…and this is a 
One author responds
Category: Academics
Posted on: February 11, 2008 7:53 AM, by PZ Myers
I've received email from one of the authors of that bafflingly bizarre paper on mitochondria. I'm still confused.
Dear Dr. Myers
First of all, I am very sorry for that trouble for you.
I found the serious mistakes in the paper during the process of edits, which I confused between the early drafts and the latest versions: I did not check the use of the sentences in the references (more than 200 references). Finally I made serious error to make the final version.
In order to rectify an error, I requested to retract the paper to the editorial office of Proteomics.
Thank you very much for indicating this carelessness.
Based on this good experience, I will study science and prepare a manuscript with caution.
Again, I am very sorry for that trouble for you.With best regards,
Jin Han
The author is clearly not a native speaker of English, but I can't criticize that — his English is far better than my Korean. The explanation that this was just a confusion of an early draft simply doesn't work. We are talking about a peculiar title and a specific, grammatically correct assertion made in the abstract that is not supported in the text, except by a claim of a "mighty creator". Where did that come from? One of the authors? Someone who assisted them in polishing the language? The instance of plagiarism are also left dangling.
It also doesn't address the other concern here. If we accept the idea that Warda and Han made a clumsy mistake and submitted the wrong draft, one that was full of errors, we're still left with the question of how that mess made it through peer review to the stage just prior to publication. Something broke somewhere, and one unfortunate consequence of the retraction of the paper by the authors is that we may not find out what.
The authors don't need to apologize, especially not to me. All I'm interested in is tracking down how a paper that is so thick with warning signs could get so far through the review process.
Education & Careers
Comments
If we accept the idea that Warda and Han made a clumsy mistake and submitted the wrong draft, one that was full of errors, we're still left with the question of how that mess made it through peer review to the stage just prior to publication.
Not only that, but we need to wonder how the hell a reference to a might creator made it into *any* draft of that paper. I mean, it really makes one wonder about the quality of their research if they're needing to invoke a might creator to explain their find findings and then editing it out of the paper in subsequent drafts. Lord knows people can't generally be held too accountable for what's in their first drafts, but this is distressing no matter when it was said.
Posted by: Jake | February 11, 2008 8:14 AM
Quite astounding how I managed to leave the 'y' out of "mighty creator" twice in that above post.
Posted by: Jake | February 11, 2008 8:16 AM
Jake (#1) is dead on there (and no worries, per your comment #2, about typos - easy to do and many of us make similar errors - one has to distinguish between trivial and substantive mistakes after all).
As commenters have noted on other threads, how the whole package - plagiarism plus the ID-like language - got missed or added (?) by the whole review process is truly odd. I've never seen a case quite like this where the conceptual framework (ID) is "not even wrong" and the substance is a combo of plagiarised work and word salad. Especially for a reasonably high impact journal at that.
Posted by: stephen murphy | February 11, 2008 8:34 AM
It's certainly possible that they could have cut and paste chunks out of other papers as part of the writing process in a foreign language. That's plausible. But the other stuff? It's hard to figure that part of the scenario out.
That said, it's a massive failure of the peer review system. That said, when you entire system depends on volunteer labour and altruism (often in service of highly profitable publishing companies), it's bound to fail from time to time.
Posted by: IanR | February 11, 2008 8:59 AM
Wow, well it sounds like this guy maybe wants to try to redeem himself a bit before it becomes clear that the paper has been retracted - let it be known that he choose to retract it himself (who knows if that's true or not).
This really is unfortunate though. As I don't know these authors at all, I guess that it is possible that someone who translated the manuscript for them is the person(s) responsible for interjecting all of the plagiarism and 'almighty creator' crap into it. For sure though the reviewers of the manuscript or the editor are definitely responsible as well, whether directly or indirectly who knows. On another note, how strange for the author to apologize to PZ for causing him trouble. Just strange.
Posted by: LisaJ | February 11, 2008 9:02 AM
In late spring, which is term-paper-grading time, I make sure I have a box of tissues on my office desk. That way, when I sit a student down and show them the evidence that they've plagiarized their term paper, I can hand them a tissue.
Once they've wiped away the tears, they usually say something that sounds a lot like Han's letter: "I must have turned in an early draft by mistake, I meant to just use those passages as notes and revise them later, I don't know how that could have gotten in there." Sometimes they even try "Thank you very much for indicating this carelessness." Then I tell them that as part of the university's policy on academic dishonesty, a letter will be sent to their parents, and I hand them another tissue.
