Plagiarism

Washington. FROM LABORATORY PAYOLA to faked data and plagiarism -- it's all there in a new congressionally compiled sampler of sleaze in science.Read it and despair about the white-coated realm of truth-seeking, where it can be perilous to tackle intellectual crooks and profitable to compromise scientific independence. The science establishment has responded to the congressional allegations with assurances that it has cleaned up the mess and no government intervention is required. But isn't that what Wall Street said in the early days of its assorted scandals?

Scientific misconduct may be far more extensive than the occasional high-profile cases of fabricated research or plagiarism, according to survey results published in today's issue of the journal Nature. That's because scientists appear to be engaging far more often in "mundane" kinds of scientific wrongdoing - transgressions that could be an even greater threat to science, authors from the University of Minnesota and a Minneapolis research foundation conclude. The researchers found that 33 percent of the scientists surveyed admitted to engaging in at least one of 10 research misbehaviors in the previous three years.

The federal government is requiring a Coppin State College psychology professor to have outside experts check his research and grant applications for authenticity for the five years after finding that he claimed someone else's work as his own.The professor, Lonnie Mitchell, and his immediate supervisor, Jerusa Wilson, the chairman of the psychology department, also have been barred for five years from serving on committees that review federal grant applications...

A panel of scholars at Boston University has decided that the doctorate earned there by the late Martin Luther King Jr. in 1956 should not be revoked even though his dissertation contains plagiarisms that were disclosed last year, shocking admirers of the slain civil rights leader.Instead, the Boston University committee, in a report released yesterday, recommended that a disciplinary letter noting the scholarly improprieties be attached to the official copy of King's theology dissertation in the school's library.

A Denver-based scholarly librarian leveled plagiarism allegations against a Towson University professor after doing research for his watchdog blog and alerting university officials, journals and The Baltimore Sun. Towson is reviewing the work of legal affairs professor Benjamin A. Neil, who says that he has done nothing wrong and that the issue is a matter of "style and formatting. " Jeffrey Beall, an academic librarian at the University of Colorado, Denver, specializes in scrutinizing publishers who make content available for free online but require authors to pay a fee when their articles are accepted into a journal.

Baltimore's mayoral race may have failed to get off to a fiery start, but at least one candidate is hurling accusations of "political plagiarism."Democrat A. Robert Kaufman of the City Wide Coalition is taking exception to opponent Carl Stokes' calling for a $1 tax on tickets to sporting events at Camden Yards. The money would be used to help pay for city recreation programs.Kaufman said the ticket-tax idea belongs to Southeast Baltimore City Councilman Nicholas C. D'Adamo, who introduced a bill calling for the same tax two years ago. That proposal has been languishing in a council committee.

A review of articles written by disgraced reporter Jayson Blair for a student-staffed news agency run by the University of Maryland has found repeated errors and several sources who dispute remarks attributed to them. But it did not uncover any of the rampant plagiarism or fabrication found in at least three dozen stories he later wrote for The New York Times. The university's Philip Merrill College of Journalism commissioned the study of Blair's work in the wake of the scandal at the Times that cost him his job last spring and, ultimately, cost the newspaper's two top editors their jobs as well.

NEW YORK -- More name-calling controversy has erupte among scholars of the Dead Sea Scrolls, deepening distrust and threatening to disrupt an international conference scheduled to begin tomorrow at the New York Academy of Sciences.A group of scrolls experts is asserting that the authors of a new book translating 50 of the ancient documents borrowed heavily and without acknowledgment from the research of others.They condemned that as the "unethical appropriation" of previous transcriptions and translations, and said the authors' claims of having done independent and original work were "laughable and manifestly dishonest."

A columnist and a historian have accused best-selling author Stephen E. Ambrose of copying passages in his recent book, The Wild Blue. The two cite details and phrasing very similar to descriptions in The Wings of Morning, a book by one of the accusers, the historian Thomas Childers. Both books tell the stories of World War II bomber pilots. Ambrose included footnotes in his book acknowledging that Childers' book was a source of information in the relevant pages. But Ambrose does not acknowledge quoting from the book or borrowing phrases or wording.

July is shaping up to be the cruelest month for Avril Lavigne. Over the past two weeks, the pop princess' carefully crafted image as the anti-Britney Spears - that is, a chart-topping ingenue who writes her own songs, spits at paparazzi and has shaped her own spiky-yet-vulnerable image - has come under attack on multiple fronts. In a lawsuit made public last week, the 22-year-old Canadian superstar is being sued for copyright infringement. She's accused of plagiarizing a substantial part of "I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend," a song by '70s new wave group the Rubinoos, for her hit "Girlfriend."