This and that

Again, I'm posting some links with a short description, as the links are piling up with no time to spend digging deeper.

• Ireland: The Irish Times reports that the chairman of the Institute of Technology Tralee is said to be stepping down while an investigation into plagiarism found in his Master's thesis is investigated.
• Canada: The Windsor Star reports that the dean for the Faculty of Education at the University of Windsor, Ontario, Canada, has taken administrative leave without pay. This is linked to an unspecified "academic integrity breach". 
• Utah, USA: The Salt-Lake Tribune reports on a case of English as a Second Language teachers at the Southern Utah University permitting their students to plagiarize. 
• PNAS published a report by Fang, Steen and Casadevall: "Misconduct accounts for the majority of retracted scientific publications"
  Abstract: "A detailed review of all 2,047 biomedical and life-science research articles indexed by PubMed as retracted on May 3, 2012 revealed that only 21.3% of retractions were attributable to error. In contrast, 67.4% of retractions were attributable to misconduct, including fraud or suspected fraud (43.4%), duplicate publication (14.2%), and plagiarism (9.8%). Incomplete, uninformative or misleading retraction announcements have led to a previous underestimation of the role of fraud in the ongoing retraction epidemic. The percentage of scientific articles retracted because of fraud has increased ∼10-fold since 1975. Retractions exhibit distinctive temporal and geographic patterns that may reveal underlying causes. "
• Germany:  An informative article in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung on professors who plagiarize from their students.
• Germany: Transparency International will be looking into corruption in German universites, Spiegel Online reports. 
• Germany: The DFG has announced results in three accusations of academic misconduct:
• Silvia Bulfone-Paus, FZ Borstel, may not apply for funding for three years and must give up all her official research duties with the DFG
• Dr. Elena Bulanova, FZ Borstel, may not apply for funding for five years for manipulating data
• PD Dr. Volker Korz, Universität Magdeburg, has been found not to have used good scientific practice, but to have not crossed the line that would entail sanctions.