… that I must announce the death of my brother, Nicholas Hughes, who died by his own hand 16th March, 2009, at his home in Alaska. He had been battling depression for some time.”

Sylvia Plath’s son has killed himself.

From the Fairbanks News Miner:

Friends in Alaska are mourning the death of Nicholas Hughes, who studied at Oxford and became a prominent fish biologist at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. The news of his passing has prompted headlines around the world because his parents were poets Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes.

… [T]he 47-year-old Fairbanks resident …became an authority on grayling, salmon and trout. He developed computer models to show the relationship between fish behavior and stream characteristics. He was an incredible cyclist, as well as an ardent gardener and fisherman.

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Update: From the same News Miner writer:

A few times, I called him to let him know I would like to write about his life and his family connections, whenever a news story about his parents appeared, but he did not think it was a good idea, so it never happened. He deserved his privacy. By and large, people in Fairbanks respected that, which is a good comment on our part of the world.

In Alaska, he had the freedom and the opportunity to live on his own terms and be recognized for his own accomplishments. Here he was not a literary figure forever defined by the lives of his parents.

But he was their son and his death will generate headlines around the world.

The statement from his sister, quoted in the Times Online, said: “His lifelong fascination with fish and fishing was a strong and shared bond with our father (many of whose poems were about the natural world). He was a loving brother, a loyal friend to those who knew him and, despite the vagaries that life threw at him, he maintained an almost childlike innocence and enthusiasm for the next project or plan.”

… when you learn one little extra thing about a person, and then go back and read something about them, it reads completely differently.

For instance, Robert Hebbel is a professor who uses his wife’s disability parking permit illegally. He was just fined $500 for doing it at the school where he works, the University of Minnesota.

So here’s an article written about him not long ago. UD has enjoyed snickering through it with this new information.

Start with the headline.

DR. ROBERT P. HEBBEL IS DRIVEN TO DISCOVER HOW THE BIOLOGY OF SICKLE CELL DISEASE WORKS

[Dr. Hebbell is] a fellow who’s very busy and very driven.

… Hebbel was attracted to the problem solving approach of internal medicine. “”I love the chase! I love using your wits to design an experiment to solve the problem,” he says. “I love the “aha!” moment, finding out how something works in biology.” [The chase! Problem solving! Using your wits! You can experience the very same thrills figuring out how to take parking spaces away from disabled people.] … I do things that are risky,” he says. … “I’ve always just done what seems to be interesting to me in the moment.”

The University of South Florida professor who stepped down from his position earlier this week wants to take back his resignation.

Dr. Abdul Rao, an associate dean and professor at USF’s School of Health, says he was rushed into a resignation after he was caught on tape and admitted to stealing a graduate student’s bicycle.

Rao accepted a 50,000 dollar buy out to resign from his 384,000 dollar per year position.

“Our position is his employment is over,” University Spoke[s]man Michael Hoad said. “And, anything different, his attorney will have to talk to our attorney.”

Professor Rao’s discovering that when you’re a thief — with a YouTube recording the fact, and a court case pending — jobs are scarce.

She teaches only one course a semester at the University of Florida.

In the sort of dinky program that assures small classes.

And she’s complaining.

Because her university wants her to teach two.

UF’s authority to change the agreement under which faculty are hired without their consent was questioned Thursday in a six–hour arbitration hearing.

UF and the faculty member in question each presented evidence concerning the university’s right to adjust her course load without her permission.

When Florence Babb, an endowed professor and graduate coordinator of UF’s Center for Women’s Studies and Gender Research, received her agreement letter in March 2004 outlining the terms of her hire, it determined she would teach one course per semester and promised her a research assistant.

Endowed faculty are expected to increase the university’s prestige with their contributions and research, and thus they often have lighter teaching loads.

Last March, Babb was informed via a letter from then–interim dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, Joe Glover, that her teaching load would be increased from one course per semester to two courses per semester “because of the state’s fiscal difficulties and the severe budget cuts applied to UF.” Babb said to her knowledge she was the only endowed professor to receive such a letter at that time. She was also relieved of her research assistant. Babb said the lower course load allowed time to conduct research.

She filed a grievance in April 2008 and said that UF violated an agreement it has with the United Faculty of Florida, or UFF, the faculty union…

Icing on the cake: Her grievance will cost the university a lot of money.

The University of South Florida dean who steals bikes has embarrassed his university, of course, and serious punishment makes sense.

But this detail from the story explains why USF did well to fire him.

After Rao learned he was captured on tape on Wednesday, [the bike’s owner, a graduate student] said, Rao called him into his office and pressured him to tell police that the matter was the result of a misunderstanding.

“This (research) is an ethical profession, and Rao is an unethical man,” Boyd said. “I don’t want him in here in my profession. I hope he’s fully investigated, because I would be interested to know what else he’s done.”

