After Reports of His Own Wife's Plagiarism, Bill Ackman Threatens Plagiarism Reviews For All MIT Faculty (businessinsider.com) 293
This week Harvard's president Claudine Gay resigned "after conservative activists revealed she had plagiarized," writes Business Insider, adding that hedge fund manager/prominent Harvard donor Bill Ackman "helped lead the charge."
Then Business Insider "analyzed Ackman's wife's doctoral dissertation and found numerous instances of plagiarism." In most cases Ackman's wife put the author's name and publication date immediately after the material which she used — but did not put quotation marks around it. But according to the Business Insider, "At least 15 passages from her 2010 MIT doctoral dissertation were lifted without any citation from Wikipedia entries." Her husband, Ackman, has taken a hardline stance on plagiarism. On Wednesday, responding to news that Gay is set to remain a part of Harvard's faculty after she resigned as president, he wrote on X that Gay should be fired completely due to "serious plagiarism issues... Students are forced to withdraw for much less," Ackman continued. "Rewarding her with a highly paid faculty position sets a very bad precedent for academic integrity at Harvard."
Ackman's wife was a tenured MIT professor from 2017 to 2021, according to the article. "It is unfortunate that my actions to address problems in higher education have led to these attacks on my family," Ackman posted Friday night on Twitter.
Then Ackman threatened "a review of the work of all current MIT faculty members. We will begin with a review of the work of all current MIT faculty members, President Kornbluth, other officers of the Corporation, and its board members for plagiarism."
Business Insider notes that Ackman "has been vocal about wanting to see MIT's president, Sally Kornbluth, fired since Kornbluth testified on December 5 in front of a congressional panel examining how university presidents handled student protests against Israel's war in Gaza. Kornbluth said in her opening statement that she didn't support 'speech codes' that would restrict what students say during protests."
Then Business Insider "analyzed Ackman's wife's doctoral dissertation and found numerous instances of plagiarism." In most cases Ackman's wife put the author's name and publication date immediately after the material which she used — but did not put quotation marks around it. But according to the Business Insider, "At least 15 passages from her 2010 MIT doctoral dissertation were lifted without any citation from Wikipedia entries." Her husband, Ackman, has taken a hardline stance on plagiarism. On Wednesday, responding to news that Gay is set to remain a part of Harvard's faculty after she resigned as president, he wrote on X that Gay should be fired completely due to "serious plagiarism issues... Students are forced to withdraw for much less," Ackman continued. "Rewarding her with a highly paid faculty position sets a very bad precedent for academic integrity at Harvard."
Ackman's wife was a tenured MIT professor from 2017 to 2021, according to the article. "It is unfortunate that my actions to address problems in higher education have led to these attacks on my family," Ackman posted Friday night on Twitter.
Then Ackman threatened "a review of the work of all current MIT faculty members. We will begin with a review of the work of all current MIT faculty members, President Kornbluth, other officers of the Corporation, and its board members for plagiarism."
Business Insider notes that Ackman "has been vocal about wanting to see MIT's president, Sally Kornbluth, fired since Kornbluth testified on December 5 in front of a congressional panel examining how university presidents handled student protests against Israel's war in Gaza. Kornbluth said in her opening statement that she didn't support 'speech codes' that would restrict what students say during protests."
Just the conservative playbook (Score:4, Insightful)
Has there ever in the history of US conservatives been a fight against something they weren't guilty of themselves?
Re:Just the conservative playbook (Score:4, Insightful)
Has there ever in the history of US conservatives been a fight against something they weren't guilty of themselves?
Yes: intellectualism.
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In case you hadn't noticed, despite sharing the same root, "intellectual" and "intelligent" are not the same thing.
Quite right. Intellectualism means using your intelligence.
In fact, they usually appear to be mutually exclusive.
Quite wrong.
And of course this whole get-the-college-presidents things is just part of Republicans longstanding war on intellectualism. They want universities to teach students stuff that Ron DiSantis approves and never think critically about it.
