Re: Revocation of a PhD

From: Lee Rudolph (lrudolph_at_panix.com)
Date: 07/15/04 

Date: 15 Jul 2004 09:31:59 -0400

lrudolph@panix.com (Lee Rudolph) writes:

>It is, by the way, rather trivial (and not very time consuming),
>if one has access to Dissertation Abstracts, to find out the
>identity of Mr X. One can then do a Google search for Mr. X,
>in which one (for values of "one" equal to "I") finds essentially
>no evidence that he has suffered any disgrace, or that the revocation
>of his degree has been made public (explicitly). The one suggestion
>that he's done wrong is in a retraction of an article (clearly, by
>its title, largely coextensive with the plagiarized thesis), in
>which the editor extends "regret"s to the readers, and "apologizes"
>to both the plagiarized author and (incredibly) the plagiarist, to
>the latter for having been unable because of publishing schedules
>to withdraw the plagiarized article upon a request from the plagiarist
>(presumably prompted by the investigations which culminated in the
>revocation of his degree). The words "plagiarism" and "plagiarist"
>appear nowhere, nor is the degree revocation mentioned.

Actually, upon further investigation (and an exchange of e-mail
with someone who has actual knowledge of some of the details of
the case), it turns out that Mr. X.'s retracted article--despite
its title--was *not* "largely coextensive with the plagiarized
thesis". Rather, it was plagiarized from work by at least one
other author!

This is the sort of thing few mathematicians can even aspire to.

Lee Rudolph