I don't think we can blame the reviewers or editor for not catching the plagiarism; until you've been burned once and start looking for it everywhere, it's hard to catch. I used Turnitin.com, a commercial service that compares text to their database of student papers, papers from term paper mills, and the Internet, and it only found two of the seven plagiarized sources that are now known (see http://udel.edu/~mcdonald/wardahan.pdf ). The best way to detect plagiarism is by picking out suspiciously well-written phrases and Googling them, and that's pretty tedious. I don't think we can expect reviewers (who work for free) or editors (who work for relatively little) to go to all that trouble for every manuscript.
How the creationism got through the review process is another story; either the reviewers and editor were asleep, or Warda and Han slipped it in during the final revision. It's interesting that Han's letter says nothing about that.
Posted by: John H. McDonald | February 11, 2008 9:07 AM
To be fair, this has to be analyzed in the context of linguistics. I know nothing about korean. But I know a little tiny bit about Chinese. Having a translation error like this might be possible with Chinese (i.e., the meaning being about intelligent design getting inserted somehow by accident).
I'm not saying that this is likely. But it should be ruled out.
Posted by: Greg Laden | February 11, 2008 9:21 AM
I'd like to echo what John just said, and reinforce the fact these authors not only cut-and-pasted massive amounts from other sources, they did not cite these same sources despite a bibliography of over 200 citations. We're actually asked to believe the plagiarism is coincidental to the not sourcing. Sorry, but in name, and publicly, I call complete B.S. on that. These authors do not deserve respect- they are liars and thieves.
Posted by: Jay Clayton | February 11, 2008 9:23 AM
I've seen more comprehensible English on Thai T-shirts at the lcal Tesco here (and yes, my Thai would be so much more laughable). Yet the paper is in proper English (if incomprehensible in other ways). Who proofread that, and read the paper plus the correspondence from the author? And then approved it? Who didn't see the obvious disconnect?
Posted by: QrazyQat | February 11, 2008 9:24 AM
I'm not saying this happened, but I wonder if the "mighty creator" could be a translation error, particularly considering the generally broken English shown above (and again, no criticism of the author--as PZ pointed out, he speaks English much better than I speak Korean).
But I guess even the phrase "major cause" has enough similarities to "mighty creator" that such a mistranslation is possible.
The real question is how it got past English-speaking editors and peer review.
Posted by: Ahcuah | February 11, 2008 9:29 AM
Looks like computer science masters project!
Bob
Posted by: Bob O'H | February 11, 2008 9:33 AM
I can't resist piling on with the obvious:
"Based on this good experience, I will study science and prepare a manuscript with caution."
That certainly seems like a good idea, although most people start studying science before they submit articles to major journals.
Posted by: windy | February 11, 2008 9:33 AM
Isn't it the editors of Proteomics who apparently need to "study science" a bit more?
Posted by: Steve LaBonne | February 11, 2008 9:36 AM
No offense to the Korean reviewer of this paper, but if he can't write English very well, how can he truly claim to understand the details of a paper written in English? I suspect his problems with the English language probably played into this in no small way.
Posted by: writerdd | February 11, 2008 9:47 AM
#14-- I don't disagree with your conclusion, but bear in mind that active and passive use of a foreign language are very different skills. I can read Latin with ease, Icelandic, German and Sanskrit with difficulty, but I would be hard pressed to produce a grammatical, idiomatic letter in any of those languages.
Posted by: Dead Language Dude | February 11, 2008 9:59 AM
#14
He's not the reviewer, he's the author.
Posted by: Sigmund | February 11, 2008 10:03 AM
WATERGATE!!! WATERGATE!!! WATERGATE!!!
There are at least 3 issues here.
1. The plagiarism from multiple sources.
2. The insertion of religious theories having nothing to do with the subject and not supported by the data at random points. The ID/creo nonsense.
3. What broke down at Proteomics? Who knew and when did they know? Accidents like Watergate and this really aren't accidents. The scientific community deserves an explanation otherwise Proteomics will be relegated to the lunatic fringes as an unreliable source.
Of the 3, the third issue is most important. This is a subversion of the norms of science and science publication, important processes. My guess with little evidence other than the incident, someone in the Proteomics loop is a creationist pushing a religious agenda. It could even be Dunn, the editor. Need an investigation and the facts need to made public.