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Two defining principles of conservative politics in the United States today:
Every Accusation Is A Confession.
It's OK If You Are A Republican.
Re:Just the conservative playbook (Score:5, Insightful)
Every Accusation Is A Confession.
You [imgur.com] can [imgur.com] say [imgur.com] that [imgur.com] again [imgur.com].
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Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.
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"To my friends, everything; to my enemies, the law"
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You're thinking of Elvis.
Re:Just the conservative playbook (Score:5, Interesting)
The guy's a socialist [marketwatch.com] to boot.
Ackman, who runs Pershing Square Capital Management, and is not averse to an apocalyptical outburst, said the banking sector needed a temporary deposit guarantee immediately until an expanded government insurance scheme is widely available.
“We need to stop this now. We are beyond the point where the private sector can solve the problem and are in the hands of our government and regulators. Tick-tock.”
Funny how those billionaires repeatedly come running to the taxpayers whenever there's the slightest bit of inconvenience caused by their own incompetence.
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Plagiarism is not a "sin" as in "transgression against a divine law", it is a kind of dishonest behavior that is frowned upon in settings where honesty is expected.
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It might fall under "bearing false witness". It's certainly not moral behavior.
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No humans are sinful. Sin is not real, it's an invention of religionists.
Humans are just animals, a species of apes. We're not special, there's no 'god' that gives a shit about us, we're just here.
Adults who have imaginary friends are just sad. Adults who try to push their imaginary friend agenda on others are garbage.
Bullets vs Bee-stings (Score:3, Insightful)
Why bother making this a partisan issue? All sides do it. Politicians, anyone with money, hell anyone with an agenda..
Yeah and people die every year from BOTH bee stings and gunfire. I'd rather see a bee fly near me than have a gun pointed at me. The devastation of humanity due to bee stings pales in comparison to gunfire...even though both have claimed many lives.
Democrats do shitty things, but pale in comparison to the Republican ethics violations...if Joe Biden cowered in front of Putin at Helsinki, Democrats, would be demanding action. Republicans let it slide...same for not releasing tax returns....same for enc
Re:Bullets vs Bee-stings (Score:5, Insightful)
Republicans went from "Better dead than Red" to "Better Russian than Democrat" and what changed? It wasn't Russia.
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Meanwhile, the Canadian Prime Minister applauded a Nazi on their Parliament floor.
Re:Bullets vs Bee-stings (Score:5, Informative)
Even if so, Franken was forced out, Gaetz is still lurking about.
MTG with her secret Jewish space laser conspiracy theories is still in office.
Re: Just the conservative playbook (Score:2)
Why bother making this a partisan issue? All sides do it. Politicians, anyone with money, hell anyone with an agenda..
Isn't that where this is going, why make this a personal issue when everyone is doing it. It's totally fine to attack one person, then it backfires on you and the tune changes to "well everyone does it."
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I mean sure, banging underage girls isn't tasteful, but that pales in comparison to a woman of African descent not using "quotation marks". /s
She is not "of African descent".
(The discussion calls her "Bill Ackerman's wife," but doesn't actually mention her name: Neri Oxman.)
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I mean sure, banging underage girls isn't tasteful, but that pales in comparison to a woman of African descent not using "quotation marks". /s
She is not "of African descent".
(The discussion calls her "Bill Ackerman's wife," but doesn't actually mention her name: Neri Oxman.)
We're talking two different things here. I was speaking of Claudine Gay https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] who is also in the story, is also accused of plagiarism, and has resigned.
Neri Oxman is collateral damage, not terribly important. The important part is that Gay is gone. It's a matter of MAGA priorities.
Re: Just the conservative playbook (Score:4, Insightful)
Why is this being attributed to MAGAs, or any political group for that matter? As far as I'm aware, the first person to lodge that complaint was somebody that Dr Gay had plagiarized from, and it only got any attention after she declined to do anything about antisemitism.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news... [msn.com]
Is your argument that she's behind some kind of conservative conspiracy or some stupid shit like that?
