News from around the world

Again, just a few links to interesting topics from around the world.

• There has been a case of a Belgian sociologist at the KU Leuven festering since 2017, according to Google Translate's version of a Dutch Wikipedia article. He has apparently re-published papers of other researchers and published work of co-workers that was not yet published. According to an article in De Standaard from 23 April 2019, he resigned his position as head of the "Center for Political Science" in 2018, but remains a full professor at the university.
• The Finnish National Board on Research Integrity (TENK) has finally investigated cases of academic misconduct, mostly plagiarism, in 27 master't theses from universities of applied sciences, according to YLE, the Finnish broadcasting body. Most of them contained clear plagiarism. Dr. Erja Moore (author of the blog "Plagiointitutkija" in Finnish) chose the theses more or less at random from the open access thesis repository, investigated them, prepared documentation, and informed the universities in question of the problems. TENK Secretary General Sanna Kaisa Spoof has stated that the situation is serious and worrying. Dr. Moore will be presenting her results at the ENAI (European Network for Academic Integrity) "Plagiarism Across Europe and Beyond" Conference in Vilnius, Lithuania, June 19-21, 2019.
• VroniPlag Wiki just published a documentation (in German) of text parallels found in the doctoral dissertation of the current German Federal Minister for Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth, Franziska Giffey. The press has been reporting on this since they "discovered" the work-in-progress in February 2019.

Various Links

I must have about a dozen tabs open with things I want to post, but no time to comment. So here goes, a May Day collection:

• Nature reported back in February 2018 about researchers in South Korea helping their children or underage relatives to get into university by adding them as co-authors to their papers. 
• Prishtina Insight published a detailed article in February 2018 in English about a VroniPlag Wiki case (Ama) involving a professor from Kosovo who had studied in Bremen.  
• The Guardian reports in April 2018 a massive increase in cheating at university. I do assume that this is due to better reporting, not necessarily an increase in cheating per se. 
• The court case that was filed by Lm (a VroniPlag Wiki case) against the University of Hanover has finally finished with a judgement that the university was within its rights to rescind the doctorate (in German). Another judgement (in German) in another case of a German university rescinding a doctorate for plagiarism (Aeh) also found the university to be within their rights. One would think that with the dozen or so judgements in favor of the universities, people would think twice about filing suit.
• Retraction Watch published an interview with Ana Marušić about "Corrected and Republished Articles".
• In February 2018, a judge in Croatia sued the national ethics panel after it found him to have plagiarizen in his doctoral thesis from 2013, according to Science.
• The Belgian de Standaard published an article in March 2018 (in Dutch) about the Louven university being forced to retract publications that had seen a bit too much of Photoshop 
• The World Conference on Research Integrity 2019 will be held in Hong Kong.  
• A blog article in French at Rédaction Médicale et Scientifique writes about a couple of French cases of academic misconduct and another article there is about salami slicing.

Belgian Rector resigns over plagiarized speech

The rector of the Free University of Brussels in Belgium, Alain Delchambre, gave a speech on the opening day of the academic year on Sept. 19, 2014 that turned out to have been heavily plagiarized from a number of sources, among them former French president Jacques Chirac, according to media reports (French: Le Monde [paywall], La Libre [with a good synopsis of the plagiarized portions], Flemish: Staandard ). The speech was written by a speech writer who was summarily fired on the spot.

German Spiegel Online reports that Delchambre has resigned, as the university takes a hard line against plagiarists among the students, and Delchambre felt that this step was in the best interests of the institution. Of course, it took a media outrage to encourage him to take this step, but this is, perhaps, a warning signal to others: If you must use a speechwriter, make it clear that plagiarism (from the Wikipedia or elsewhere) is not going to be tolerated.

Flemish Criminology Professor Suspended for Plagiarism

NRC reports that the University of Groningen (in Holland) has suspended Flemish criminology professor Patrick van Calster on account of plagiarism in his doctorate. The doctorate was completed at the Free University of Brussels in 2005. Groningen has also published a press release that elaborates their zero-tolerance for plagiarism policy. 

The VU Brussels determined, according to the Belgian Flemish-language newspaper de morgan, that his dissertation on the complexity of criminal organizations was a blatant plagiarism of a popular management handbook and has rescinded his doctorate. 

Local media had previously reported on the case without naming van Calster. Now that the VU Brussels has reached a decision, they also formally informed the current employer of van Calster, Groningen.

This is an interesting step, as to my knowledge universities that revoke degrees do not necessarily take action to inform potentially interested parties of their decision. In this case, this in an international question, as Groningen is in the Netherlands and Brussels in Belgium.

UK academic resigned Belgian post in 2010

I happened upon an article from 2010 in the Times Higher Education supplement about a UK academic who resigned his post at the Belgian Catholic University at Leuven after charges of plagiarism surfaced. A Finnish member of parliament for the Social Democrats, Ilkka Kantola, found tens of pages of his dissertation in a paper published by Martin Stone, a professor of philosophy, according to the THE.

The Voice, an international student's newspaper, requested that the university break through the silence that has surrounded the issue and the resignation of Stone. They want to discuss what happened openly, since there appear to be many more papers by Stone that were plagiarized.

I have heard rumors that Leuven is currently considering a sort of amnesty for academics at the school found to have participated in academic misconduct. This article (in Flemish) seems to confirm this.

"Zolang in wetenschappelijke middens de onvoorwaardelijke belangstelling voor wat waar en relevant is, ondergeschikt blijkt aan de huidige prestatiecriteria, zal gelijk welke andere regelgeving de geest niet in de fles doen."
(in etwa: das bedingungslose Interesse für was wahr und relevant ist, darf den heutigen Leistungskritierien nicht untergeordnet werden)