Posted by: raven | February 11, 2008 10:03 AM
maybe the author wrote what he wanted to say to you in korean and translated it using a machine translator. that might explain his saying
'i am sorry for that trouble for you'.
can someone who knows korean tell me if this is the case?
Posted by: croor | February 11, 2008 10:08 AM
*snickering* BUSTED!!!!!!!
It's funny watching them backpedal on this one. But I wonder if the scientist in question actually did have a good paper that was butchered and had the offending bits injected and is incredibly EMBARRASSED.
Posted by: Jason B | February 11, 2008 10:20 AM
John,
Why must a students parents be involved in their adult child's discipline? Do you send letters to parents of students in their 30's or 40's or 50's or older or only if they are younger? As someone who just graduated from college at the age of 45 I find the policy rude and perhaps illegal. It should be up to the student what to tell their parents when they get an F in a class, it is part of growing up. And if their parents are not paying they have no right whatsoever to know unless their child tells them.
Posted by: KevinC | February 11, 2008 10:37 AM
Unfortunately once you take out the "mighty creator" bits and the bits that have been caught as plagiarism there doesn't seem to be enough left to make up a good sentence, never mind a whole paper.
Posted by: Lilly de Lure | February 11, 2008 10:37 AM
Creationists typically suck at everything intellectual. While most are true believers, and it is uncertain whether they are creationist due to incompetence, or if it's the other way around, well, let's say that they're just not very good at reviewing science.
Why didn't this particular episode become a persecution issue a la Expelled (too bad the plagiarism was found before a river of crocodile tears had been shed over their "persecution")? The plagiarism, of course. But what a surprise, eh? The wisdom of the mighty creator in the same paper as a bunch of cut and pastes. That's so, so, Dembski-like.
See a creationist paper, and you know something went wrong, whether shepherded through the peer review process, or whatever unfathomable mistakes were made at Proteomics. Ethical violations are to be expected wherever creationism/ID raise its ugly head, the first and most obvious ethical violation of science being that these people don't care about requiring evidence prior to coming to a conclusion.
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/2kxyc7
Posted by: Glen Davidson | February 11, 2008 10:52 AM
My laptop was stolen from a locked lab shortly before papers were due. I thought the situation was a little fishy considering the antiquated nature of my machine (really just a word processor.) So I whined and moaned about how I had no other copies of my paper and how I would have to start from scratch.
I had a jump-drive with my work on it.
I finished my paper, turned it in and waited.
The person who stole my machine turned in my paper almost completely unchanged. I would like to say there were dung and crayon additions, but there really weren't.
After the thief was expelled I pressed charges for theft of my machine and recieved restitution for the original cost of my laptop.
These people deserve whatever comes to them.
Posted by: Abstruse | February 11, 2008 11:10 AM
Writing a scientific paper in English and taking care of the correspondence (he's the corresponding author!) should qualify as ACTIVE use...
Posted by: windy | February 11, 2008 11:11 AM
#14: That is exactly my point. As non native English speaker, this is highly suspicious to me. Yes, of course Spanish is much closer to English than Korean is, but I bet that Korea has better English teaching than Venezuela. I am not sure if this person is even feigning extremely poor English, since to understand a complex paper in English you need a very good level and even if you cannot write very well, as # 15 says, you must know that what you are writing is awful, as I realize that this message is not proper English, but, much better than Han's letter.
I think Han is trying to feign extremely poor English. If he would be so embarassed to write a letter to P.Z., would not he check the grammar and spelling? When I write an important e-mail I try to get it reviewed by somebody whose English is better than mine or who is a native English speaker before I hit "send". This might be paranoia, but, together with the fact that he remains silent about the ID part and silent about plagiarism, makes it more plausible.
To state it bluntly: The level of English required to understand a paper on the subject and be asked to do a review (and having published other papers before, this guy is no novice!) is way above this letter's level. And again, it does not explain what happened. Even if this author is honest and his excellent paper got caught by something, this does not explains his awful English in this communication.
#3 said: "I've never seen a case quite like this where the conceptual framework (ID) is "not even wrong".