Better yet, just admit that she was handed a job that some say is the most prestigious position in all of academia, and yet even if you ignore her repeated and wanton blatant disregard for some of the most basic rules of academia, which was apparently even already known about, she did next to noting to earn it. Why the fuck was she even put there if not for meeting a few identify checkboxes?
Even if she wasn't the first to bring that up (even though it was long before all of this) attributing her downfall to any of racism or MAGA or any of that shit is intellectually dishonest.
Personally I think this is a reckoning for all of academia. Even at the highest levels, they're throwing out merit in favor of identity, they've thrown out freedom of expression, and they've made themselves so self-important that they're treating their students like blank checks. Oh you want an accounting degree? Well the professors in some unrelated departments need money even though they're basically useless, so we're making some of those courses mandatory for your degree. Better ask for more student loans too because we're raising the tuition again to fund a new football stadium.
It's all horseshit.
Re:I'm confused on one thing. (Score:4, Insightful)
It's a classic exhaustion strategy.
It takes him ten seconds to demand this proof. It will take MIT weeks to provide it. Imagine all the other stuff he can demand in the meantime while those accused have to run to catch up and prove their innocence.
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He's promising to do the review himself, and publish the results. Us that "force" in your book, or are you just bad at reading? From TFS:
We will begin with a review of the work of all current MIT faculty members, President Kornbluth, other officers of the Corporation, and its board members for plagiarism.
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You completely omitted that part where Gay was absolutely anti-semitic? Why is that?
I suspect because it's not true in the universe most of us share?
Re: Way to bury the lede. (Score:3)
Sorry, you can't be anti-Semitic for not commenting.
There's plenty of real anti-semitism around. You don't need to invent stuff.
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So the claim is he didn't inhale?
Re: Just the conservative playbook (Score:2)
So...what...he fucked the maid in the kitchen? What was the scandal? They did it too close to the casserole?
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So...what...he fucked the maid in the kitchen? What was the scandal? They did it too close to the casserole?
All we have to do is accept that he voluntarily went to a place well known for jailbait sex, multiple times, and rather than partake of the jailbait that was the very purpose of the place, he chose to hide in the kitchen with the kitchen staff, eating food there. I don't doubt that he might have ventured in there for a post-nookie snack.
The suspension of disbelief needed is pretty impressive to think that's all he did
Do I suspect that old Billy Boy partook of some teeny booty while he was there? Duh!
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You're surprised that the dude who had fast food served at a White House function, and famously ruins his steaks by cooking them well done and eating them with ketchup, would do something like a grab a bite to eat in the kitchen? REALLY?
Food has nothing to do with morality. What is really odd is the willingness of some people to believe that a person would fly down to Epstein's island, where it was well known that there was barely post-pubescent girls available for sexual purposes, and decide they wanted to have a meal in the kitchen rather than engage in the very purpose for the place.
Sounds soooo legit.
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3 years after huh? I love this because I dont have to even read source material, you just keep feeding me the damning information.
How on earth can one justify waiting three years to report child molestation?
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Tit for tat chain (Score:5, Insightful)
To unravel it:
There were protests at east coast universities, Harvard among them, supporting Palestine (also protests supporting Israel, although these didn't draw the same fire). Congress did a hearing about this, at which Harvard president Claudine Gay testified. When asked where the line between free speech and calls for genocide should be drawn, she failed to draw the line clearly enough (basically, saying it would be a case by case decision), and hence Bill Ackerman (whose wife is Israeli) called for her to be fired. (He also called for MIT's president Sally Kornbluth to be fired for saying that she didn't support speech codes that would restrict what students say during protests.) To support his call to fire her, he pulled up old charges of plagiarism and said that there should be zero tolerance for plagiarism. This line of attack succeeded, and Claudine Gay resigned.
