lab's history. Over a dozen of Sch?'s papers were found to contain made up or altered data, including a paper on molecular-scale transistors that was hailed as a breakthrough.
On October 31, 2002, Science withdrew 8 papers written by Sch?, and then on March 5, 2003, Nature withdrew 7 papers written by Sch?.