The student’s correct. Rao’s behavior throughout suggests a degenerate sense of entitlement.

Although he earns over $700,000, a dean at the University of South Florida stole a bicycle. 

He was captured on camera doing it.

He’s on leave.

UD thinks you can tell from his photo that he’s trouble.

That’s a USF clip he’s got on, which is already pretty weird.  He’s anxious for you to see his way big gold watch.  Bad sign.  He looks smug.  UD‘s theory is that he thinks he owns the clinic he works in, and all the objects in it.  (He stole the bike from his building.)  If he needs a bike, for instance, and he sees one, it’s his.

A former Western Kentucky University professor pleads “guilty” to federal program fraud.

The U.S. Attorney’s office says Katrina Phelps entered into a “plea agreement” today, where she admits intentionally misapplying $27,087.20 from Western Kentucky University.

[“Guilty”? “plea agreement”? Why the quotation marks? Did she not really plead guilty? Is it not really a plea agreement? Am I living in Upper Volta where we don’t use terms like guilty and plea agreement, so you have to put them in quotation marks to introduce them to me?]

Phelps admits from March 2005 to December 2007, she took the proceeds from 16 checks from a justice department grant, and misapplied the funds.

As part of her plea agreement, Phelps agrees to pay full restitution to WKU, prior to her sentencing.

The maximum potential penalties for Phelps’ offense, include ten years in prison, a $250,000 fine, and supervised release for up to 3 years.

Adds piquancy that these were from the justice department… “Background” “here.”

… and so far I’ve come across one alumna of University Diaries — the dread Jane L. Dolkart. Let’s take a careful trip down Memory Lane…

On Wednesday, June 8, testimony began in the case of [Southern Methodist University] Dedman School of Law professor Jane L. Dolkart, accused of hitting bicyclist Tommy Thomas with her car in May 2004.

Less than a week later, a Dallas jury found Dolkart guilty of aggravated assault but decided not to sentence her to jail time, opting instead for a penance of five years of probation and two years of community service.

The jury, according to media representatives inside the courtroom, ‘determined that Dolkart intentionally struck … Thomas with her car at White Rock Lake.’

In his testimony, Officer Craig Bennight explained that when told of Mr. Thomas” original accusation, Dolkart said she ‘only meant to tap him.’

After investigating the details with his partner, Bennight said, ‘We both concurred there was no evidence it was an accident. Ms. Dolkart never said it was an accident.’

Though she and defense attorney Mike Gibson were able to avoid the maximum of 20 years in prison and a $10,000 fine, Dolkart still elicited strong emotions from bicyclists across the metroplex.

One avid cyclist, who asked to remain anonymous, remarked, ‘As we all know, a “tap” from a two-ton auto can kill. … If there is justice in this world, she should pay big time.’

But the penalty from the city of Dallas is only half of the price Dolkart can expect to pay. A member of the Washington, D.C. bar association, Ms. Dolkart”s future as an SMU professor is under investigation.

The day after Dolkart”s sentence was handed down, the University issued the following statement:

“SMU is aware of the jury”s decision in the case involving Professor Jane Dolkart. Under University policy, SMU will conduct an internal review of the situation to determine an appropriate course of action.’

A Johns Hopkins professor who co-authored a study suggesting that huge numbers of civilians have died during the U.S. war in Iraq was accused of ethics violations yesterday by a prominent group of polling researchers, and university officials announced that they are conducting their own review.

The rebuke, by the American Association for Public Opinion Research, came after an investigation into how Dr. Gilbert Burnham of the Bloomberg School of Public Health determined that nearly 655,000 Iraqis had died as a result of the U.S.-led invasion and its bloody aftermath. The results – which estimated hundreds of thousands more deaths than the Bush administration had reported – were published in 2006 in The Lancet, a leading British medical journal.

Officials of the association, of which Burnham is not a member, said Burnham refused to disclose the wording of his questions and basic methodological details of his research, a violation of the group’s code of ethics and practices. That makes it impossible for other researchers to verify the work, said Mary E. Losch, chairwoman of the AAPOR’s Standards Committee….

Burnham does not seem to list the Lancet article on his webpage, though he has written other pieces for the Lancet.

Note the blizzard of skeptical questions for Burnham here.

Press release from AAPOR.

Recall the similar case of Michael Bellesiles.

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Update: A reader, David, points out that the likely article is indeed listed on Burnham’s website. I overlooked it because it’s the only listing that doesn’t include a date of publication. Here’s the citation:

Roberts L, Lafta R, Garfield R, Khudhairi J, Burnham G. Mortality before and after the 2003 invasion of Iraq: cluster sample survey. Lancet, 364:1857-64.

UD thanks her reader.