Nerd Scandal: Plagiarism and Crossword Puzzles

Well, well, well ...

Great Moments in Research: Peer Review Fraud

I'm resurrecting the sarcastic "Great Moments in Research" tag to report yet another massive scandal in scientific research publication.  Ugh:

In August 2015, the publisher Springer retracted 64 articles from 10 different subscription journals “after editorial checks spotted fake email addresses, and subsequent internal investigations uncovered fabricated peer review reports,” according to a statement on their website. The retractions came only months after BioMed Central, an open-access publisher also owned by Springer, retracted 43 articles for the same reason. 

“This is officially becoming a trend,” Alison McCook wrote on the blog Retraction Watch, referring to the increasing number of retractions due to fabricated peer reviews. Since it was first reported 3 years ago, when South Korean researcher Hyung-in Moon admitted to having invented e-mail addresses so that he could provide “peer reviews” of his own manuscripts, more than 250 articles have been retracted because of fake reviews — about 15% of the total number of retractions.

A Law Professor Considers the University of Oklahoma Speech Kerfuffle

The umpteenth reminder: free speech also protects speech that you don't like.

Here's a bit of it:

Though some ignorant people argue that "hate speech" is unprotected under the First Amendment, that is not the law and never has been. Nor should it be. The test of our commitment to free expression, after all, isn't our willingness to tolerate speech that everyone likes. If you only support free speech for ideas you agree with, you're a hack. If you only support free speech for ideas that everyone agrees with, you're a coward. 

Nerds Behaving Badly: Harvard Business School Prof Threatens Legal Action Over $4

Seriously?

Nerd News: "Luxury College Dorms" Is A Debt-Ridden Oxymoron

Ridiculous.  A university is not a resort.

Nerd News: Journalism School Misspells Own Diplomas

SPELL CHECK, YO!

Nerd News: Is March Madness in the Curriculum?

Sometimes the temptation is just too great.

Nerd News: UK University Admissions Service Sells Access To Student Data

Selling out to the tune of 12 million pounds sterling.

Nerd News: Publishers Withdraw 120+ Fake Research Papers

Here's the sordid tale:

The publishers Springer and IEEE are removing more than 120 papers from their subscription services after a French researcher discovered that the works were computer-generated nonsense. 

Over the past two years, computer scientist Cyril Labbé of Joseph Fourier University in Grenoble, France, has catalogued computer-generated papers that made it into more than 30 published conference proceedings between 2008 and 2013. 

The "nerds behaving badly" tag is for the publishers who clearly had sloppy vetting practices.  My response:

Nerd News: Academic Assessment Gone Mad

You don't say!   This glorious "satire" hits too close to home:

We will establish a Workplace Agency for Success and Teaching Excellence (Waste) to oversee the large number of Committees on the Recording and Assessment of Professors (Crap) that must be established in order to make these assessment efforts possible. We estimate that this office will need a staff of 60 highly trained Waste managers and appropriate Crap support staff with an annual budget of £100 million. We believe that these funds can be readily obtained through efficiency savings garnered from the large amount of instructional waste present on campus. Further savings will be obtained through the use of more contingent staff and by increasing charges to staff for renting office space and for car parking.

In other words, the admin will eat the faculty in the name of education.  It's already happening.  Do you know that for the average price of one college VP you could hire an entire battalion of lecturers who actually - you know, this is a revolutionary thought indeed - teach students?

800-Pound Snowball 1, Campus Housing 0

You've got to see the photos of the monster snowball that got away from its two math-major creators and smashed into a Reed College dorm, cracked its wall, and knocked it off its studs.  Nobody was injured, so we call safely laugh out loud at this!

I personally love this caption on one of the photos: "Runaway 800-lb snowball puts dent in RCA #7.  Math majors were involved."

You know, as a teacher I'm not supposed to say things like this about pranks that cause damage to campus buildings, but this was my honest reaction:

"I'm impressed."