How about this?:
"Housing in Pyramid Counteracts Neuroendocrine and Oxidative Stress Caused by Chronic Restraint in Rats"
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17342239?ordinalpos=1&itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_RVAbstractPlusDrugs1
This paper is indexed in Medline. And a lot of quack sites use it to promote superstition and prove it has accepted by science. What is worse, the journal where it was published, eCAM, evidence based Complementary and Alternative Medicine, is published by Oxford Press and has published tons of similar bullshit, including papers by a local scammer, known scientologist who claims to cure AIDS, Cancer, Diabetes, Dengue and almost any known disease. Now this guy claims that "Oxford" recognizes his work (Papers where he quotes Ron Hubbard as part of his new "theory"), and since we, the critics have no papers to the date, he claims to be a new Galileo. This guy, José Olalde, is an Engineer with zero training in Biology or Medicine, but, despite that, he is part of the editorial board of the journal.
It really pisses me off to see these travesties of peer reviewing, but it pisses me more when they are used to steal from people, to hurt, deceive and give fake hope to them.
If anybody is interested in more details about this "journal" and its quackery and about our national quackery, here is more extensive account:
http://globallyconnected.blogspot.com/2007/07/exposing-some-quacks.html
PS: Please take a look, all these crap-papers are indexed in Medline making claims as wild as Han's paper and are being used to deceive and make harm.
Posted by: Guido | February 11, 2008 11:38 AM
I got that email from Han too, but it seriously lacks explanation to multiple issues here. I do hope that there will be a Nature or Science op-ed on this scandal accompanied by a real investigation.
Posted by: Attila Csordas | February 11, 2008 12:05 PM
Isn't a more appropriate Angel quote this one:
"Are you crazy? I saw that movie - even the priest died!"
Posted by: Amy | February 11, 2008 12:06 PM
Not sure how that happened, that comment was meant for the exorcism post!
Posted by: Amy | February 11, 2008 12:09 PM
I don't know Korean (aside from the rudimentary amount required to order a beer or tell a cab driver where to drop me off), but I have spent a year in Seoul teaching English to Koreans, and my wife is still an ESOL teacher who deals with Korean students on a regular basis. I can tell you that this phrase -- and the whole text of the letter to PZ -- is entirely consistent with what I'd expect a Korean who is not fluent in English to produce. You don't need to imagine a freaky machine-translation to account for this result.
As for...
...I'll note that quite aside from linguistic concerns, there are cultural issues at play: There's a very strong impulse in Korean culture to defer to authority figures, and especially to teachers. Thus, Han's promise to "study science" should be seen as a formal gesture of humility and deference to PZ, rather than a confession of ignorance. (Which doesn't mean, of course, that he's not ignorant.)
None of this bears on the validity or intellectual honesty of the paper, but it's always a good idea to understand the potential for cross-cultural misunderstandings.
Posted by: Bill Dauphin | February 11, 2008 12:14 PM
#16: He's not the reviewer, he's the author.
He's the coauthor (if the word "author" even applies) and from the looks of it, he had no clue what was in that paper: "I will study science...." Hah.
I suspect Warda for concocting this thing and taking Han along for the ride. That doesn't get Han off the hook for endorsing this garbage.
Presuming they are guilty as charged, I want no less than their expulsion/firing, an apology from their departments, and a full explanation from the journal.
Posted by: aporeticus | February 11, 2008 12:20 PM
The story is in
The Harvard Crimson this morning.
Posted by: menglander | February 11, 2008 12:44 PM
#6: It's my understanding that FERPA prohibits the type of parental notification that you describe. I'm surprised if your college would still have that as a policy, because it would be counter to federal law. It's generally not allowed to discuss anything about the academic performance of someone over the age of 18 with anyone they haven't given express written permission for, and in some cases it isn't even done then just to be on the safe side. There have been some challenges to it, some very justified (like notifying when a 19 year old has flunked out and not shown up to classes for weeks), but I don't think any of them have won. I can see where a formal letter of censure would be sent to the student's official address, but it would have to be addressed to the student him or herself, not the parents.
Posted by: Carlie | February 11, 2008 12:45 PM
Posted by: sparc | February 11, 2008 12:50 PM
I'm fairly sure that's just an aspect of oriental culture, and I wouldn't attach any weight to it.
But for the rest, I see a complete failure to actually address any of the main issues. Lack of English writing ability doesn't explain it. He doesn't even try. With two days of hard work I'm damn sure I could do a better job of addressing them in Spanish, and I've never written any Spanish in my life. It would be horribly ungrammatical, but it would at least have most of the necessary nouns and verbs in there somewhere.
