Following the filing of a complaint and affidavit in July 2022, Georgios Laliotis, a postdoctoral researcher from Ohio State University (OSU), was found guilty of creating and sending fake recommendation letters, supposed to be from his supervisor, Dr Philip Tsichlis. It all started when Laliotis’ contract at OSU was terminated on 30th November 2021, after …
Fired postdoc faked recommendation letters from supervisor Read More »
“The narrative around plagiarism is often extremely simplified: There is a plagiarist and there is a victim. It’s a simple and compelling narrative. There is a bad person that has stolen or lifted from a good person by using their work without the decency of at least giving them proper credit. It’s a visceral and …
“In August 2021, Matthew Schrag, a neuroscientist and physician at Vanderbilt University, got a call that would plunge him into a maelstrom of possible scientific misconduct. A colleague wanted to connect him with an attorney investigating an experimental drug for Alzheimer’s disease called Simufilam. The drug’s developer, Cassava Sciences, claimed it improved cognition, partly by …
“You can’t cheat to cure a disease” (by: Matthew Schrag) Read More »
“A major controversy in marine biology took a new twist last week when the University of Delaware (UD) found one of its star scientists guilty of research misconduct. The University has confirmed to Science that it has accepted an investigative panel’s conclusion that marine ecologist Danielle Dixson used fabrication and falsification in work on fish …
You cannot hide from misconduct, not even underwater! Read More »
“Last week, a plagiarism scandal rocked the Guggenheim Bilbao and their Basque Artist Program. The original allegations were published by Hannah Swayze, a producer who worked on the short film Blue by artist dayday. According to the claims, the Spanish artist Gala Knörr used the film as inspiration for her painting entitled Young Cowboy Gazing. …
Everyone within an academic community deserves to be treated with respect and dignity by other members of that community. The community may be within one institution or involve several institutions and organisations, for example: the community of partners working together on a research project; students and supervisory staff involved in placements based in external companies; …
The good old days? What has my career taught me about respect in the workplace Read More »
Including someone’s name in a paper to increase the chances of being published, adding someone’s name to a paper based on their seniority level, adding the names of one another on papers to increase their list of publications and adding someone’s name in return for opportunities are all examples of gift authorship. This is a …
The University of Toronto is suing a tutoring service for contract cheating and copyright infringement allegations. The company at stake, owned by a former student from the University of Toronto, is claimed to target Mandarin-speaking students with tutoring packages that include course materials, digital presentations, lecture notes and assignments. For over USD 1,000, students in …
An honest support service for international students or contract cheating? Read More »
“In recent years, a chorus of former PhD students have broken their silence over abusive behaviour suffered at the hands of their supervisors. Their horrifying accounts variously relate being belittled and humiliated in front of colleagues, having supervisors explode with anger upon hearing of scientific setbacks, even supervisors sullying their students’ reputations in the eyes …
“Bik, a microbiologist from the Netherlands who moved to the United States almost two decades ago, is a widely lauded super-spotter of duplicated images in the scientific literature. On a typical day, she’ll scan dozens of biomedical papers by eye, looking for instances in which images are reused and reported as results from different experiments, …
