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invented e-mail addresses so that he could provide “peer reviews” of his own manuscripts, more than 250 articles have been retracted because of fake reviews — about 15% of the total number of retractions.

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

*facepalm*

Nerd News: the Atlanta Cheating Scandal

From earlier this week, which I missed because I was busy: SHAME:

Thirty-five Atlanta educators are expected to surrender Tuesday after being indicted in the biggest alleged cheating scandal involving standardized testing in American history. The list of suspects includes everyone from the former superintendent to principals and teachers. 

... Investigators say Atlanta's school district orchestrated a culture of cheating to benefit those at the top. 

Nearly 200 educators admitted to taking part in the massive scandal: they tampered with students' standardized tests and corrected answers to inflate scores. Some teachers had pizza parties to erase wrong answers and circle in the right ones. One principal allegedly handled altered tests wearing gloves to avoid leaving her fingerprints.

Sumo in Decline?

Say it ain't so!  Recent scandals have hurt the sport too.

Film Culture Commentary: the 10 Worst Chick Flicks Ever Made, Or "Turn Off That Slop and Watch Buffy Instead"

Hear, hear!  You're already familiar with my critiques of The Notebook (#10) and Twilight (#1) the book, the actual movie, and also the entire phenomenon.

The Fall of Lance Armstrong

I don't even know what to say.

Fareed Zakaria, Plagiarist

SHAME ON YOU. On the up side, he can now try to excuse his idiotic analyses by saying that they weren't really his.

Olympic Overload

Blogging will be light until the Games are over, because your humble hostess is too busy obsessing about them and trying to do nerd work at the same time!  (Get your London 2012 app yet?)  The NBC coverage during primetime has been mostly - let's be honest - bad when it's not silly and crammed with some of the most idiotic "commentary" I've heard.  How bad is it?  Sometimes even the logo placement elicits guffaws from the audience, and this unfortunate placement of the graphic makes the entire scene seems a lot naughtier than it really is.  The daytime live coverage is less awful, at least - I suspect because of the conspicuous absence of annoying people like Ryan Seacrest.  Really, NBC, the snarky satirists at the Onion are doing a better job of "covering" the Games.  I mostly watch NBC with the sound turned off.  I'm not kidding.

If you're watching the primetime coverage, do have actor Samuel L. Jackson's Twitter feed available too, because he's a sports addict who is utterly laugh-out-loud funny in his no-holds-barred running real-time commentary.  (Language warning, obviously.)

For other awesome perspectives on the Games, you can always follow some of the athletes' Twitter feeds (like Michael Phelps' or Lolo Jones's ... and Lolo is hilarious) or maybe watch the BBC's streaming coverage.

As for the Games, they're full of stories of all types, which brings me to the dirtbag du jour, Olympic edition.  Nope, that's too depressing.  Let's focus instead on Phelps making glorious history by winning his 19th medal, shall we?  Congratulations, sir!

LOL: Student Fails Twice In One Go

You fail once for cheating, and you fail again for being incompetent at cheating.  I love the teacher's snarky comments.  Click on the image to enlarge it.

Nerd News: the Long Island Exam Cheating Scandal

UGH.

Nerd News: Cheating Is Big Business

I knew there were plenty of chances for undergrads to plagiarize and sponge off other people's work and all that, but this really struck me as a whole other level in shirking one's personal responsibilities and basically getting other people to do your learning for you.  Check out this blurb from the website:

Here you can easily hire a private writer in as early as 5 minutes. With 200+ writers available 24/7, we can help with any written assignment (from simple essays to dissertations).

SRSLY?  And another thing: oh, I'm sure it's easy enough to cough up a freshman essay on some banal old chestnut of an intro history or lit or whatever class, but you can really get someone to do a doctoral dissertation for you?  

Nerd News: Huge Social Psych Research Fraud

BUSTED.

Nerd News: Cheating on the SAT

The infamy of this standardized exam is matched only by the history of cheating on it (and by the college admissions process that uses these exam scores).  Of course, every major exam system in history has had its history of cheating. (One of my favorite stories is from medieval China's bureaucratic entrance exams, during which some enterprising folks smuggled in answers inside steamed buns.)

Nerd News: Thoughts on Plagiarism

Read this, especially the bit at the end.

Asians Don't Count -- We're White

I've said this before, and it's true in practice ... and maddening.  Here's a fresh tale.  The term "minority" doesn't apply to Asians, even though statistically speaking, we make up the smallest segment of the American population.  You know I hate the diversity/identity politics/race-baiting/affirmative action game.  I also hate hypocrisy and cheating and rigging the game and double standards, and I say: how is this mess not basically racist discrimination against Asians?  PFFFFFFT.  Do you recall how in apartheid South Africa, Asians were counted as white?  UPDATE:  Also this.  

Nerds Behaving Badly: The Atlanta Teacher Cheating Scandal

DUDE.  And yet ... somehow predictable.

Taiwanese News Animators vs. Sumo Scandal

Here's the newest cartoon lunacy from those delightfully goofy animators:

Hilarious Headline of the Day: "Germany's Gutenberg 'Deliberately' Plagiarised"

Gutenberg plagiarized?  ZOMG!

OK, so it's not that Gutenberg.  Oh, and isn't the intention to plagiarize rather part and parcel of the dastardly deed?

Nerd News: German Defense Minister Accused of Plagiarizing Doctoral Thesis

Via an econ prof's blog, here is a whiff of possible scandal involving (the stupendously monikered, by the way) Karl-Theodor Maria Nikolaus Johann Jakob Philipp Franz Joseph Sylvester Freiherr von und zu Guttenberg.  Oh, in this Internet Age, it is both easier to plagiarize and easier to get caught plagiarizing than ever before.