This implies to me one of two things:
- either he knows he has been caught and is hoping that a bit of weaseling will rescue his career;
- or he's so clueless that he had no hope of a career anyway.
That's unusually harsh for me, but I think it's fair nonetheless.
And the peer-review mystery remains ...
Posted by: Stephen | February 11, 2008 12:52 PM
Bob at #11,
The problem with automating plagiarism detection by breaking up a document into phrases, then automating Google searches for those phrases, is that Google really, really doesn't want Google searches done by scripts (they want humans to look at the ads, after all), and they have the programmer brainpower to prevent it. If they wanted to develop GoogleCopyCheck, it would take them about one afternoon.
KevinC at #20,
I don't know why my university notifies the parents when a student is found guilty of academic dishonesty. There are very strict policies that professors and administrators can't discuss a student's grades, etc., with the parents without the written permission of the student (it's a violation of a federal law known as FERPA), but then when there's academic dishonesty, a letter goes to the parents. I don't know why that's legal, and it's not a policy I agree with.
Posted by: John H. McDonald | February 11, 2008 12:54 PM
If Warda wrote everything *and* listed him as the corresponding author without his knowledge, why wouldn't he reply "oh fuck, I had no idea", or whatever the equivalent is in Korean?
Posted by: windy | February 11, 2008 1:08 PM
Has anyone checked to see if "mighty creator" is some sort of idiom in Korean that only seems to be religious when translated literally? (Not that it would explain the rest of the problems.)
Posted by: John Pieret | February 11, 2008 1:12 PM
Just to reiterate a few things, the fault here lies firmly on the side of Proteomics. I sent an email to the editor in chief and he replied with a stock response. I suggested that they reveal exactly how such a paper would reach the point of publication in order to prevent such a thing from happening again at another journal, and he said he and the board would take my suggestion under consideration (I think he only responded because I work in a good proteomics lab and told him that I - and by implication the rest of my lab - would no longer be reading the journal).
Another thought is why were these people asked to write a review on this topic. Usually the editors request reviews from people. No one has ever heard of them, and yet they were asked to write a review for a journal in a field that is different from theirs? They are clearly not in the proteomics field. I'd also like to know why they were asked to write it in the first place.
DS
Posted by: Drunkensci | February 11, 2008 1:21 PM
I'm wondering if we might be seeing the first stealth paper submission. It may be possible to submit papers with reasonable discussions for peer review, then switch to the IDiotic version when submitting the final draft that supposedly has dealt with the reviewers' comments. If the editor is not on his/her toes that might work for a short period.
Posted by: Randy | February 11, 2008 1:25 PM
Its weak and doesn't explain all of the things wrong with the paper of course, but I can see how bad translations of early drafts can lead to a problem like this. In my experience, Japanese in particular when you translate some correspondence word for word has all sorts of long flowery metaphors in its phrasing left over, and it just doesn't make a lot of sense because of the colloquialism factor of how they're used in the language. It takes extensive work to translate the meanings as well as just words.
Posted by: Karey | February 11, 2008 1:30 PM
You guys are being so understanding of the plight of non-Anglo authors, it's giving me all sorts of ideas for my next paper. "Dear Editor; I have no idea what you mean by 'crude ethnic slur against Swedes', it must be a problem caused by a literal translation from a Finnish idiom..."
Posted by: windy | February 11, 2008 1:35 PM
one scenario on which our korean friend would feel suitably embarrassed, but not feel the need to fess up to the IDiotry:
the "mighty creator" line was already in some piece that he (han) plagiarized uncritically, perhaps without even noticing that it puts forward an ID line.
re-read the "mighty creator" paragraph, and you may notice that, at least so far as prose goes, it is fairly competent. one explanation could be that neither han nor warda wrote it.
i realize this is far-fetched (that they happened to plagiarize a piece that slipped in some creationist nonsense.) but we know they plagiarized quite a lot. and there is no reason why they should have restricted their plagiarizing to articles published in peer-reviewed journals.
so, here's another possible line of research: are there any creationist/ID'ers out there who like the phrase "fingerprints of a mighty creator" or the like? are there any creationists who are already fixated on mitochondria, and might have written this sort of thing, perhaps circulating it without publishing it?
it would be very sad if han were simply a run-of-the-mill plagiarist who happened to plagiarize something with creationist nonsense. okay, maybe not that sad--maybe even a little comical in a way. but a bit unfortunate, if true, to get busted for creationism when all you intended was a little innocent intellectual-property theft.
i mean, i know that in my own case, at least, i would much rather be found guilty of intellectual property theft than of creationism.
anyhow--since there are so many mysteries here, i just thought i'd toss out this hypothesis.
