One of the most contemptible plagiarism scandals UD has encountered features the same character most of these scandals feature: The Junior Colleague. The eminent senior guy accused of having stolen reams of articles published under his name speaks darkly of an incompetent uncontrollable underling… Can’t recall her name. Don’t know where she is now…

The mythic research assistant is merely one component of the Serge Valentin Pangou story, a story which features a senior scientist tearing through one ecology journal after another (including one published by the notoriously cheesy outfit Elsevier) with articles copied from other sources and co-authored by people as mythical as the Junior Colleague. I mean, the co-authors existed… Pangou had even met them once or twice. But all were surprised to find out they’d authored anything with Pangou. All must also be thrilled that their names are now trashed by association.

**************************

Update: Some of the comments on this page, from Retraction Watch, are of interest.

As the beautiful toy that was Risperdal begins, gently, to tarnish, UD offers this valedictory.

RISPERDAL

Opus 1, No. 1
Margaret Soltan
ca. 2012
Tune: Mollys Abschied, Beethoven
(Play Sample to sing along.)

Risperdal! How sore my heart is aching!
Thoughts of the past
Upon my soul are breaking.
See the children laugh and play!
Blessings on you, J&J!
Whither have they fled, those joyous off-label days?

Biederman! Return from your long journey!
Save Risperdal
From federal attorneys!
Tell them of the joy and pleasure
Children felt beyond all measure!
Whither have they fled, those joyous off-label days?

Our university presidents speak. NCAA, government. Somebody’s gotta stop athletics from killing universities. Just don’t ask university presidents to do it.

… since scientists pointed out the fraudulence of Yoshitaka Fujii’s work? A decade during which scads of his bogus articles about anesthesia appeared in all the major journals in the field?

180 of his articles are currently under investigation for faked data. 180! And all the time people were trying to get someone – anyone – to pay attention.

[One of the whistle blowers] wrote to the FDA, its Japanese counterpart and the Japanese Society of Anesthesiologists to warn them about Dr. Fujii’s results — but received either no reply or a cursory acknowledgment of his concerns.

Scott Reuben, Joachim Boldt, Fujii – what is it about anesthesiologists? Are they in a permanent state of twilight sleep?

… at her other campus, at Inside Higher Education, will follow her adventures with Udemy’s Faculty Project. She’s written her first post, and it will appear Sunday evening. Title: MOOC Synthesizer.

UD‘s first Udemy lecture, on poetry, should appear in a few days. I’ll link my readers to it.

Fear of money drives the current presidential scene, here and in France. Panicked flight from your hundreds of millions of dollars has taken hold of two leading politicians, each of whom has palmed the problem off to a surrogate – the Missus. Carla Sarkozy calls herself and her husband “modest simple folk,” and Ann Romney doesn’t consider herself wealthy. Their comments have set off a laff riot.

There are a couple of other ways of approaching this problem. One is to assert that any allusion to money is déclassé, vulgar, beneath one, beneath everyone. Refuse to talk about it.

Another – the Eric Cantor thing – is to assert that any allusion to money is a sign of petty envy on the part of the mentioner.

Both of these approaches are preferable to the business of pretending you’re not rich.

… El Rushbo!

… to some extent at most American medical schools, UD says they should turn their attention to corporate ghostwriting of articles and books for university researchers.

AMSA’s simple expediency of publishing COI rankings for each school has shamed many institutions into taking more seriously not merely specific practices like free drug samples and the constant trolling of campus by pharma sales people, but also disclosure in general, as in how much pharma money this or that professor pockets.

The widespread scandal involving professors claiming publications in the scientific literature which have in fact been written, in whole or in part, by ghostwriting firms paid by pharmaceutical companies, is much talked about. But professional organizations and editorial boards – both almost completely dependent on revenue from drug firms – will never do anything about it. Universities don’t care. Only independent groups like AMSA can get anywhere on this one.

*******************************

We can expect resistance to all of these changes. UD anticipates a new organization emerging called PharmFee.

You’d expect some statement from the president, but schools like Auburn don’t really have presidents. Just coaches.

Well, there you go. You can’t get a better, more graphic instance of the threat to free thought in universities than that. Tunisia’s Manouba University, where the flag switch took place, is on the front lines of the university’s defense, and its women students – threatened, as usual, most severely – seem to be leading the fight (see the photograph accompanying the article to which I’ve linked). The Salafists note that university women get to wear niqabs/burqas (both face-covering clothing) in other countries:

“We demand a prayer room and access for all students wearing the niqab to classes and exams, as is allowed in the United States, Britain and Germany,” said Mohammed Bakhti, a spokesman for the Salafi students.

He is too modest. His group also demands gender segregated classrooms. And gender segregated instruction… And it’s funny… Tunisia… strong links to France, and yet he doesn’t list France. Because burqas are illegal in France. They will probably be banned this year in Italy. Canada has begun partial bans, as has Sweden. Spain looks close to a ban.

By the way, there are plenty of schools in Britain that ban the burqa. A Norwegian professor has banned the burqa in his classrooms. The beat goes on.

… is the scene of a shooting. The situation is ongoing.

First they hire rancid Rick Rodriguez; then a bunch of his guys go punching women in the face.

… interviewed by WBUR about the exhibit she has curated – Contemporary Egyptian Video Artists – at the School of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts.

… is now up at Inside Higher Education.

… Rush Limbaugh.