Angrybk Posted January 13 Posted January 13 Didn't want to post this on the Culture Wars thread because it's all Murph-Memes now (sorry Murph, I love you). 1) I have a BA in History and MA in Security Studies/Foreign Policy from relatively fancy-pants but not Top 5 schools. "Don't copy other people's stuff/cite stuff properly, otherwise you're in deep shit" was drilled into me from freshman year. 2) All of my co-students were on board with that to a bit of an obsessive degree -- "should we cite that George Washington was the first President", etc. 3) The Claudine Gay/Neri Oxman stuff was obviously people with agendas focusing on their work, but they found a lot of wrongdoing that would have gotten me shit-canned as an MA student and spanked a lot as an undergrad.
Ivanhoe Posted January 13 Posted January 13 If you compare cumulative salaries of Carol Swain and Claudine Gay over the last 25 years, definitely not a victimless crime. Errors in formatting quotations are unfortunate but happen, and are mostly sins on the shoulders of the dissertation committee. Repeatedly and overtly copypasta-ing with a few word changes, at the doctoral level, is completely unacceptable. Gay's doctorate should be nullified. Harvard's rep is permanently damaged; firstly from hiring Gay into leadership positions, secondly for dissembling.
BansheeOne Posted January 13 Posted January 13 Those ladies certainly can't become German cabinet ministers now, but may be fit to be Berlin mayor. 😄 (Ever since former defense minister Karl Theodor zu Guttenberg had to resign over accusations of plagiarism in his doctoral thesis, hunting for those has become a sort of obsessive sport here.)
Ssnake Posted January 13 Posted January 13 ...and I'm perfectly fine with that, even if the selective dissemination of politicians rather than anyone who rose to prominence is a bit unfair. But you have to have public hangings, pour encourager les autres.
BansheeOne Posted January 13 Posted January 13 In fairness, artists are accused of plagiarism all the time, though that's typically over monetary interests and mostly doesn't hurt their careers. In German politics you could note that it's predominantly conservatives being targeted, which may be in part because they tend to decorate themselves with academic titles more. Franziska Giffey was a prominent exception of an SPD minister, though as mentioned above, she still had a soft landing as governing mayor of Berlin before being voted out in last year's repeat election.
Rick Posted January 13 Posted January 13 (edited) I have never been a university student. From my limited perspective it appears one can get a mostly useless degree, ie a degree that you cannot earn a "living wage" and burdens you with a near perpetual student loan payoff, in about any subject and claim you "discovered" or "re-discovered" something in some useless field of study that does nothing to contribute to your knowledge or the benefit of society. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WGpcsYr-mOU Edited January 13 by Rick
Ssnake Posted January 13 Posted January 13 Well, the student loan aspect is a very American perspective on this. Getting a degree is not nearly as expensive in Germany, but of course you could still waste years with "Gender studies" or determining the radiological properties of unicorn farts. Still, degrees are career enhancers and plagiarism not only undermines credibility of science in general, getting ahead of others because you faked your degree has precisely those other candidates as victims. Zu Guttenberg's case was special insofar as he didn't fake his own dissertation, but had it faked by some ghostwriter. Which, of course, he couldn't admit because that would have been a felony. So he simply couldn't explain all these citation errors. Despite the well-earned public humiliation and embarrassment, he actually got away lightly. Getting a degree is hard, difficult work - and should be.
Harold Jones Posted January 13 Posted January 13 1 hour ago, Ssnake said: ...Getting a degree is hard, difficult work - and should be. Here in the states at least with the exception of STEM degrees that isn't necessarily true, grade inflation and a proliferation of 'studies' degrees has lowered the signaling value of a college degree. A growing number of employers are removing degree requirements from their job descriptions because of this.
TonyE Posted January 13 Posted January 13 4 hours ago, BansheeOne said: Those ladies certainly can't become German cabinet ministers now, but may be fit to be Berlin mayor. 😄 (Ever since former defense minister Karl Theodor Maria Nikolaus Johann Jacob Philipp Franz Joseph Sylvester Buhl-Freiherr von und zu Guttenberg had to resign over accusations of plagiarism in his doctoral thesis, hunting for those has become a sort of obsessive sport here.) There, fixed it.🧐👍
Steven P Allen Posted January 13 Posted January 13 Over my career, I have come down as hard as possible on student plagiarism. Distinguishing between ignorance, error, and intent is not really that hard. Modern tools are helpful, but an experienced prof can smell plagiarism. Ignorance needs to be taught and slapped on the wrist. Error needs to be retaught and spanked. Intent needs to be crucified. I have done all three, fortunately the third not so often.
