Dr. Bernard Carroll, known as the "conscience of psychiatry," contributed to various blogs, including Margaret Soltan's University Diaries, for which he sometimes wrote limericks under the name Adam.
New York Times
George Washington University English professor Margaret Soltan writes a blog called University Diaries, in which she decries the Twilight Zone-ish state our holy land’s institutes of higher ed find themselves in these days.
The Electron Pencil
It’s [UD's] intellectual honesty that makes her blog required reading.
Professor Mondo
There's always something delightful and thought intriguing to be found at Margaret Soltan's no-holds-barred, firebrand tinged blog about university life.
AcademicPub
You can get your RDA of academic liars, cheats, and greedy frauds at University Diaries. All disciplines, plus athletics.
truffula, commenting at Historiann
Margaret Soltan at University Diaries blogs superbly and tirelessly about [university sports] corruption.
Dagblog
University Diaries. Hosted by Margaret Soltan, professor of English at George Washington University. Boy is she pissed — mostly about athletics and funding, the usual scandals — but also about distance learning and diploma mills. She likes poems too. And she sings.
Dissent: The Blog
[UD belittles] Mrs. Palin's degree in communications from the University of Idaho...
The Wall Street Journal
Professor Margaret Soltan, blogging at University Diaries... provide[s] an important voice that challenges the status quo.
Lee Skallerup Bessette, Inside Higher Education
[University Diaries offers] the kind of attention to detail in the use of language that makes reading worthwhile.
Sean Dorrance Kelly, Harvard University
Margaret Soltan's ire is a national treasure.
Roland Greene, Stanford University
The irrepressibly to-the-point Margaret Soltan...
Carlat Psychiatry Blog
Margaret Soltan, whose blog lords it over the rest of ours like a benevolent tyrant...
Perplexed with Narrow Passages
Margaret Soltan is no fan of college sports and her diatribes on the subject can be condescending and annoying. But she makes a good point here...
Outside the Beltway
From Margaret Soltan's excellent coverage of the Bernard Madoff scandal comes this tip...
Money Law
University Diaries offers a long-running, focused, and extremely effective critique of the university as we know it.
Anthony Grafton, American Historical Association
The inimitable Margaret Soltan is, as usual, worth reading. ...
Medical Humanities Blog
I awake this morning to find that the excellent Margaret Soltan has linked here and thereby singlehandedly given [this blog] its heaviest traffic...
Ducks and Drakes
As Margaret Soltan, one of the best academic bloggers, points out, pressure is mounting ...
The Bitch Girls
Many of us bloggers worry that we don’t post enough to keep people’s interest: Margaret Soltan posts every day, and I more or less thought she was the gold standard.
Tenured Radical
University Diaries by Margaret Soltan is one of the best windows onto US university life that I know.
Mary Beard, A Don's Life
[University Diaries offers] a broad sense of what's going on in education today, framed by a passionate and knowledgeable reporter.
More magazine, Canada
If deity were an elected office, I would quit my job to get her on the ballot.
Notes of a Neophyte
January 9th, 2011 at 12:11PM
Margaret, you got it mixed up.
At all serious universities, a doctoral thesis, as well as a Ph.d thesis is assessed by a committee with a majority of people outside the university where the research has been done, and where the person is employed. This is also the case at your university. Else nepotism would be all to obvious.
Who assessed your thesis? Your colleagues and associates for the last decade, or professors in your research area but from outside your institution (in your wording = “a bunch of people from somewhere”)?
January 9th, 2011 at 1:19PM
Peter: Yes, there are always outside scholars included in doctoral examination committees; but this is very different from what the article I quote describes: A dean’s intervention which involves overturning the original failure (I assume there were also outside scholars included in the original dissertation defense) by bringing in external reviewers (how were these chosen?), and then a decision (the dean’s, I assume) to have her retake the defense with a committee entirely made up of people unconnected with her university. I don’t know how things are done in Denmark (I have only the article I quote to go on) but the idea of an entirely outside committee for your defense would be bizarre in the American context. It’s not nepotistic to be examined by – among others – people who know your work best.
January 15th, 2011 at 4:30AM
Margaret has it right: The original doctoral thesis was turned down (I believe the first committe was all-Danish, but from different universities). Then the dean Hemmingsen, for the first time in Danish university history, decided to overturn the decision and appoint a new committee for a re-evaluation of the thesis. If my memory serves me right, this second committee consisted of Swedes. The thesis was now accepted.
Some of the concerns raised by the original committee (the most grave being the claimed experiments on 1000+ rats, a number any scientist with real lab experience will tell you is ridiculous, outside of big pharma) were being handled by the dean personally. Ie. Penkowa was allowed to submit her explanation for conflicting reports of where these extensive animal studies had actually taken place and he personally decided that her explanations made sense. Even though she changed her explanation repeatedly, first explaining that they took place in Copenhagen, then at Barcelona University, and then at a private company in Spain whose name she won’t give to media journalists today. 1000 rats… come on.
Horrible and shameful story for Danish science and for Copenhagen University! Please bear in mind that this one bad apple is not in any way representative for the rest of the research being conducted in Denmark. Best regards
January 15th, 2011 at 7:54AM
Danish passerby: Many thanks for that additional information, and for the important reminder that – if the allegations are proved true – this is one rogue scientist, and doesn’t reflect on the rest of Danish research.
February 12th, 2011 at 4:19AM
Question:
‘So at the University of Copenhagen you can pass your thesis by scraping together a bunch of people from somewhere to say it’s okay?’
Answer:
Yes, but you have to be a woman to pull the stunt.
February 27th, 2011 at 6:19PM
[…] on the Milena Penkowa science fraud story (background here): [Former science minister Helge] Sander contacted several of university staff members to tell them […]