Google censors link

Well, what does the morning's email bring? A letter from Google:

Notice of removal from Google Search

Due to a request under data protection law in Europe, we are no longer able to show one or more pages from your site in our search results in response to some search queries for names or other personal identifiers. Only results on European versions of Google are affected. No action is required from you.
These pages have not been blocked entirely from our search results, and will continue to appear for queries other than those specified by individuals in the European data protection law requests we have honored. Unfortunately, due to individual privacy concerns, we are not able to disclose which queries have been affected.
Please note that in many cases, the affected queries do not relate to the name of any person mentioned prominently on the page. For example, in some cases, the name may appear only in a comment section.
The following URLs have been affected by this action:
http://copy-shake-paste.blogspot.de/p/vroniplagwiki-scorecard.html

All right, that means that one of the following 36 persons who have either a dissertation, a habilitation or a textbook published under their own name have extensive text parallels with other works that are generally considered to be plagiarism, even if the university in question has not decided to withdraw the degrees:

Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg, Veronika Saß, Matthias Pröfrock, Silvana Koch-Mehrin, Georgios Chatzimarkakis, Bijan Djir-Sarai, Uwe Brinkmann, Margarita Mathiopoulos, Siegfried Haller, Jürgen Goldschmidt, Cornelia Eva Scott, Arne Heller, Martin Winkels, Daniel Volk, Ulf Teichgräber, Patrick Ernst Sensburg, Nalan Kayhan, Andreas Wolfgang Bonz, Michael Heun, Loukas A. Mistelis, Asso Omer Saiwani, Arne Herting, Nasrullah Memon, Bernhard Fischel, Bernd Holznagel, Pascal Schumacher, Thorsten Ricke, Jesu-Paul Manikonda, Rodrigo Herrera, Mareike Bonnekoh, Christian Huber, Ruth Angela Wernsmann, Qiang Fang, Dariusz Malan, Tristan Nguyen, or Alexandros Philippos Anastasiadis

It's called the Streisand effect, people.

You published something that contains unexplained text parallels. These text parallels have been documented publicly, in a review. Explain them in public. That's what we do in academia, we discuss and exchange arguments publicly.

Or as the yearly conference of German language and literature scholars put it in 1967, when they were protesting the decision of the University of Bonn to not rescind the doctorate of Pater Udo Nix which contained extensive plagiarism:

Die auf der Bochumer Tagung versammelten Hochschulgermanisten halten es für ihre Pflicht, sich von dieser an der Universität Bonn getroffenen Entscheidung nachdrücklich zu distanzieren. [. . . ] Wenn eine Rezension in einer unserer Fachzeitschriften gegen eine wissenschaftliche Veröffentlichung den Vorwurf des Plagiats erhebt, hat es als selbstverständlich zu gelten, daß diejenigen, die ein solcher Vorwurf trifft, in angemessener Weise dazu Stellung nehmen. Versuchen die Betroffenen, die Angelegenheit durch bloßes Stillschweigen zu erledigen, und bleibt dieses Verhalten auch noch ungerügt, so muß man fragen, was unser Rezensionswesen eigentlich noch wert sei und bis zu welchem Grade die Regeln wissenschaftlichen Anstands denn außer acht gesetzt werden dürfen. [. . . ] Angesichts einer solchen Häufung von Entlehnungen, wie sie im Falle Nix festzustellen ist, kann weder die Erklärung befriedigen, daß vorsätzliche Täuschung nicht eindeutig nachweisbar und daher bloße Fahrlässigkeit zu unterstellen sei, noch die Behauptung, daß die plagiierten Stellen für die Beurteilung der wissenschaftlichen Leistung irrelevant blieben. Auch wenn sie zuträfen, höben beide Feststellungen den Tatbestand nicht auf, daß die oben genannte wesentliche Voraussetzung für die Verleihung des Doktorgrades irrigerweise als gegeben angenommen wurde. Es wäre schlechthin verderblich, wenn in solchen Fällen die gesetzlichen Vorschriften in einer Weise ausgelegt würden, welche eben diejenigen Grundlagen wissenschaftlicher Forschung und Publikation bedroht, deren Sicherung die gesetzlichen Vorschriften zu dienen haben.
[Moser, H. (1968). Notiz. In: Zeitschrift f. dt. Philologie, Vol. 87, No. 1, pp. 312–316]