Tit for tat, Business Insider pointed that his wife, Neri Oxman, had plagiarized text in her thesis.
Tit for tat, when that was pointed out, he said he would start an investigation of all MIT professors for plagiarism, starting with MIT president Sally Kornbluth (who he'd already said should be fired for failing to stop MIT protests supporting Palestine).
TLDR summary: this has little to do with plagiarism. It's retaliation and counter-retaliation, over stopping or not stopping student protests.
Re: Tit for tat chain (Score:2)
supporting Palestine (also protests supporting Israel, although these didn't draw the same fire).
Why are you avoiding mentioning the elephant in the room?
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When asked where the line between free speech and calls for genocide should be drawn, she failed to draw the line clearly enough (basically, saying it would be a case by case decision)
Not quite. The question was not where the line should be drawn (which would be a question about her own opinion), but wether particular speech acts were automatically "harassment" under existing regulation. She answered that, as far as I can tell, correctly and to the best of her ability - basically, that a generic speech act would not be considered harassment, but that any such acts specifically directed towards individuals would.
Tit for tat, when that was pointed out, he said he would start an investigation of all MIT professors for plagiarism, starting with MIT president Sally Kornbluth
I just looked at Kornbluth's scientific output over at Google Scholar [google.com], and
So scary... (Score:5, Interesting)
In our university it is obligatory to run all theses and dissertations up to and including doctorate require plagiarism check before defense. So hardly anyone would be impressed.
BTW, I skimmed through the "dissertation" of the billionaire's trophy wife. I was surprised to see that MIT grants "doctorates" in "computing" that are really bad fiction, on the level of low-grade liberal arts college. https://dspace.mit.edu/handle/... [mit.edu]
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Oops - I meant "it is obligatory to run all work through automated plagiarism check"...
Re:So scary... (Score:5, Insightful)
I too skimmed that dissertation. To me, it reads like a parody. To me, the fact that someone was granted a PhD for that tripe is far more concerning that the occasional bit of plagiarism.
Re:So scary... (Score:5, Interesting)
Maybe a donation was made at the same time. Educational institutions are famously corrupt when it comes to that kind of thing.
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Nope. That usually grants Doctor of Letters, or Honoris Causa, not a Doctorate.
Re:So scary... (Score:4, Insightful)
Depends on what the donor wants. It costs the school nothing to slip a few garbage doctorates through.
Honest donors will settle for the honorary diploma. This guy is just plain evil, no question he'd have demanded the real thing for the trophy wife.
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I'm sure some less than stellar doctorates get through, but this crap isn't under par, it is just garbage. It must have been purchased in full.
One would hope the practice hasn't gone above a particular adviser and his close pals in that specific dissertation exam commission, otherwise it speaks very poorly of MIT.
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Yep, my point exactly.
Re: So scary... (Score:2)
It's the MIT Media Lab. When they weren't taking Epstein dollars, they were laundering this shit to give it credibility.
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It's from the Dept. of Architecture.
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So?
Re: So scary... (Score:2)
Architecture, as distinct from structural engineering or the like.
My uncle was an architect. He fancied himself an artist, not a scientist or an engineer.
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Don't be surprised by that. These are big money institutions. If you bring in money or reputation they will grant you degrees, the students on grants or paying their own way get a much harder time.
What a hypocritical asshole (Score:4, Insightful)
If plagiarism's bad (and it is, especially in an academic setting), then it's still bad when your wife does it, you giant bowl of dicks.
Threatening everyone around you doesn't make your wife intellectually honest.
Re:What a hypocritical asshole (Score:4, Insightful)
If plagiarism's bad (and it is, especially in an academic setting), then it's still bad when your wife does it, you giant bowl of dicks.
Threatening everyone around you doesn't make your wife intellectually honest.
Hypocritical, but not for that reason.
Neither Claudine Gay nor Ms. Ackman intended to commit plagiarism, and if asked if they had beforehand they'd honestly answer they never had committed plagiarism.
