… can be ugly. Some of these details may be difficult for more sensitive viewers.

But if you’re not that sensitive, read on.

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UD‘s alma mater, by the way, is getting quite the gold-plated reputation.

Remember M. Todd Henderson?

And in Ravelstein, Saul Bellow immortalized Allan Bloom:

[Nobody had ever questioned Ravelstein’s] need for Armani suits or Vuitton luggage, for Cuban cigars, unobtainable in the U.S., for the Dunhill accessories, for solid-gold Mont Blanc pens or Baccarat or Lalique crystal to serve wine in — or to have it served… [At Lucas-Carton restauarant we were] attended by no fewer than four waiters. The sommelier, wearing his badge of office on a chain of keys, supervised the filling of the glasses. For each course there was an appropriate wine, while other waiters working like acrobats reset the china and the silver.

What Harvard expert have the Australians been relying on to set their ADHD diagnosis / Ritalin use national standards?

WHOOPS. Monsieur Multiple Sanctions himself, Joseph Biederman.

Now what to do?

Nothing. In fact the committee has all this time just been sitting around waiting for the results of Harvard’s investigation into You mean I was supposed to tell you that the firms who make the drugs I research give me millions of dollars? Biederman.

And meanwhile the Australian committee had to toss its chair because “his ties with pharmaceutical companies that produce ADHD drugs were exposed.”

Yes indeed. Fellow psychiatrists rely on Biederman for more than his research results. There’s an entire ethos to be emulated here. After all, he’s the leader in the field.

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Will this committee assemble itself and get serious about protecting the health of young Australians?

I’d say the outlook is grim. There they sit, the provincials, waiting for big fancy Americans at Harvard to tell them what to do. Tsk.

Professor Edward Larkin of the University of New Hampshire likes to drive around town on his motorcycle and expose himself to young girls.

Realizing that this behavior constitutes a “major public relations problem for the university,” UNH has, since Larkin’s arrest and conviction for indecent exposure, tried to fire him.

Now an arbitrator has said that it can’t, because cock-flashing, while unpleasant, isn’t a firing offense.

“At the UW… Greenberg gave an annual lecture to students titled Ethical Issues in Forensic Psychology.”

A sickening tale of intellectual and institutional credulity, or laziness, or just plain corruption. No telling how many lives were ruined.

It’s a story made for the New York Post, so UD will defer to their writers throughout her coverage of the Flory/Garcia story.

… about a high-profile University of Melbourne professor of psychiatry accused of … well, you know the list from our homegrown … troubled professors of psychiatry:

… over-medication of drugs, consultations of 30 seconds and a conflict of interest involving pharmaceutical companies…

Curious, too, because you just know, from looking at his cv, that this guy is the real thing. Start with his acronyms:

AO, KCSJ, BSc, MB, ChB, DPM, MD, FRANZCP, FRCPsych, MRACMA, Dip.M.Htlh.Sc (Clinical Hypnosis), FAChAM.

Do you have that many acronyms? UD has… let’s see… BA, MA, PhD, CIA (can’t talk about that), NSA (ditto) NS (Navy Seals, can’t talk about that), MY (Mother of the Year)… That’s seven after-the-name acronyms. Graham here has… I’m counting twelve, but I’m thinking we could break down Dip.M.Htlh.C into two probably… So make it thirteen.

Then (stand back): There’s this:

He has published more than 650 scientific articles in peer-reviewed journals. He is the author or editor of more than 95 books, including the Handbook of Anxiety Disorders and the Handbook of General Hospital Psychiatry and has contributed chapters to approximately 190 other scientific books. He serves on the editorial boards of 30 international and Australian journals.

Consultations of 30 seconds! His patients should be honored to get five seconds! Do they have any idea who they’re dealing with??

David Flory, a Fairleigh Dickinson University physics professor, seems also to run a pretty big-time prostitution ring. He calls the activity “a hobby,” but there’s the matter of its illegality. Details of his arrest are here.

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UPDATE:

Three limericks.

This one’s from a UD reader:

In Albuquerque, New Mex,
A professor whose hobby is sex
brought people together,
without asking whether
they’d succeeded in skirting the lex.

This one’s from another UD reader:

A physics professor named Flory
Has a website that’s ever so whore-y
He’s not in it for money
Just loves spreading honey
At least that’s his side of the story.

And one from UD:

We offer the cheap Standard Model:
She’ll coo and she’ll kiss and she’ll coddle.
But those special patrons
With extra-Large Hadrons
Can launch one of our rocket bottles.

From an interview with Julian Young, in Figure/Ground.

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What makes a good teacher today? How do you manage to command attention in an age of interruption characterized by attention deficit and information overflow?

It is very difficult to give a general answer to this question, for teaching, like love, is an intuitive business that cannot properly be articulate[d] in rules and procedures. (That is why one should never go to a ‘teaching-improvement workshop’.) One thing to do is to stop complaining about students. Sure, they suffer from ADD but one needs to get into the habit of liking them, of not regarding them as the enemy, patients, cannon fodder, or a necessary evil. Students tend to respond well to someone they sense wishes them well. Never let students think that your real life is research – work that happens out of the classroom – try to make it the case, so far as possible, that (as in the nineteenth-century) your research and teaching are one and the same. Do not pander too much to the demand for ‘visual aids’. Do not teach in a darkened classroom and, especially, do not structure you[r] lecture around a set of ‘bullet points’ projected onto a screen. Remember that bullet points are discrete while thought is continuous so that what bullet points represent is, in fact, the death of thought…

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UD thanks Dirk for the link.

… has been found dead in her swimming pool.

She is prominently featured on the center’s website.

First the double dipping couple; now this guy (still proudly claimed by his robbee), who seems to have stolen from the school this way and that way and this way and that way. And this way.

Kangari got reimbursed for more than $10,000 worth of trips to Las Vegas and Los Angeles where he and his family visited tourist attractions. The auditor called them “thinly veiled family vacations with no verifiable business purpose.” … “[I]nappropriate purchases” on his P-card [included] nearly $1,000 worth of textbooks, which matched his daughter’s class schedule, sent to him via email. He also bought nearly $4,000 worth of electronics, including a pink iPod Shuffle…. [According to school auditors,] “he was not even present at some of the events for which he requested reimbursement.” At some he said he sent his wife in his place. The audit also said Kangari falsified timesheets for an employee, costing the school an additional $1,800.

Gevalt.

… Temple University, has allegedly spent the last twelve years stealing from a children’s hospital.

… Ghana Juana.

… an American University professor, looked at first like a random act of violence. Now an acquaintance of hers (we don’t yet know how close their friendship was) has been named in the crime. Police aren’t sure where he is, however. Probably Mexico.

Just ten Canadian professors each year win the 3M National Teaching Award. Excerpts from a profile of one of them.

Ryerson University history professor Arne Kislenko … doesn’t use PowerPoint or any other technology. While he makes ample time for students outside the classroom, when lecturing he sees no problem with asserting his expertise over his students. In class, apart from presenting the occasional map, he rarely departs from straightforward lecturing. “Too many bells and whistles takes away from the orator, and I think the professor is the real conduit of knowledge,” he says.

… Kislenko’s lectures are full of emotion—injected with humour, irony, outrage and sadness, depending on the historical period he is discussing…

The Korean university has already had a lot of untimely deaths this year, and now a visiting professor, Christopher Surridge, has died. Only 46 years old, he collapsed at a train station in Korea. Some of his colleagues made a memorial YouTube. Here’s another YouTube – a talk he gave about PLoS-ONE.