Posted by: kid bitzer | February 11, 2008 1:38 PM
The editor Dunn has got some explaining to do. Three possibilities:
1. Dunn and/or the reviewers are creos pushing their agenda.
2. Dunn and/or the reviewers are asleep at the wheel and acceptance of papers for Proteomics is a random walk.
3. The authors managed to game the system somehow, maybe adding nonsense at the prepublication proofreading.
Option 3 is unlikely, option 2 possible, option 1 most ominous. Watergate wasn't an accident, why should this be any different? Who knew and when did they know?
Posted by: raven | February 11, 2008 1:41 PM
OK, I hesitated to do this, but Jin just sent out another form email to me (I also received the first one), reacting to my informing him I was informing other journals of the charges of plagiarism against him.
Here it is (sorry for no clever formatting)
Dear Sir,
Thank you very much for everything!
I hope that I keep in touch with you regarding to Science.
Can I communicate with you from now?
With best regards,
Jin
Posted by: Jay Clayton | February 11, 2008 1:54 PM
#43 : "Thank you very much for everything!
I hope that I keep in touch with you regarding to Science.
Can I communicate with you from now?"
Anyone else read that and think of GLaDOS?
Posted by: Ray | February 11, 2008 2:36 PM
EPIC FAIL
Posted by: Owlmirror | February 11, 2008 2:46 PM
Ray: If the paper and the correspondence is a product of a clever AI level code, well then we have the first functional ID believer AI fake scientist that can pass the Peer Review Turing Test, but not the science blogoshpere. :)
Posted by: Attila Csordas | February 11, 2008 2:53 PM
I was surprised tha DO'L at UD missed the paper. Luckily, one can always count on Sal Cordova. Over at young cosmos celebrated this paper on February 8th:
Obviously this is not enough, later he writes:Posted by: sparc | February 11, 2008 2:58 PM
I don't buy the explanation either. If I were to write a review in Spanish, you can bet I wouldn't start by preparing a draft made up of entire paragraphs lifted from other papers. I would have a native speaker review the grammar and vocabulary, but I would certainly know what I was talking about. Scholarship should not be lost in the translation. The statement of retraction in Proteomics should clearly describe what went wrong, and credit the authors of the various sources that were copied without citation.
Posted by: J | February 11, 2008 3:04 PM
I noticed that "Creationist" has the same syllable count as "Aperture", and this kinda just fell out from there:
Darwinist liars!
I'm making a note here:
EPIC FAIL
It's hard to overstate my irritation
Creationist Science:
We say that you can't
because we can
For the good of all of us
So God won't send us to Hell
But there's no sense crying over every mistake
You just keep on trying 'til the Darwinists break
And the science that's done
looks like a lot of fun
Until you actually check the facts
Posted by: Owlmirror | February 11, 2008 3:04 PM
Has anyone else noticed that over at PIMM several comments with suspiciously bad English have been defending the paper and accusing those criticizing it of "propaganda" and bad "tone"?
Posted by: Wes | February 11, 2008 3:07 PM
Continuing from above:
Posted by: Wes | February 11, 2008 3:09 PM
I don't see anything inherently wrong with notifying the parents of a student caught plagiarizing. If our goal is to discourage future acts of plagiarism, telling at student's parents is probably pretty darn effective and less harsh than suspension or expulsion.
Students' marks are rightly confidential, but lawbreaking should not be. Intellectual honesty is a basic "law" of any university. I don't have any right to confidentiality if I have been found guilty of a crime. We don't keep cases of doping in sports secret. We consider any embarrassment that a guilty suffers to be a desirable contribution to general and specific deterrence. Furthermore, the public and victims or potential victims in particular are entitled to know that appropriate measures have been taken against the rulebreaker.
So I wouldn't bother informing the parents directly; I would simply publish names, offenses, and punishments of those found guilty. Plagiarizing students are probably more amenable to reform by shaming than many criminals. Let them experience the disapproval they have earned from their peers, their professors, and their families. What reason is there to treat academic theft differently than other harmful acts?