All these reviews found is some sloppiness in making citations, plagiarism in the strictest sense, but absolutely not plagiarism in the sense there was no intent to pass off someone else's work as their own.
Mr. Ackman is full of s**t saying "Students are forced to withdraw for much less", a student would get the passage circled and maybe be docked a mark.
Then Ackman threatened "a review of the work of all current MIT faculty members. We will begin with a review of the work of all current MIT faculty members, President Kornbluth, other officers of the Corporation, and its board members for plagiarism."
I suspect such a review would find many, if not most faculty members guilty of such minor transgressions, whether he and other conservative activists would see such a result as the massive self-own that it would be is another question.
Re:What a hypocritical asshole (Score:4, Insightful)
> Neither Claudine Gay nor Ms. Ackman intended to commit plagiarism
Does that really track with lifting multiple passages from Wikipedia and not citing? That's really really difficult to accept as 'sloppy work' and not a deliberate choice.
Added to the fact that the paper itself is laughably bad and you start to draw inferences.
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Honest question here as I'm not entirely sure on the rules for quotes. If something is written on Wikipedia which is itself not quoted from the source material, but is some editor's explanation of the concept, how do you attribute that? How do you start digging for who first posted that to a page that may have had thousands of edits over the years, and then you end up with, at best, a Wikipedia username. Is that enough?
Re:What a hypocritical asshole (Score:5, Insightful)
If you're quoting Wikipedia in your doctoral dissertation, you're probably doing something very wrong.
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Under tools on the right side of wikipedia pages there is a link "cite this page" which provides various styles of citation for the article. These cites include a permalink to the version of the page you're looking at. If for some reason you are citing Wikipedia, use this feature. Ideally, save both the page and the cites when you do it, too. Then you know you will always have access to them.
Re:What a hypocritical asshole (Score:5, Insightful)
When I was writing papers for my college English class they tended to come up 30-40% plagiarism. Those automated checkers, at least the ones my college used, were fairly stupid. They would also go all the way down to 3 word sentence fragments. They also really couldn't understand in-line citations at all.
For example, my citation pages were 100% plagiarism according to the checker. If ANYBODY else had cited the paper or document I did, it counted it as plagiarism. Was actually a semi-decent way to find other papers citing the ones I was. But, when doing citations by style guide, of course they're all going to be identical if you're doing it right.
Of course, I took the "safe" option that if I read a paper in preparation of mine, I cited it as a source.
Re:What a hypocritical asshole (Score:5, Insightful)
"We will begin with a review of the work of all current MIT faculty members, President Kornbluth, other officers of the Corporation, and its board members for plagiarism."
I suspect such a review would find many, if not most faculty members guilty of such minor transgressions, whether he and other conservative activists would see such a result as the massive self-own that it would be is another question.
Last time I checked, the sort of thing he's all in a rageboner about misses the point that unless your paper is 100 percent original, never before published work in a field that has never been addressed before - that is to say not even any references, you're using other people's work to create your own.
And of course, this rageboner isn't actually about plagiarism, it's about Gay not having the politically correct outlook, which is to say that they do not support the Conservative christian, support of Israel as its presumed purpose in greasing the skids for their end of the world myth.
In the MAGA world, cultlike adoration and support for a rapist and espionage agent who plans on a dictatorship and suspension of the constitution is perfectly acceptable, but someone who doesn't toe the politically correct line - those missing quotation marks are unforgivable, and must be punished severely.
Sounds like Cancel culture writ large.
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Sounds like Cancel culture writ large.
Never forget the origin of cancel culture. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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Sounds like Cancel culture writ large.
Never forget the origin of cancel culture. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Far left and far right demand idealogical purity.
Re:What a hypocritical asshole (Score:4, Insightful)
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[Citation Needed]
Claudine Gay had a rather lengthy history of plagiarism *starting* from her PHD thesis and continuing through her later career.
I know nothing of Ms Ackman, time may show similar or different, however your dishonest lumping of the two together at this stage is well... dishonest.
