Milena Penkowa [scroll down for earlier posts] happened on his watch.

Actually, The Ratwoman didn’t just happen on his watch. Hemmingsen did a good deal to enable her vicious ways. And when caught out on his enabling, he lied about it.

The legal investigation into Hemmingsen’s management was sparked by suspicions that arose when he and the rest of the university’s management nominated Penkowa for a prestigious research award in 2008, even though they knew that she had been reported to the police on charges of embezzlement and forgery.

Hemmingsen initially said he didn’t know that Penkowa had been reported to the police, but later he admitted that he knew about it.

Earlier, in 2002, after a faculty committee, smelling a rat, rejected her thesis, “the university’s then dean of faculty Ralf Hemmingsen intervened and sought an external review of Penkowa’s thesis by two other researchers. They were critical of the committee’s decision, arguing that there was no clear evidence of research misconduct. Penkowa resubmitted her thesis to a different committee of researchers not based at the University of Copenhagen and passed…”

How do you get promoted from dean to rector at the University of Copenhagen? You do Milena Penkowa’s bidding.

Understandable, though. Penkowa was having “an intimate relationship with a Science Ministry official,” and you want to be sure to behave slavishly toward anyone shtupping a Science Ministry official…

Although the university’s board of directors says everything’s fine now that Penkowa’s been sentenced, nothing to see here, the new Science Minister, Charlotte Sahl-Madsen, has lost faith in the board and will “increase supervision” of the university.

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How do things like this happen?

They happen when your university is so provincial as to make Lower Slobbovia look like Paris.

… on your graduate students or your many jealous competitors is SO the done thing. UD, who has covered reams of these stories over the years of her blog, sees it again and again. When pushed to the limit, when faced with evidence in a courtroom, academic members of what Boris Badenov called the Villains, Thieves, and Scoundrels Union will swing wide, swing desperately…

The University of Copenhagen’s Milena Penkowa has lost her job and lost her criminal case.

She continues to insist that she did not attempt to “frame an innocent 24-year-old student assistant [for Penkowa’s own] embezzlement by fabricating documents, e-mails and account withdrawals in the student’s name.”

She’s a brain scientist… And it must be admitted that her behavior from the beginning of her remarkable fraud journey (type Penkowa in my search engine) has been a fascinating cerebral puzzle.

She faces another criminal case: She apparently lied about the rats she used in her experiments.

Rats. You can’t make this shit up.

Update on the Milena Penkowa science fraud story (background here):

[Former science minister Helge] Sander contacted several … university staff members to tell them that Penkowa’s suspension in the summer of 2010 was ”unacceptable” and that he would take the matter to the justice minister.

… [University of Copenhagen rector Ralf] Hemmingsen [says] he is ”surprised” and ”annoyed” that after the phone conversation between the two, Sander contacted other members of staff at the university to influence their decision on the matter.

It has now also emerged that Penkowa had an intimate relationship with a Science Ministry official.

… administrators at the University of Copenhagen have – it’s claimed – been overlooking Milena Penkowa’s scientific fraud (misuse of grant money, irreproducible experimental results, etc.) for almost ten years.

It’s a strange story. Apparently after her doctoral thesis failed, the dean got a bunch of people outside the university to pass it.

Questions over Penkowa’s research began at least as early as 2002 with suspicions over her doctoral thesis. For instance, Sørensen says, Penkowa claimed to have performed experiments on around 1700 rats over several months. The committee rejected her thesis.

According to Sørensen, the university’s then dean of faculty Ralf Hemmingsen intervened and sought an external review of Penkowa’s thesis by two other researchers. They were critical of the committee’s decision, arguing that there was no clear evidence of research misconduct. Penkowa resubmitted her thesis to a different committee of researchers not based at the University of Copenhagen and passed, Sørensen says.

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?

Here’s a letter from a bunch of scientists calling for an investigation.