Dishonesty is a huge deal in academia.
by EricCartman (2024-01-04 13:27:49)

In reply to: It's relevant because I don't think politically-motivated  posted by FaytlND

Cannot Reply Return to Political

There are plenty of examples of academics being fired for being dishonest. Now, you may not consider plagiarism to be comparable to falsifying data on the scale of which is worse. However when publishing, they are both material violations of professional standards.

https://www.insidehighered.com/news/quick-takes/2023/07/20/florida-state-fires-professor

https://www.npr.org/2023/06/26/1184289296/harvard-professor-dishonesty-francesca-gino

https://www.woodtv.com/news/michigan/university-of-michigan-researcher-quits-after-publishing-falsified-data/

https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/breaking/ct-met-university-of-illinois-professor-fired-20181214-story.html

https://stanforddaily.com/2023/07/19/stanford-president-resigns-over-manipulated-research-will-retract-at-least-3-papers/



I'm in academia.
by FaytlND  (2024-01-04 13:44:13)     cannot delete  |  Edit  |  Return to Board  |  Ignore Poster   |   Highlight Poster  |   Cannot reply

I'm aware.

Were they all fired after appropriate institutional investigations? Or did any of them get canned because they had outside actors trying to get them fired because they didn't like their politics? Were Christopher Ruffo et al. going to stop taking shots if Harvard ran an investigation that determined she plagiarised, but that it didn't rise to the level of being removed as President?

Which is my point below on how this should be handled. It's possible that Gay committed plagiarism, but that the circumstances surrounding how it played out are problematic.
I agree it's something worth considering....
by Marine Domer  (2024-01-05 15:33:48)     cannot delete  |  Edit  |  Return to Board  |  Ignore Poster   |   Highlight Poster  |   Cannot reply

We don't want McCarthyism, but can still be concerned about Communist infiltration into our institutions. So one can consider the motivation of the whistleblower, and the severity of the matter being investigated.

It's similar to an argument many of us have had with Trumpsters, including within my own family. Yes, I have no doubt some of the investigatory vigor directed at Donald Trump is politically motivated. That should be addressed and called out. But that doesn't mean it's OK for him to do the things he does.

Cool, then we are on the same page.
by EricCartman  (2024-01-04 14:56:42)     cannot delete  |  Edit  |  Return to Board  |  Ignore Poster   |   Highlight Poster  |   Cannot reply

My wife has a PhD, so I was subjected to five years of discussions about publications and life in the lab.

Digging into someone's background to find dirt is fairly standard practice in politics. Like it or not, when you take overtly political positions, someone on the other side is going to come for you.

I do agree that the practice of digging up dirt is problematic, I just don't think that the practice is unique to what happened to Gay. It is SOP in politics (which is why most normal people don't want to run for office) and some form of vetting is usually done for executive level positions in corporate America. While the motivations of her accusers should be taken into consideration, the fact remains that the accusations are valid. Given this, the motivations don't really matter all that much.

It does seem strange that none of this was identified before. How many levels of review did her work go through prior to being finalized?
She did her PHD a while back
by AquinasDomer  (2024-01-04 15:08:35)     cannot delete  |  Edit  |  Return to Board  |  Ignore Poster   |   Highlight Poster  |   Cannot reply

I'm sure if you fed a lot of old work through modern plagiarism finding software that you'd turn up a lot of dirt on a lot of people. There's software now that's good at catching human generated data in experiments that's led to some retractions.

I'm just surprised it's not SOP to do this before hiring a president or giving someone tenure.
She graduated a few years ago.
by EricCartman  (2024-01-04 15:19:14)     cannot delete  |  Edit  |  Return to Board  |  Ignore Poster   |   Highlight Poster  |   Cannot reply

It was before the AI boom, but not that long ago.
She got her PhD in 1998
by AquinasDomer  (2024-01-04 16:11:40)     cannot delete  |  Edit  |  Return to Board  |  Ignore Poster   |   Highlight Poster  |   Cannot reply

That seems to be in the early years of software.
I thought Jacquard invented software. *
by Kbyrnes  (2024-01-05 15:37:48)     cannot delete  |  Edit  |  Return to Board  |  Ignore Poster   |   Highlight Poster  |   Cannot reply

That will be news to a lot of engineers. Just giving you a
by Grace91  (2024-01-04 17:39:07)     cannot delete  |  Edit  |  Return to Board  |  Ignore Poster   |   Highlight Poster  |   Cannot reply

hard time - I presume that you mean the early years of the type of software used to check references in papers and such.
Ha.
by EricCartman  (2024-01-04 16:59:10)     cannot delete  |  Edit  |  Return to Board  |  Ignore Poster   |   Highlight Poster  |   Cannot reply

I was talking about my wife. Sorry.
Let's include for consideration the resignation of the pres
by Barrister  (2024-01-04 13:32:11)     cannot delete  |  Edit  |  Return to Board  |  Ignore Poster   |   Highlight Poster  |   Cannot reply

of the University of South Carolina for plagiarizing a piece of a commencement speech (not generally considered an academic work) in 2021.