At some point, intent is clear from actions, not words.
O
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[Citation Needed]
Claudine Gay had a rather lengthy history of plagiarism *starting* from her PHD thesis and continuing through her later career.
I know nothing of Ms Ackman, time may show similar or different, however your dishonest lumping of the two together at this stage is well... dishonest.
At some point, intent is clear from actions, not words.
My citation is the summary.
The examples basically all of the form a passage from the other author(s), in conjunction with their names, but no specific quote marks.
As a rule of thumb, if you're trying to pass off someone else's work as your own you don't name that person as you're ripping them off.
The only reason Dr Gay's record of "plagiarism" is longer is she published more and people went through more of her work.
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Thank you for confirming you're only speculating, while attempting to pass off the ideas as facts... sounds familiar. Is yours an alt Dr Gay account?
*basically* is a weasel word you are trying to use to defect from the specifics at hand, brushing aside any specific allegations, and before all facts are known. It will be interesting to see how Harvard and Dr Gay respond to the lawyers representing one of the p
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Thank you for confirming you're only speculating, while attempting to pass off the ideas as facts... sounds familiar. Is yours an alt Dr Gay account?
Actually I read though the article detailing the original accusations, but in this case the summary itself actually provided a fairly accurate summary.
The examples basically all of the form a passage from the other author(s)
*basically* is a weasel word you are trying to use to defect from the specifics at hand, brushing aside any specific allegations, and before all facts are known.
"Basically" is also a word used to indicate that even when individual specifics differ, the differences aren't relevant.
There was one other example of part of an acknowledgement at the end of her book that was largely copied from another book, big whoop. And ordinary person would just say she liked the sentiment, she wasn't claiming any big insight or researc
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Re:What a hypocritical asshole (Score:5, Interesting)
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I teach writing at a university. You can't copy other people's words without attribution. Period. Even unintentionally. Copying someone else's words is still plagiarism whether through intention or negligence. I report students for this regularly. Profs (and especially university presidents) have to practice what they preach.
If you haven't even seen the examples of their plagiarism, I'll summarize it for you: Both of them were *obviously* plagiarizing. Oxman's examples are far more blatant than Gay's, but
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You are so awesome! How can you stand to even live with yourself? Every day must be wonderful, merely because you inhabit the world. Can you teach me to be like you, please?
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but it's much like holding on any given NFL play. If you look hard enough, you'll find it, but it's usually not called unless its obvious and egregious
In some cases, not even when it's [thesportsrush.com] blatantly obvious [youtube.com].
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Yes. It would be incorrect to site small fragments like that. The activity is completely pointless. Firstly, the details of the modern formulation are frequently slightly different than from the original paper, often because nomenclature in the field has improved with time. So the site would be to a subsequent paper likely discussing something else, and not to the original paper which is what defined the reference. So the reference wouldn't be useful. Secondly, referencing every short sentence / fragmen
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To clarify:
"Some of the automated thesis generators "
should read
"Some of the automatic index generators automatically remove simple words, like "is". However, certain words of topic-specific general discussion should not appear in the index, and this isn't handled automatically correctly."
I doubt an automated citation program would generate better cites for a PhD thesis than an automated index generator generates indexes.
Re: What a hypocritical asshole (Score:2)
At the same time, if he actually finds anyone else's plagiarism, that doesn't absolve that other person of their guilt either.
Rather funny watching the libs openly saying that misconduct is OK if it's righties who identify it. Also scares the living shit out of me since it's those same people frequently claiming the mantle of science and telling the rest of us how to behave.
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Which leads me to the important question, what is more important to conservative hypocrites? Cancel culture or petty revenge?
Also, Ackman's wife put the author's name and publication date immediately after the material which she used — but did not put quotation marks around it.
Weak.
Digging for dirt on others (Score:5, Insightful)
Digging for dirt on others has a motivating effect for others to dig for dirt on you. I suspect some unflattering details of Mr. Ackman's life will soon come to light. I for one am getting out the popcorn.
