Ibn Al-Haytham

WildeThing "...admission/hiring is usually done in a holistic matter, meaning that singular details become less relevant. Either way, there is no way to know WHY this person was admitted to any of these programs or why he was hired, so we cannot know the significance of these issues. The person's employers and professors were informed of these issues and apparently unanimously decided that no action was merited, perhaps because they didn't base their decisions on admission/hiring on these parts of the person's CV? " Perhaps you are right. Maybe the specific 'inaccuracies' in a Professor CV shouldn't have any impact on hiring decisions. So maybe there is no harm now in keeping someone who uses false credentials in his CV as a University Professor. "They do seem to have reacted, as the professor has removed these issues from his CV. It seems that they (people in separate organizations) have decided that no further action is necessary (or they took private measures, we do not know), and I see no reason to believe that their reactions were inappropriate." Maybe the informed University administrators did all that has to be done or could be done. Maybe they didn't feel uncomfortable with the confrontation or the embarrassment, and did whatever has to be done. Maybe this entire thing can be forgotten and it is no longer anyone concern. Maybe all the colleagues of this Professor value him like they value all their other colleagues. For example, if he would write a glowing recommendation letter for one of his graduate students for some internal scholarship, his letter would be valued just like any other recommendation written by any other Professor. Maybe there is no harm of any kind being mentored by such a Professor.

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Sure. Anytime.

hats "As to your post on the previous page, obviously this man has standing to request that his students not plagiarize. If I got a speeding ticket ten years ago and now I'm teaching my teenage daughter to drive, do I have the "moral basis" to tell her that she should obey traffic laws, too? " A parent-child analogy is problematic. Some occupations require different level of ethics. Particularly those occupations where a major part of the responsibility is the searching of the truth and the reporting of facts (police detective, judge, scientist, journalist...). A better analogy would be "If someone was found to be involved in multiple incidences of fraud, for close to two decades, will you accept him acting as a judge?" I don't know what the proper punishment should be. I do know that cover-up and lack of any disciplinary action aren't acceptable.

I apologies for that. But, yes, the majority of Retraction Watch readers are mid to late academic career stage, rather then mostly students, as it is here. It is most unlikely that you wouldn't experience such crup in your department by the time you would become a Professor. I do find you guys as valuable audience- those that are most vulnerable to misconducts done by more senior scientists, as well as those who are most likely to make a significant change. And a change is required .

"You've instead assumed the role of Defender of Academia. No one appointed you, and it seems to me that the people you claim to be fighting for aren't happy with what you're doing. Think about that. " I suspect that you do not understand your responsibilities as a scientist. Turning a blind eye, even to the slightest evident dishonesty or 'inaccuracies', is not one of those responsibilities. Something very recent and most related: http://retractionwatch.com/2017/11/14/phantom-reference-made-article-got-almost-400-citations/ Also read the comments for this article, written by likely more mature academics.

