Plagiarism and other academic misconduct. Go to Retraction Watch for MANY Reports. These are ones that seem particularly egregious in that they have high profile positions.
7. Harvard’s Chief Diversity and Inclusion Officer Sherri A. Charleston
Harvard’s Chief Diversity and Inclusion Officer Sherri A. Charleston faced 40 allegations of plagiarism in an anonymous complaint filed with the University on Monday. The complaintt, first reported by the Washington Free Beacon on Tuesday, alleged 28 instances of plagiarism in yet doctoral dissertation at the University of Michigan and 12 allegations against a 2014 article in the Journal of Negro Education, co-authored with her husband LaVar J. Charleston and Michigan State University College of Education Dean Jerlando F.L. Jackson.
Complaints were also filed to the University of Michigan and the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where Charleston co-wrote the 2014 paper, according to the Free Beacon. The complaint alleged that the “results” described in the 2014 article were “practically identical” to the “major findings” of a 2012 article paper by LaVar Charleston — the UW-Madison deputy vice chancellor for diversity and inclusion — in the Journal of Diversity of Higher Education.
The two articles contain nearly identical descriptions of interviewee demographics. While the 2014 article repeatedly cites LaVar Charleston’s 2012 article, it does not attribute the interviews to the 2012 article or cite it in the passages in question.
6. Harvard Extension School Administrator Shirley R. Greene
Harvard Extension School administrator Shirley R. Greene was accused of 42 instances of plagiarism in her 2008 University of Michigan dissertation in a complaint sent to the University Friday. Unlike Gay, Charleston and Greene are administrators and do not hold academic appointments at Harvard. The complaint was submitted anonymously to the chair of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences’ professional conduct committee Friday afternoon and obtained by The Crimson.
The allegations ranged from “plain silly” to “especially worrisome,” according to plagiarism expert Jonathan Bailey, who runs the blog Plagiarism Today and independently reviewed the complaint at The Crimson’s request. Bailey wrote in an email that the contents of the complaint were “definitely enough” to “warrant a thorough review of this dissertation,” though he added that many of the allegations “either don’t prove plagiarism or only point to very minor errors.” The most extensive passages in the complaint compare Greene’s summary of Jean Kim’s theory of Asian American ethnic identity formation with a similar summary in Janelle Lee Woo’s 2004 Ph.D. dissertation. Greene’s dissertation does not cite Woo’s.
The complaint also points to a table in Greene’s dissertation that compares the stages of “ethnic identity development” postulated in five scholars’ models. Woo’s dissertation contains a similarly formatted table discussing four of the same models featuring identical descriptions of certain academic concepts.
The other allegations concern scattered sentences or phrases that appear in other scholar’s publications. Most are accompanied by citations but not enclosed in quotation marks, similar to many of the more minor allegations against Gay
5. Erick Jones, UNR Dean of the College of Engineering
Dozens of academic research papers from Erick Jones, dean of the College of Engineering, have circulated online that are “so bad, you can’t believe it.”
This comes after a blog post was published by Andrew Gelman, a statistics and political science professor at Columbia University, who commented on the “empty jargon” present in the studies.
The main paper in question by Gelman is titled “Using Science to Minimize Sleep Deprivation that may reduce Train Accidents,” listing Jones as one of the four authors and was published in the International Supply Chain Technology Journal in 2022. Many red flags were raised by Gelman and subsequently the academic community on X, formerly known as Twitter: the paper consisted of only one page, two paragraphs and no citations and the peer review process took only 15 days.
Jones was hired as dean of the College of Engineering in 2022 and previously served as the senior science advisor in the Office of the Chief Economist at the U.S. State Department and was a former professor and the associate dean for Graduate Studies at the College of Engineering at The University of Texas at Arlington.
Upon the publication of Gelman’s article, many took to X to further investigate the claims, calling Jones an “academic fraud”. Internet sleuths pointed out ISCTJ has two websites: one of which lists him as Editor-in-Chief, while the other lists his son Erick Jones Jr. as a board member.
In a response to The Nevada Sagebrush, Gelman stated he denies Jones is a fraud or is involved in anything fraudulent, he is just “baffled” at the situation.
“I have no idea what is going on. This is one of the most bizarre academic stories I’ve ever hear[d],” said Gelman in a response to the Sagebrush. “Just to be clear, I’m not saying there is any fraud here.”
Gelman is unaware of what requirements a dean’s position at the University of Nevada, Reno or the College of Engineering’s research qualifications are, if any.
“What disturbed me is that some of his papers are so bad that it’s incomprehensible to me how they could be associated with a dean of engineering at a flagship state university, or a dean of engineering anywhere,” Gelman told The Sagebrush. “I was not saying that Dr. Jones’s research has not been sufficient for his job.”
Additionally, the majority of Jones’s publications per his Google Scholar have been through ISCTJ and the content raises the same alarms as the original article in question: little substance in the paper and a short turnaround time. Even further investigation pointed out Jones publishing almost identical articles in two separate issues of ISCTJ with the same authors, but separate review and publication dates.
4. Columbia University DEI Head Accused of Plagiarism
A complaint filed anonymously with Columbia University accuses the school’s chief diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) office, Alade McKen of plagiarizing significant portions of his 2021 dissertation, which was submitted to Iowa State University’s School of Education as part of earning his Ph.D.
The allegations were first reported by Aaron Sibarium at the Washington Free Beacon. The 55-page complaint identifies some 58 alleged plagiarized passages, amounting to roughly one fifth of the dissertation. The allegations accuse McKen of plagiarizing a variety of other academics in the space, most notably University of Rwanda’s Chika Ezeanya-Esiobu, but also copying up to two pages from Wikipedia with only minor alterations. Though some of the sources were cited in the paper’s bibliography, none of the verbatim or near-verbatim text was indicated to be quotes and many of the sources, including Wikipedia, were not cited at all.
However, this raises a simple question: How serious are the allegations against McKen? The answer, unfortunately for McKen, is that they are very serious.
3. Gina and Airley
2. President of Stanford University
1. Claudine Gay, President of Harvard University
No comments:
Post a Comment