This guy... (Score:3, Insightful)
This guy, upset that the same standards he applied to Claudine Gay are being applied to his wife. What a bunch of self entitled bullshit.
I always got the feeling that the outrage over Gay was too loud for it to really be about academic honesty and not culture war bullshit. He's just confirmed it, it was always about culture war nonsense.
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Just because the motivations were wrong doesn't mean the results were... and now that we have seen the motivations, we can cast a sharp eye on Ackman. It won't be just his wife who has skeletons, you can bet money he's done some things he's terrified will see the light of day and ruin his life too.
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Are they the same standards?
Claudine Gay came under scrutiny because of *her* actions.
His wife came under scrutiny because of his actions.
Can you not see the difference?
Direct accountability vs guilt by association.
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Direct accountability vs guilt by association.
So it's like Israel deliberately bombing [latimes.com] Palestinian civilians [nbcnews.com] because of Hamas' actions?
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War is a terrible thing, doubly so when civilians needlessly die. Hamas chose war, just as it chose not to protect it's civilians from the predictable response which would occur from the from the lawless killing and kidnapping of civilians on October 7th and since, instead opting to hide behind them as human shields.*
Do you have a point?
Or are you seeking to prove the point correct that Dr Gay wasn't forced out because of plagiarism, but because of rampant antisemitism on college campuses such as Harvard wh
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Fair is fair. By all means, let's get Ackman's wife fired from her job as a trophy wife.
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No. He's holding his wife and everyone else responsible too as he should.
Plagiarism is a serious issue in academia. Glossing over some incidents and say everyone does it is a bigger problem. I know when I did my post-graduate work and wrote my masters thesis, I was very careful to cite and document sources correctly. It was expected. Anyone who steals another's work without proper attribution is either lazy, a liar/cheater, and/or stupid and doesn't deserve the credit for the work and deserves to be sl
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No. He's holding his wife and everyone else responsible too as he should.
No he's not. He's deflecting. His wife was called out for doing the exact same thing Gay was found to have done and instead of saying the same action should be taken he said "let's check everyone else". He doesn't want the spotlight on his cheating wife and I can guarantee he'll never admit she plaigarized.
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If you dare oppose the wholesale murder of women and children Israel's right wing government is perpetrating in Gaza, you're going to attract a lot of hate.
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Supporting genocide of Jews isn't the same as opposing Israel. I'm going to assume you already knew that, because usually the people posting things like you just posted do and just don't care.
Not even in the AI era (Score:2)
And just think, we aren't even in the era where AI has been utilized to generate these papers. If not verbatim, then excerpts of text that the "author" then rewords and reworks to not trigger AI detection. Or general outlines, individual sentences, etc. If so many authors are lifting individual sentences from other published and known works, which can be caught relatively easily, then imagine what will happen when a sentence is totally unique having been generated by AI.
From my experimentation, AIs that det
So ... (Score:2)
"It is unfortunate that my actions to address problems in higher education have led to these attacks on my family," Ackman posted Friday night on Twitter.
Do as I say, not as I do -- or, apparently, as my wife does. Is it an "attack" to point out that she's done the same thing you just crucified someone else over?
Her husband, Ackman, has taken a hardline stance on plagiarism.
Then stand by that or be a hypocrite. If your wife did the same thing, criticize her too or STFU about others, 'cause if you don't you're obviously just going after the other people because you don't like them.
[In future news prediction: Bill Ackman found to have plagiarized ...]
Re: (Score:3)
When you are a billionaire you have privileges other people don't -- whether or not that's a good thing, it just is. You can punch down safely from your lofty position.
It's like when the National Enquirer tried to blackmail Jeff Bezos by stealing his dick pics. When I heard that I laughed out loud at their naivete. Did they think Bezos would be afraid of becoming some kind of paraiah if the world knew he sent dirty pictures to his side piece?
