Academic Roadkill

The German journalist Hermann Horstkotte reports in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung from June 23, 2010 on a strange case from the Ludwig-Maximilian University in Munich.

A doctorate in Germany is awarded by the faculty department, and a reference to the department can be found after the Dr. title: Dr. phil. (humanities), Dr.-Ing. (engineering), Dr. rer. nat. (science). There has been a bit of inflation recently, with all sorts of doctoral titles appearing. The faculty of medicine at the LMU can confer a Dr. biol. hom. on people who did not study medicine, but work in the field.

4th International Plagiarism Conference

I attended the 4th International Plagiarism Conference in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, England, this week, and presented a paper on my test cases for testing plagiarism detection systems. I had almost finished a very long version of this report when I wanted to find a YouTube link to add on the end. Since YouTube now insists that you use your Google account, I had to log out of my blog address, but continued typing. And so 2 hours of research and typing disappeared in a flash. I guess that I will need one different browser per Google "service" so that I don't mix them up. I'll try and retrieve from my brain:

Satisfaction - but not from the universities

H. Peter Gumm writes about the resolution of his plagiarism case that was reported here early last month. There was no active response on the part of either university involved about the plagiarism, but the publishers have removed the title from their catalog. This is a good sign, as I had speculated about whether this was a serious publisher or not. A serious publisher takes action when plagiarism is demonstrated, so they are rehabilitated in my eyes.