Sochi Opening Ceremonies: As Bizarre As You'd Imagine. Plus Geopolitical Nerd Fight

You just KNEW it was going to be a weird night when the Trololo song ended up in the proceedings and this happened:

As for the rest of the evening, I should preface this by saying that in my corner of Nerdworld, watching the thing with a bunch of fellow nerds turned into an argument about geopolitics. Whoever keeps trying to say that the Games are non-political is a fool.  You know, I wasn't going to bother blogging about the nerd fight, but why not ... You saw the ceremonies yourself and know the extent of its content. But you weren't in my living room. So if you want to hear what happened, it's all after the fold.

Nerd News: The Latest Academic Boycott of Israel ... and Its Opponents

So another academic organization wants to boycott Israeli institutions (hence the tag "Nerds Behaving Badly"), but this time the pushback has been gratifyingly robust. Law prof William Jacobson has been keeping track of this and of the increasing number of institutions that are voicing their opposition.  Here is a collection of official statements by various university presidents on the topic.

Michael Roth, the president of Wesleyan University, has recently written an op-ed about this in the Los Angeles Times, and it is worth a read.  Here's a piece of it (and it's also the quote of the day):

Boycotts don't serve these debates; they seek to cut them off by declaring certain academic institutions and their faculty off-limits. This tactic, in the words of Richard Slotkin, an emeritus professor here at Wesleyan University, "is wrong in principle, politically impotent, intellectually dishonest and morally obtuse." 

As president of Wesleyan, and as a historian, I deplore this politically retrograde resolution of the American Studies Assn. Under the guise of phony progressivism, the group has initiated an irresponsible attack on academic freedom. Others in academia should reject this call for an academic boycott.

Academic boycotts are antithetical to the very idea of academic freedom.  Every responsible nerd should be voicing his/her opposition.  This is the real issue.  Israeli policy is not.  Remember, darlings, that the AAUP opposes all academic boycotts as a matter of principle.

RELATED POST: Here.

UPDATE: Even the Washington Post editorial weighs in: "terribly misguided" and "fundamentally wrong."

The Great West Point Egg Nog Riot of 1826

Oh, egg nog.  Please drink responsibly.  Oh, and look who was there for the egg nog riot: Jefferson Davis and Robert E. Lee.  Yes, THAT Jefferson Davis and Robert E. Lee!

Nerd News: Hahvahd Student Arrested for Bomb Hoax

So is this guy a bigger idiot than he is a dirtbag? Tough call.  Apparently he wanted to get out of taking his final exams.  SCREW YOU, MAN.  Suck it up and do it like the rest of us.

UPDATE: Quote of the day about this:

“I don't think any lawyer in the world could save him at this point,” said Harvard Law School professor Alan M. Dershowitz, who predicted Kim will plead guilty.

Nerd News: The Psychology of Murder

Looking into the psychology of murderers can be interesting ... unless it's your psychology professor who's the murderer.  Good grief.  Also distressing: the college is standing by him so he will keep on teaching.  What?  The guy slaughtered his entire family in 1967.  This is not some feel-good comeback story about how he got rehabbed or whatever!  Do you want a murderer teaching your kids?

Chinese Nerd News: Exams, Cheating, and Riots, Oh My!

*facepalm*

Nerd News/Rant Update: the AAAS and BDS

I had ranted previously here, and now Inside Higher Ed has an open letter to the AAAS from a polisci professor.  Here's a piece of it as he slams the AAAS resolution for passing with suspicious unanimity:

I cannot resist asking: Are you at all embarrassed? 

... Reasonable people disagree about the Middle East, about the advisability of academic boycotts, and about how the AAAS can best serve Asian Americans. 

But that is precisely what makes the complete absence of a public conversation about these matters among Asian Americanists, a conversation with at least two sides, so peculiar. How can a group purporting to stand for the “highest professional standard of excellence in teaching and research” permit itself to appear so close-minded?

I do note with some satisfaction that the American Association of University Professors has rejected the AAAS's move and that the AAUP on principle opposes all academic boycotts. (As it should.)

Nerd News: Got a Doctorate in Disgrace? Be a Professor!

*Sigh.*

Nerds Behaving Badly: Prominent Scholar Banned From Rutgers Campus

What does one make of stuff like this?  It begins with "A dispute involving Robert Trivers, a well-known evolutionary theorist at Rutgers U. at New Brunswick, escalated from claims of fraud to accusations of threatening behavior."