Linkspam #1

Due to other pressing projects I am not getting around to discussing all of the cases that should be discussed here. So I herewith steal borrow that most excellent idea of geekfeminism and will start posting linkspam at irregular intervals. No, the things I am linking to are not spam. I am just spamming my regular readers with some links that may or may not be interesting to them.

• The Journal of Nietzsche Studies has a long article, Telling the Same Story of Nietzsche’s Life, by Mark Anderson, with a number of rejoinders linked on the left hand side. It is not about plagiarism, but about a matching story and concludes: "[...] although a biographer must of necessity adhere to an accurate chronology of events, nothing compels a specific selection of facts, quotations, or vocabulary."
• Retraction Watch (which needs to be on your required reading list, anyway) documents the University of Frankfurt in Germany snapping at whistleblowers:
  German university calls whistleblower’s emails “dangerous”. This is quite a complicated case with personal insults and injuries being mixed in with scientific ones. Retraction Watch states:
  

  But we are also on the record insisting that institutions and journals take whistleblower allegations seriously, even if they are anonymous. So while we take the university at its word that it will “take any allegation of scientific dishonesty very seriously and its designated committee will thoroughly investigate any such accusation,” we really hope this letter isn’t an attempt to discourage future whistleblowing, or a precedent for why universities should ignore such allegations.

• I found this letter to the editor of Upsala Nya Tidningen (in Swedish) in January 2012 from students complaining about the media reporting on plagiarism. They feel that the reports on cheating are vastly exaggerated and that students caught are put on the stocks and treated as criminals [well, they did cheat, actually - dww] and the fault is of course with the government for not giving the universities enough money or instructional time or face time with professors. 
• Der Standard in Austria reports that the head of the Slovakian Christian Democrats Party (KDH), Jan Figel, is said to have committed plagiarism in his doctoral thesis, according to the Deutschen Presse-Agentur (dpa). Figel was Comissioner of Education for the EU from 2004-09 and Slovakian Minister of Transportation from 2010-12.  
• Ulrich Lichtenthaler is now up to six retractions.
• And then there is South Korean researcher Hyung-In Moon who appears to have used identity theft and identity fabrication in order to self-review his papers.

Many thanks to readers who send me links - I think this format is a good way to get some links out to people to find out more about these cases. Do keep sending them!