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On punishing plagiarizers and falsifiers

By Lawrence B. Ebert, Esq.

The nanopolitan blog had a Feb. 23 post titled Punishing the plagiarizers and falsifiers which began with the Chiranjeevi issue (popularized by C&E News), worked through the Gunasekera and Constantine matters and brought up the Mashelkar situation.

The blog did not mention the Poshard matter at Southern Illinois University [SIU], or the various plagiarisms at Harvard University, all of which fall in the general ambit of the blog's remark: "plagiarizers don't lose their jobs; they receive a public reprimand, and perhaps a demotion." The blog did not mention the Merrill matter at the University of Missouri, wherein the accused "plagiarizer" did lose his "job," but wherein the plagiarizer, a former journalistm professor, had plenty of defenders.

The nanopolitan blog did distinguish plagiarism from the more serious problem of falsification: Chiranjeevi has been accused of other crimes that are a lot more serious than plagiarism: fabrication and falsification. How are fabricators and falsifiers punished elsewhere? Ironically, one notes that back in February 1990, when C&E News published something that was false, C&E News twisted and turned, but would not admit the falsity. [See Carbon, Volume 33, Issue 7, 1995, Pages 1007-1010.] There, of course, was no punishment. The person that wrote the false statement is now editor. The nanopolitan blog did mention Schon and Hwang, but one recalls that the journals who published the false work were NOT quick to address problems. The problem with Hwang's second paper was first dismissed as an inadvertent mix-up of photos.

Recall also that the Stanford Law Review never corrected the false statement that Gary Boone invented the integrated circuit.

See also

http://ipbiz.blogspot.com/2008/02/columbia-teachers-college-no-rules.html

http://ipbiz.blogspot.com/2007/08/plagiarism-or-ghost-writing.html

http://ipbiz.blogspot.com/2006/08/plagiarism-or-how-edison-got.html

http://ipbiz.blogspot.com/2005/04/harvard-laws-laurence-tribe.html

http://ipbiz.blogspot.com/2005/04/harvard-crimson-on-reprimand-of.html

Full post as published by IPBiz on February 23, 2008 (boomark / email).