Or when Elon Musk reacted like a total lunatic when the Thai c
Who cites wikipedia in a thesis? (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes there are some well written articles on wikipedia that can be a great introduction to a topic. However any serious scholar should take the time to read the sources cited by it before accepting its words as being the least bit authoritative. Wikipedia should not be cited in a thesis any more so than should a review paper; it's simply lazy work to do so. Even citing an undergrad text book is a better academic move than citing Wikipedia.
Re: (Score:3)
Mark Cuban might be the only decent one. He didn't start out rich and runs a pharmacy with the goal of lowering prescription prices industry wide. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Re: (Score:2, Flamebait)
NO ONE got to be a billionaire without exploiting the work of many, many other people for their ill-gotten gains.
There aren't any good ones.
Re: (Score:2)
NO ONE got to be a billionaire without exploiting the work of many, many other people for their ill-gotten gain
Explain how someone is being exploited if they willingly accepted the job at the pay rate stated? How are those gains "ill gotten" when other people were buying the product or service offered by the person who became a billionaire?
Let's use Warren Buffett as an example. His business offers insurance. People buy that insurance. The money he gets from people buying that insurance goes to pay his em
Re:For the betterment of all society... (Score:4, Interesting)
If the employees were getting a fair wage based on the output of their work, no one would be a billionaire.
If prices were set based on cost of production, no one would be a billionaire.
If taxes were set fairly, no one would be a billionaire.
It is impossible to become a billionaire without exploitation.
Re: (Score:2)
You started with an absolute. That is really all that was necessary to expect that the rest was some kind of emotional rhetoric.
The next thing you did was tack on "without exploiting the work of many, many other people for their ill-gotten gains" as requirement for not meeting your 100%/absolute/black and white part of the statement.
In fact, the entire post is a just baseless hyperbolic defamatory attacks on the very wealthy.
I have great disdain for how lopsided wealth concentration is in our country. I j
You don't understand food production, do you? (Score:5, Insightful)
I hate to be the one to point this out, but making the poor extinct would probably be a considerably bigger benefit to society. Just sayin'.
You realize that the majority of people you depend on to sustain life are poor, right? If I could "thanos snap" away everyone who earns less than a living wage, that would eliminate nearly the entire workforce that produces your food....not just McDonald's workers, but everyone from the farm helpers to the packagers to the distributors to the people that ensure it gets on your grocery store shelves.
OK, so you're ready to grow your own food?...I hope you don't need fertilizer or chemicals....you'd lose several key people in that pipeline, not to mention the logistics of getting equipment to your house. OK, so you stockpiled all the supplies you need in advance?....
I hope you have perfect health or plan on dying in a car crash...as well as having your loved ones do the same...so much of the medical pipeline, from caregivers to pharmacy employees fall under the working poor category.
Basically, unless you want to go full Amish, your life depends on exploiting the poor. It's shitty, but a fact of life. In order for you to have medicine, food, and supplies needed for living, someone in the supply chain is earning less than a living wage and your money is funneling disproportionately to the top.
Take every billionaire CEO and replace him with a millionaire and I think we'd be just fine. In fact, society would be richer and we'd probably get better business outcomes.
Eliminate the poor?...society collapses.
Re: (Score:3)
CEO performance goes down with increasing salary, so that "probably" isn't just a guess.
Re: (Score:2)
Come on, automated plagiarism checks aren't used like that in most places I know of, they give advisory score and mark the questionable passages, but it is still the advisor and the examination committee or the review board or whatever it is called at the institution in question, that decides if automated check result is grounds for any further action.
Re: (Score:2)
The opinion of the public at large on what is academic plagiarism is largely irrelevant, as only public opinion will almost never cause a review, much less lead to a degree being rescinded.
As to the problem with the "thesis" of the trophy wife, that isn't "plagiarism". The problem there is that the 330 pages of tripe and crap that it is somehow went to a defense and a degree.