The scholars of German Letters gathered at the conference in Bochum feel that it is their duty to distance themselves from the decision reached by the University of Bonn. [. . . ] When a review of an academic paper is published in one of our academic periodicals and contains the accusation of plagiarism, it is taken for granted that the person such accused must respond in an appropriate manner. If the person in question tries to solve the matter by remaining silent, and if this behavior is not condemned, then one must ask oneself of what worth our system of reviews actually is and to what degree the rules of good academic conduct may be set aside. [. . . ] In the face of the sheer amount of borrowed material that can be determined in the case of Nix, it is not satisfactory to declare that it is impossible to prove beyond a shadow of doubt that the deception was not done with malice aforethought and thus only an accusation of negligence remains. It is also not satisfactory to assert that the plagiarized passages are irrelevant for the determination of the academic content. Even if this were so – it would not change in the least the fact that the above mentioned preconditions for granting a doctoral degree were erroneously assumed to have existed. It would be ruinous if in such cases the legalities were to be interpreted in such a manner as to threaten the exact same basic tenets of academic research and publication that they purport to uphold.[Selection and translation from my book False Feathers, p. 50]

Censorship of blogs

I recently discussed on my blog the issue of lawyers requesting take downs even for links to other sites. In this particular case (there are others to come) the lawyers felt that the page I was linking to was illegal.

I find this fascinating, as there has actually been litigation on this particular case that was decided by the Oberlandesgericht Karlsruhe in case 14 U 90/06 from August 4, 2006. If you read through the judgement, it is extremely clear: It was absolutely within the rights of this journal to publish what they did. So their page is not illegal, neither is linking to it.

MIR summarizes the case in German:

Ein Autor, der mit (wissenschaftlichen) Veröffentlichungen hervorgetreten ist, muss sich eine Überprüfung seiner Werke dahingehend gefallen lassen, ob es sich dabei um eine eigene geistige Leistung gehandelt hat. Die, das Persönlichkeitsrecht eines Betroffenen berührenden Recherchemaßnahmen, sind gerechtfertigt, wenn sie von einem vertretbaren Informationsinteresse (der Presse) getragen sind.
[An author who has stepped into the public sphere with a (scientific) publication must accept that his works will be examined by others in order to determine if they are his own intellectual works. The investigations are permissible, irrespective of the personal rights of the party involved, when they are carried out within reasonable bounds of informational interest, in this case, the press. - translation dww]

Since I currently do not have the time to pursue this particular case, I have removed the links in question. But we should probably at some point make it clear that removing something from the public is not the way to deal with such problems. Arguments, however, are always welcome.

Lawyers instead of arguments

One of the Alpha-Bloggers in Germany, Johnny Haeusler from Spreeblick, wrote the other day about the mounting legal costs of operating a blog that reports on and comments the news (Geld ausgeben mit Blogs). He's apparently already spent 10,000 € on legal fees fighting take-down notices from lawyers, although at least he runs ads and has income. People and companies don't like it when you say anything negative about them. They try and root out all of the reports about problems with their products or the deeds that they did and try to silence people.

I am quite allergic to people who give themselves out to be scientists (for example because they wrote a doctorate or publish scientific papers that turn out to be plagiarisms or to have cooked their data or some such) and who react to criticism or statement of fact by sending out the lawyers. I much prefer to see arguments. Don't threaten me, convince me!

I myself just had a tussle about an article that I wrote on this blog in October 2011 about a conference on good scientific practice in medicine at the Charité.  I noted that the journalist Hubert Rehm had spoken about a few cases, amongst them B.S.  (for more information, see Laborjournal (link removed), they have reported in depth on the case). A few weeks ago I received a letter from a Swiss law firm with so many names on the masthead, it took almost half of the first page. Take down the reference to B.S. immediately or else.

I consulted a lawyer, who noted that I am in a very special circumstance: I do research on good scientific practice, and in Germany a researcher is permitted to publish as they please, as long as it's not illegal. And it is never illegal to state the truth. All the same, the lawyer suggested that I tone down my sentence. So I did, and had the lawyers write an (expensive) letter to that effect.

