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“[I]n a section of her thesis about the characteristics of stem cells, [Haruko Obokata, a now-disgraced Japanese stem cell researcher] had cut and pasted long passages from the National Institutes of Health Web site… Obokata says that she was hurrying to finish her thesis before the deadline, and accidentally bound and submitted a draft rather than the final version. But [a fellow scientist] says that when he confronted her about the plagiarism she said that it was common at Waseda [University], and that a faculty member had told her that no one reads the theses anyway.”

A long New Yorker essay about madly proliferating stem cell research fraud reminds us of PhD protocols at some of the world’s prominent universities:

Cut – Paste – Pass Without Reading

Margaret Soltan, February 25, 2016 6:27AM
Posted in: foreign universities, plagiarism

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2 Responses to ““[I]n a section of her thesis about the characteristics of stem cells, [Haruko Obokata, a now-disgraced Japanese stem cell researcher] had cut and pasted long passages from the National Institutes of Health Web site… Obokata says that she was hurrying to finish her thesis before the deadline, and accidentally bound and submitted a draft rather than the final version. But [a fellow scientist] says that when he confronted her about the plagiarism she said that it was common at Waseda [University], and that a faculty member had told her that no one reads the theses anyway.””

  1. dmf Says:
    February 25th, 2016 at 9:42AM

    the politics/economics of who gets phds (or even credit on just published papers) and who doesn’t in lab sciences is often messy and conflicted even at better (less corrupt)schools so this isn’t as surprising as it might be tho still disappointing, if I was a cleverer fellow I’m sure there is some punny humor to be had in cut&pasting a phd on gengineering.

    elsewhere in the world of “higher” ed:
    http://www.philpercs.com/2016/02/tek-tek-tek-texas.html

  2. john Says:
    February 25th, 2016 at 4:52PM

    plagiarized papers that no one reads… sounds like the UNC situation

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