Posted by: Barb | February 11, 2008 3:16 PM
One thing in regards to the non-native English speaker - I've seen noted scientists give lectures in English, not realizing that their whole talk was off by a slide or two, since they were simply phonetically reading their talk. Someone might be relying heavily on a in-house (aka grad student) translating services, and not realizing what is happening to their paper (or that half the paper was borrowed).
Posted by: mu | February 11, 2008 3:23 PM
I don't see how the process of translation of an original manuscript would introduce plagiarized sections not in the original draft.
All this is really smells bad to me. I just can't see any plausible explanation that doesn't make the original authors culpable of plagiarism and bad science. And that is completely disregarding the appalling lack of checks and balances in the journal's editorial process. (PZ is right, of course, that this is the real issue -- there are plenty of nutbars around who might submit lousy, crazy. plagiarized papers, but the journal should catch them before they get anywhere near publication.)
Posted by: Tulse | February 11, 2008 3:51 PM
WTF?
Posted by: noncarborundum | February 11, 2008 3:57 PM
owlmirror, you rule! Let me chime in:
Darwinist liars!
I'm making a note here:
EPIC FAIL
It's hard to overstate my irritation
Creationist Science:
We say that you can't
because we can
For the good of all of us
So God won't send us to Hell
But there's no sense crying over every mistake
You just keep on trying 'til the Darwinists break
And the science that's done
looks like a lot of fun
Until you actually check the facts
I'm not even honest
I'm being insincere right now
I claim Darwinism leads to Nazis
and racists and death camps for the Jews
afterwards I smile because
I have such hatred for truth
Misrepresenting data
makes for beautiful lies
'cause there is no greater
way of shielding our eyes
from the damage we've done
and the victories we've won
over people who do
check the facts
Posted by: Eric Saveau | February 11, 2008 4:03 PM
Portal. It's the new hotness.
http://youtube.com/watch?v=RthZgszykLs
Posted by: Owlmirror | February 11, 2008 4:05 PM
Oops. Sorry about the truncated italics! First three stanzas - Owlmirror. Next two - me.
Posted by: Eric Saveau | February 11, 2008 4:05 PM
Urgh. Reading that over again, I see I missed a line of my one. Reposting with corrected italics and the missing line, with another shout to Owlmirror who is awesome.
Darwinist liars!
I'm making a note here:
EPIC FAIL
It's hard to overstate my irritation
Creationist Science:
We say that you can't
because we can
For the good of all of us
So God won't send us to Hell
But there's no sense crying over every mistake
You just keep on trying 'til the Darwinists break
And the science that's done
looks like a lot of fun
Until you actually check the facts
I'm not even honest
I'm being insincere right now
I claim Darwinism leads to Nazis
abortion and Commies
and racists and death camps for the Jews
afterwards I smile because
I have such hatred for truth
Misrepresenting data
makes for beautiful lies
'cause there is no greater
way of shielding our eyes
from the damage we've done
and the victories we've won
over people who do
check the facts
Posted by: Eric Saveau | February 11, 2008 4:09 PM
The italics are still wrong. We apologize. Those responsible for the previous italics have been sacked.
Posted by: Eric "Ralph the Wonder Llama" Saveau | February 11, 2008 4:11 PM
A number of years ago, a foreign student in our department plagiarized a term paper. The instructor of the scientific writing course(!!) was my adviser. He, being a kind hearted soul, gave the student a second chance after carefully explaining the implications of this type of misdeed. The student excused his error on cultural differences in writing between his native university and 'here in America.' The student turned in a second plagiarized paper and was expelled from the University.
Posted by: mothra | February 11, 2008 4:17 PM
Thanks for the link, Owlmirror, but I was mostly reacting to your statement that "Creationist" and "Aperture" have the same syllable count. They don't, you know.
Posted by: noncarborundum | February 11, 2008 4:27 PM
Thanks for the link, Owlmirror, but I was mostly reacting to your statement that "Creationist" and "Aperture" have the same syllable count.
If it was "Creation" rather than "Creationist" it would fit the number of syllables - and still work exactly the same way.
Owlmirror? Your turn. Finish this song!
Posted by: Eric Saveau | February 11, 2008 4:32 PM
Front-loading!!
Posted by: windy | February 11, 2008 4:40 PM
Why did I think they did...?
Oh, I think I was slurring the pronunciation a bit: "Cray-shun-ist".
Isn't there a technical term for that? Yes, it was an elision.
I claim artistic license!
I will ponder extending the lyrics further. GLaDOS is a perfect voice for a Creationist, because she is, to use another technical term, bonkers.