What I don't understand is what these lawyers and their customers think that they are going to achieve by trying to silence everyone. Have they not heard of Barbara Streisand?

Update: On 2013-04-18 I removed the link to the Laborjournal article.  The lawyers insist that even linking to the publication that they consider to be illegal is not okay. By linking I am not assuming the position of the items I link to - I am reporting on what what was said and giving my readers the opportunity to decide for themselves. This is covered by the laws governing freedom of speech and the freedom of the press. I am not removing information because I made an error - I am making the changes clear while removing the identifying information because I do not wish to fight a legal battle on this particular issue.

Responsible conduct of research in academic medicine

I attended and spoke at a one-day conference "Responsible conduct of research in academic medicine - From neglect to action plan" at the Charité in Berlin today on good scientific practice. The speakers:

• Jens Georg Reich (Max-Delbrück-Center of Molecular Medicine, Berlin and German Ethikrat) spoke on "Ethic topics in modern biomedical research"
• Gretchen Brodnicki, J.D. (Dean for Faculty and Research Integrity, Harvard Medical School, USA)
  Coordinated approach to research integrity at Harvard Medical School - Lessons learned
• Ulrich Dirnagl (Center for Stroke Research Berlin, Department of Experimental Neurology, Charité)
  Why most published research findings are false: GSP to the rescue
• John C. Galland (Director, Division of Education and Integrity, Office of Research Integrity, US Dept. of Health and Human Services, Rockville MD, USA)
  Implementing and monitoring responsible conduct of research in academic medicine: The ORI experience
• Sabine Kleinert (Senior Executive Editor, The Lancet, London, UK and Vice-Chair of COPE (Committee on Publication Ethics))
  Plagiarism, duplicate publication and text recycling
• Hubert Rehm (Freelance Journalist, Freiburg, Germany)
  Research misconduct in the German medical system: Role of whistle blowing and investigative journalism

In the afternoon there were three sessions, one on "Teaching and implementing a culture of responsible conduct of research", one I gave with a colleague on "'GSP - Forensics': Tools and approaches to detect misconduct", and one on "Sanctioning misconduct in academic research".

The plenary sessions were held in the anatomy department in a steep lecture theater in wood with inkwells (!) [I thought all day that this would be a great place to put an electrical outlet]. Along the back row were what one participant noted was the data of the anatomists: a large collection of skulls.

My head is spinning from all the information I took in, here just a few points:

• The USA is lightyears ahead of Germany on Good Scientific Practice. They have training courses, GSP officers, procedures, national bodies, a cool interactive movie on avoiding research misconduct, great flowcharts on what to do if you suspect scientific misconduct, info material on avoiding plagiarism, etc.
• A national repository for original data is necessary.
• Training and procedures for dealing with allegations must be the top priority in Germany at the moment.
• John Galland had a cool formula for Research Excellence:
  
  RE = β1T + β2R + β3V +β4 C
  
  T = does tasks well
  R = builds strong relationships
  V = has a vision
  C = is a person of character
  
  The coefficients βi are between 0.0 and 1.0. He asserts that most researchers are at a RE factor of 0.8 and exhorts people to strive for 1.0 by working together.
• Hubert Rehm talked about a number of German scandals, I didn't know all of them: Nazi doctor Sigmund Rascher (the only person ever to be shot for scientific misconduct); Bernhard S*******, called the "P*******or" by Laborjournal (link removed); Austrian incontinence researcher Hannes Strasser accused of fabricating data; Nicolai Savaskan, doctor at the Charité accused of falsifying data.

It is a great start to have so many researchers talking about good scientific praxis!

Update: On 2013-03-20 I changed the wording for the sake of clarification on the last bullet point because of a lawyer's letter. 
Update 2:  The lawyers insist that even linking to the publication that they consider to be illegal is not okay. By linking I am not assuming the position of the items I link to - I am reporting on what what was said and giving my readers the opportunity to decide for themselves. This is covered by the laws governing freedom of speech and the freedom of the press. I am not removing information because I made an error - I am making the changes clear while removing the identifying information because I do not wish to fight a legal battle on this particular issue.