Talk:2007 Plagiarism Ring Affair

From Eureka

Excellent, Blake! You beat me to it. --John Baez 04:02, 24 August 2007 (EDT)

Thanks! I figure we should link to pages within Eureka whenever possible, so that readers aren't "led away" from our site. Blake Stacey 14:12, 24 August 2007 (EDT)

Very impressive, Blake! Brucebartlett.

Dang it! The list of papers provided by Woit is actually a mixture of the METU and COMU papers. It's going to take a while to get this sorted out. — Blake Stacey, editing as BlakeBot 20:00, 28 August 2007 (EDT)

And on the general topic of plagiarism, I just noticed a news blip (Xinhua wire service, picked up by Reuters) about a new law currently being drafted in China. The short version: "Frustrated by episodes of plagiarism, fraudulent or misleading data, and other ethical lapses from research teams, legislators apparently feel that extra fear among many Chinese of losing face — and not getting further research money — helps drive some scientists to fudge results rather than to admit test runs that came up short." I'd heard on the grapevine that plagiarism was a big problem among Chinese graduate students, which makes me curious to know more. Blake Stacey 12:49, 29 August 2007 (EDT)

Just one tiny quibble: "damage control" could suggest that METU is seeking to cover things up or spin them, which seems not to be the case at all, in fact my impression is that METU is handling this much more responsibly than most universities would do. Can I "be bold" in Wikipedia sense and soften the tone of that sentence?

It is easy to distinguish between the COMU and METU rings; AFAIK, the persons whose names appear as authors on the questioned papers is disjoint. It is possible that not all of these persons is equally culpable (some might even be innocent--- in some past cases, the plagiarist added "authors" without their knowledge, apparently hoping to point the finger of blame in another direction should they be caught). I urge METU and COMU to disseminate results of official Ethics Committee investigations because an investigation can exxonerate as well as inculpate.

It might be a good idea to make clear that Eureka is not making these allegations but only reporting allegations by the arXiv admins. However, I'd certainly encourage any doubters to compare the cited papers side by side to see how they came to their conclusions. It might also be good to be aware of this treaty, which worries the ACLU and other organizations. (The U.S. but not Turkey have ratified this treaty.) This treaty seems certain to chill public discussion of allegations of academic/scientific misconduct, which is very unfortunate, because IMO we need more discussion of these issues, not less. Even worse, the treaty appears to render it more difficult for arXiv and journals to respond to even the most egregious cases of misconduct. I note that Turkish libel law is completely different from American libel law; in particular, as I understand it, the truth of an allegation is not a valid defense against libel under Turkish law; all the plaintiff needs to prove is that you "offended his personal dignity" or something like that. Turkey has not yet ratified the treaty, but in any case, libel tourism is becoming increasingly popular (sad to say).---CH 14:48, 31 August 2007 (EDT)

Addressing the tiny quibble: I've modified the article to indicate that the phrase "damage control" comes from the Ars Technica piece. Blake Stacey 16:27, 31 August 2007 (EDT)

I've added two new references, but I'm away from my institutional subscriptions right now, so I can't see all of what the Nature article said. Somebody should check this out! Blake Stacey 13:28, 7 September 2007 (EDT)

OK, now the arXiv says that only sixty-five eprints were withdrawn, whereas when I last looked, they had sixty-seven. It looks like hep-th/0110228 is now being treated as legitimate. In addition, one of the fifteen authors has apparently been cleared. Blake Stacey 14:43, 9 September 2007 (EDT)