Posted by: Owlmirror | February 11, 2008 4:46 PM
Dear Mr. R. W. Llama:
Speaking purely as a pedant, I must point out that although "Creation" and "Aperture" have the same number of syllables, is not strictly true that "If it was [sic: were] 'Creation' . . . it would . . . still work exactly the same way." If you replace "aperture science" with "creation science" in the referenced song, you will end up stressing "creation" on the first syllable.
Prosodically, it's better just to stick with "creationist", stress it on the "-a-", and live with the extra syllable.
P.S. Or, as Owlmirror suggests, sing it "Cray-shun-ist", but as I pedant I strongly disdain such a suggestion.
Posted by: noncarborundum | February 11, 2008 4:50 PM
P.P.S. Harrumph.
Posted by: noncarborundum | February 11, 2008 4:56 PM
Both "Creationist" and "Aperture" will maintain the same overall meter even though they have a different number of syllables. The only difference, poetically, is that "Creationist" is iambic, whereas "Aperture" is trochaic. Substituting one for the other is perfectly acceptable in this case.
Posted by: improvius | February 11, 2008 5:05 PM
Owlmirror, I couldn't wait.
If this seems presumptuous, me jumping in on something you started, I can only apologize and plead that you started something so cool that I couldn't help being swept away by my enthusiasm. If you've already posted a finish while I was typing this, or if you would simply prefer to disregard it in favor of whatever you've already got percolating in your mind, please proceed.
In the meantime, I offer my humble finish to "Check The Facts", with apologies to bioh you and the inestimable Jonathon Coulton -
Go on, "Expell" me
I think I prefer being on the wrong side
Maybe truth will be enough to save you
Or maybe I'll join you
(That was a joke. Ha ha. Fat chance.)
FtK, DaveScot, and I
will offer not-pologies.
Look at me, quote-mining
when there's censoring to do.
We'll delete your comments,
we don't need peer review.
We are seething in our rage,
there is warfare to be waged
upon people who do
check the facts.
You should believe me, but don't
check the facts.
Attacking science 'cause you
check the facts
We'll always hate you 'cause you
check the facts
We're always lying while you
check the facts
We haven't won yet 'cause you
check the facts
Check the facts!
check the facts
Posted by: Eric Saveau | February 11, 2008 5:17 PM
When I was teaching English in Japan some of my students were university professors. I sometimes helped them correct the English in their papers. (Look I used the right "their"! Don't get on my case if you find some other error. I will blame my fingers.) I could easily imagine some creationist proof reader slipping on something like that. Look what happened to Josephus!
Posted by: OsakaGuy | February 11, 2008 5:17 PM
P.P.S. Harrumph.
:-D
Posted by: Eric Saveau | February 11, 2008 5:19 PM
Yeah, I'm not buying the "we submitted the wrong draft" excuse.
1. I've written quite a few peer reviewed journal articles and there's little likelihood of confusing your rough draft with your final draft.
2. If his first draft was *that* bad, then he needs to find a new area of expertise.
3. I've reviewed articles (given, not on this topic) and find it frightening that this garbage, especially with the plagerism issues, made it through. Holy crap! If nothing else, the journal needs to write up some apology to the authors of the copied materials. Do they not have that handy-dandy software wherein you scan in a document and search it for plagerism?
I almost wonder if these people wrote the article for a very specific audience (with limited education or unfamiliar with biological concepts). Like, maybe they wrote it for a creationist group talk and someone in the group said, "Hey! You should publish that." It strikes me as a hack job that someone might create knowing the intended audience won't have the time or brains to fact check.
Crazy.
Posted by: P-momma | February 11, 2008 5:25 PM
It occurs to me that the line "FtK, DaveScot, and I", while fitting the rhythm of the original line in the Jonathon Coulton's song, is possibly wrong for two reasons - even not-pologies are more than they are known for offering, and there are bigger IDiot fish to put there. I therefore offer the replacement line "Luskin, Behe, and Dembski" as being more appropriate while still fitting the intended meter.
Posted by: Eric Saveau | February 11, 2008 5:38 PM
I really can't say much about this, since all I know about mitochondria I learned from the Japanese story, Parasite Eve.
I live in constant fear of the day the mitochondria get fed up and rise in rebellion against nuclear tyrrany.
Posted by: October Mermaid | February 11, 2008 5:38 PM