Links

Links galore!

It seems like time is passing so quickly and I never get around to posting the links that have been collecting as tabs in my browser. So I'm cleaning out my tabs, here's the first round of links:

• Top Chinese politicians have been found to have plagiarized in their PhDs, report the Hong Kong Free Press and Digital Journal. 
• The German weekly magazine Der Spiegel had to admit that one of their prize-winning journalists, Claas Relotius, was actually fabricating or embellishing his stories. They published a list of the fabricated stories, as then
  The story broke when two residents of Fergus Falls, Minnesota, USA began fact-checking the story Relotius published about the town: "And yet, he reported on very little actual truth about Fergus Falls life. In 7,300 words he really only got our town’s population and average annual temperature correct, and a few other basic things, like the names of businesses and public figures, things that a child could figure out in a Google search."
• A Houston-based company that sold completed assignments primarily to Chinese-speaking students in Australia and New Zealand has settled out of court in New Zealand: Case described in Stuff, settlement at Radio New Zealand. The company is still in existence, because what they do is not (yet) illegal in many countries. The Times Higher Education published an article in March 2019 on the problem, identifying international students as the problem, although in the interview with Tracey Bretag she makes it clear that it is not a problem with international students per se, but with students who do not have the language skills necessary to do university work.   
• There's a app for that - Quarz reports that in South Korea ghostwriters can be hired by app.

There will be more to come!

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.