Angrybk Posted January 13 Author Posted January 13 6 hours ago, Steven P Allen said: Over my career, I have come down as hard as possible on student plagiarism. Distinguishing between ignorance, error, and intent is not really that hard. Modern tools are helpful, but an experienced prof can smell plagiarism. Ignorance needs to be taught and slapped on the wrist. Error needs to be retaught and spanked. Intent needs to be crucified. I have done all three, fortunately the third not so often. And not plagiarizing isn't particularly difficult; you can get taught the basics in an hour or less and it doesn't take that much time to add footnotes etc. I'll always be confused why anybody would do it, esp. since the whole point of academic writing is that you get to put down your _own_ thoughts.
Angrybk Posted January 13 Author Posted January 13 8 hours ago, Harold Jones said: Here in the states at least with the exception of STEM degrees that isn't necessarily true, grade inflation and a proliferation of 'studies' degrees has lowered the signaling value of a college degree. A growing number of employers are removing degree requirements from their job descriptions because of this. I don't think that a college degree should be a requirement for the vast majority of jobs, although I guess it shows that at least you have your sh*t together enough to spend four years studying stuff. Interestingly the field I work in (kinda sorta computer security) is intellectually challenging, pays well, etc. and I'm a bit of an outlier in that I have two fancy-pants degrees. Most people I've worked with over the 20 years I've spent in the field (many of whom are a lot better than me) have DeVry-level degrees.
Ivanhoe Posted January 14 Posted January 14 2 hours ago, Angrybk said: And not plagiarizing isn't particularly difficult; you can get taught the basics in an hour or less and it doesn't take that much time to add footnotes etc. I'll always be confused why anybody would do it, esp. since the whole point of academic writing is that you get to put down your _own_ thoughts. Credentionalism being what it is, many folks only want the resume fodder. And cheating is pervasive in the Ivies (recall Ted Kennedy). When I was looking into getting an MBA, I stumbled across a book that provided an insider's view of the MBA experience at the top B-schools. Dishonesty on applications was and is apparently rampant. I recall one anecdote in the book where a student described putting "plant manager" on his application. What he actually did on that job was water plants in the nursery section of a home improvement store. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/survey-42-percent-harvards-incoming-freshman-class-cheated-homework-flna8c11095144 https://www.forbes.com/sites/dereknewton/2019/03/15/the-real-admissions-cheating-scandal-lesson-elite-schools-matter/?sh=4e936c8b5a87 Quote Admissions counselors have told me they know admissions essays are faked or ghost-written and that grades and academic plaudits can be inflated, exaggerated or outright fabricated. I cannot tell you how many times I’ve been approached to write admissions materials for money. And yet admissions offices, for the most part, spend no time investigating even the more obvious frauds because they simply aren’t equipped to do so, they lack the time, funding and expertise to dig beyond the page.
Ssnake Posted January 14 Posted January 14 3 hours ago, Angrybk said: And not plagiarizing isn't particularly difficult; ... the whole point of academic writing is that you get to put down your _own_ thoughts. Some people have no original thoughts.
Ssnake Posted January 14 Posted January 14 51 minutes ago, Ivanhoe said: ... I stumbled across a book that provided an insider's view of the MBA experience at the top B-schools. Why read a book when you can learn everything in under thirteen minutes?
Harold Jones Posted January 14 Posted January 14 14 hours ago, Angrybk said: I don't think that a college degree should be a requirement for the vast majority of jobs, although I guess it shows that at least you have your sh*t together enough to spend four years studying stuff. I think it became a requirement because HR departments were looking for easily quantifiable criteria to filter applicants. Once online job boards took off an employer could get several thousand applicants within hours of posting a job so they started looking for anything that let them automate winnowing that number. Now there are screening systems that reject any resume that doesn't match some or all of the key words from the job description. This has led to a 'hack' where people (or AI assistants) put lists of keywords from the JD into the footer of the resume in microscopic white font visible to the screening software but not to humans. Quote Interestingly the field I work in (kinda sorta computer security) is intellectually challenging, pays well, etc. and I'm a bit of an outlier in that I have two fancy-pants degrees. Most people I've worked with over the 20 years I've spent in the field (many of whom are a lot better than me) have DeVry-level degrees. I think a lot of the tech fields have that mix, they are new enough that there are lots of opportunities for people with the right mindset and drive to learn it from the ground up and grow with the tech.
