Keeping tabs on cheating

I tend to keep tabs open in my browser for weeks with interesting articles I want to explore in more depth. Then Firefox decides to update and crashes so miserably, that the tabs are gone. So I'll try to at least post them here. No promises that I can do this with any kind of regularity, like Retraction Watch does with its Weekend Reads.

• The Japan Times has an interesting article debunking an excuse typically used by students from the Far East: "Confcius made me do it." It seems that the difference between allusion and "literary theft" was well know many centuries ago.
  
  "If East Asian students and researchers plagiarize, it’s not because of some archaic cultural programming; it’s because modern institutional cultures tacitly condone plagiarism, or lack clear policies for explaining and combating it."
• In the New Scientist there was an interview with Shi-min Fang that published in 2012, who was awarded the Maddox prize for his work on exposing scientific misconduct in China.  It seems that there is a lot of controversy around his work.
• At the University College Cork in Ireland there was a spat about wide-spread contract cheating, as the Irish Times reports. Ireland is currently considering legislation to make advertising for or providing contract cheating services illegal.
• Down under, the weekly student newspaper of the University of Sydney, Australia,  Honi Soit reports that the university had considered using some anti-cheating software that was created by former University of Melbourne students, but have decided not to after a trial. The idea was to analyse typing patterns and use multiple login questions in order to make it harder for students to submit essays purchased from contract cheating sites. Some of the issues included the necessity to be connected to the Internet to write an essay, forcing students to write with this system and not the editor of their choice, and a massive invasion of privacy that includes tracking the locations of the users and comparing it with the location of their mobile phones. The software was felt to be impractical and invasive.
• Back in June the Daily Times reported that the doctorate of the prorector of the Comsats Institute of Information Technology has been revoked by Preston University.
• The former head of the Toronto school board lost his teaching certificate for plagiarism. According to The Globe and Mail, he has appealed the ruling and is willing to testify under oath about who helped him produce the plagiarisms.