Ivanhoe Posted February 2 Posted February 2 https://freebeacon.com/campus/not-just-claudine-gay-harvards-chief-diversity-officer-plagiarized-and-claimed-credit-for-husbands-work-complaint-alleges/ Quote It's not just Claudine Gay. Harvard University's chief diversity and inclusion officer, Sherri Ann Charleston, appears to have plagiarized extensively in her academic work, lifting large portions of text without quotation marks and even taking credit for a study done by another scholar—her own husband—according to a complaint filed with the university on Monday and a Washington Free Beacon analysis. The complaint makes 40 allegations of plagiarism that span the entirety of Charleston's thin publication record. In her 2009 dissertation, submitted to the University of Michigan, Charleston quotes or paraphrases nearly a dozen scholars without proper attribution, the complaint alleges. And in her sole peer-reviewed journal article—coauthored with her husband, LaVar Charleston, in 2014—the couple recycle much of a 2012 study published by LaVar Charleston, the deputy vice chancellor for diversity and inclusion at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, framing the old material as new research. I guess one could say she is an expert in inclusion (of other peoples' work).
jmsaari Posted February 3 Posted February 3 On 1/14/2024 at 2:50 AM, Ssnake said: Some people have no original thoughts. And many more are careful when, where & how to voice them in the current atmosphere.
Ivanhoe Posted February 5 Posted February 5 Ouch! https://www.city-journal.org/article/claudine-gays-data-problem Quote Claudine Gay does research that is simultaneously plagiarized, p-hacked, and based on an obviously flawed approach, and gets promoted to president of Harvard. Meanwhile, non-woke white male researchers, such as Bo Winegard, do meticulous research and are fired. Data nerds continue to dissect Gay's work, and its glorious.
Ivanhoe Posted February 15 Posted February 15 https://www.campusreform.org/article/another-harvard-employee-accused-of-plagiarism-especially-worrisome/24850 Quote A Harvard Extension School employee was accused of plagiarism in a 42-count anonymous complaint submitted to administrators, according to a report. In the complaint, Harvard Extension School administrator Shirley R. Greene was accused of plagiarizing 42 times in her 2008 dissertation at the University of Michigan, according to the Harvard Crimson. According to the report, Greene’s dissertation compares her summary of Jean Kim’s theory of Asian American ethnic identity formation along with a summary that was similar to Janelle Lee Woo’s 2004 Ph.D. dissertation, but Greene didn’t cite Woo. All this could have easily been avoided, had Harvard, UPenn, and MIT simply done a better job of hiding their anti-Semitism. Too late now, blood is in the water and the sharks are converging.
Murph Posted February 22 Posted February 22 I agree does any minority academic at Harvard actually do any REAL research that is not stolen from some other academic, or are they just part of the big Liberal circle jerk?
Ivanhoe Posted March 21 Posted March 21 https://christopherrufo.com/p/copy-and-paste Quote Cross’s 2019 dissertation, “The Color, Class, and Context of Family Structure and Its Association with Children’s Educational Performance,” won a slate of awards, including the American Sociological Association Dissertation Award and the ProQuest Distinguished Dissertation Award, and helped catapult her onto the Harvard faculty. According to a new complaint filed with Harvard’s office of research integrity, however, Cross’s work is compromised by multiple instances of plagiarism, including “verbatim plagiarism, mosaic plagiarism, uncited paraphrasing, and uncited quotations from other sources.”
Murph Posted March 27 Posted March 27 Another leftist libtard academic. You almost wonder if they have ANY ethics?
Ivanhoe Posted March 28 Posted March 28 https://www.drvinayprasad.com/p/fraud-and-retraction-at-dana-farber Quote What strikes me is that the names which appear on the most papers are NOT THE JUNIOR PEOPLE, but the PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATORS of the laboratories! How can the PIs claim they are ignorant to the fraud if they are the commonality among the bulk of the papers? How can you say a junior person did it, when there is no junior person on all the papers? You either have to postulate a series of junior people who photoshopped, or… Will there be any punishment for this? I doubt it. I fear Harvard is already trying to sweep this under the rug. Keep in mind, Harvard is the same institution that threatened the NYPost with litigation for documenting the obvious plagiarism of the president. That president had 11 papers, and half had plagarism! Its hard to believe they will take this current matter seriously.
Recommended Posts
Create an account or sign in to comment
You need to be a member in order to leave a comment
Create an account
Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!
Register a new accountSign in
Already have an account? Sign in here.
Sign In Now