Sigaba This is an interesting story. But you are not focused—you don’t have to believe me. You should simply find a copy of either one of these presumably two journal papers or any one of these presumably four conference proceedings: Non-existent ‘Peer-Reviewed Articles’ (these two are listed in the CV side to some actual journal papers): · Davidenko, N., Beaumont, J., Davidenko, J.M., and Jalife, J. (1997). Spatio-temporal evolution of spiral wave activity. Biophys. J. 72:2 A370, June 1997. · Beaumont, J., Davidenko, N., Davidenko, J.M., and Jalife, J. (1995). A model study of changes in excitability of ventricular muscle cells with repetitive stimulation. Inhibition, facilitation, and hysteresis. Am. J. Physiol. 268; 37:H1-H14, 1995. Non-existent ‘Peer-Reviewed Conference Proceedings’ (these four are listed in the CV side to some actual conference proceedings papers (of the Cognitive Science Society)): · Davidenko, N., Weiner, K., Grill-Spector, K. (2013). Broadly tuned face and hand representations in human ventral temporal cortex. Talk presented at 19th Annual Meeting of the Organization for Human Brain Mapping, Seattle, WA. · Davidenko, N., Remus, D., Grill-Spector, K. (2010). Characterizing face representations in the ventral stream: effects of physical variability and distance from the average face. Talk presented at the 40th Annual Meeting of the Society for Neuroscience. · Davidenko, N., Remus, D., Grill-Spector, K. (2008). Responses in face-selective cortex increase with increased face variability but decrease with increased distance from the mean face. Talk presented at the 38th Annual Meeting of the Society for Neuroscience. · Davidenko, N., Remus, D., Ramscar, M., Grill-Spector, K. (2008). Stronger face-selective responses to typical versus distinctive faces when stimulus variability is controlled. Talk presented at the 8th annual meeting of the Vision Sciences Society in Naples, FL, May 2008. All the above are not listed as conference abstract, which are listed separately in that CV. After finding either one of the above papers (full length manuscript, please), you can move to your next challenge of figuring what motivates me. If you really care, please do proper fact checking. Yesterday I gave you a unique access code for the manuscript, and I know that your engagement was minimal (e.g., you didn’t press any of the links provided, directing to relevant materials). Regarding your argument: “If you really cared about this issue as much as you'd like others to believe, you'd have filed a lawsuit against the professor, his department, his school, and the parent system. You'd have gone to the press. You'd have gone to all of the schools he's attended. You'd have identified former classmates and interviewed them for evidence of similar behavior. “ Darling, the world does not work this way. On what basis can I file a lawsuit? There was no harm done directly to me by Davidenko or by his department. I simply looked at someone CV, looked for some of his publications, could not find some of those. After further inquiry, we (yes, we) realized that there is an ongoing issue with several details in his CV. This doesn’t make me/us eligible for filing a lawsuit. I don't know if anyone can file a lawsuit here (maybe funding agencies). I only know that such behavior by a University Professor should not be tolerated. This is how much I care about the scientific community, and this is how much I'm willing to do. Going to the press? Maybe we already did. Do you think that they have the resources publishing any wrongdoing? They are often more likely to take notice after there is already a buzz. Running my own in-depth investigation? We (yes, we) did what we could, and wrote a summary. Regarding your counter accusations directed at me—do you realize that you are using the kind of attitude often used by someone who’s defending a rapist by arguing that a woman complaining must be a prostitute? How dare you? And if you think that Universities Administration can be relied upon when it comes to policing themselves, you are welcomed to be humbled by these two known stories of Melissa Theis or Robert Trivers (more about the aftermath here, and here).

I understand very well. The bottom line is that Davidenko list a publication from 1997 as a journal paper. But his first true journal paper is from 1998 (which he lists separately).

Good point. We already tried this. Found it to be ineffective. I sent you a private note with some information.

"Despite your claim, the Davidenko et al. (1997) citation is real (other than a typo on the date which should be February 1997 not June 1997). " Once again, the link you provided is for a conference abstract, not a journal paper ...And what about the 1995 paper? Interestingly, the same 'misplacement' also shows in his biosketch, which is a totally different version of his CV. This one is from an NIH grant proposal, submitted to NIH at 2008 (this info is also provided in the article). See page 2, under RESEARCH PAPERS. Note the dissociation between these research papers and conference abstracts: https://sciencewatchblog.files.wordpress.com/2017/10/davidenko_bio_blnd.pdf Also note that in the biosketch, the conference proceedings ...and only the the TRUE conference proceedings (short papers), are listed together with the journal papers (which is, acceptable, if specified). "I agree with all of these premises, but only if the cheating is something that is 1) proven and 2) significant enough. Fabricating data, physical or emotional abuse, etc. are good reasons to raise these concerns. But in this case, based on unknown factors, the offense can be as minor as typo/absent-mindedness to as severe as intentional bending of the truth to pad one's CV. Even on the most extreme end, this is not a serious enough problem that would cause me to doubt someone's ability as an academic who can act with integrity. And in this case, there is not enough evidence to put this on the extreme end. " Minor/harmless offenses? ... for a University Professor? Imagine Davidenko as a department chair in 10 years from now (this may actually happen). It was found that a graduate student in his department plagiarized a research work conducted by others. Will Davidenko have a moral basis to discipline this student?

“During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act” – George Orwell I wonder how the attitude expressed by some of the people here is related to this: https://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/p/pod/dod-idx/on-campus-author-discusses-the-cheating-culture-with-college.pdf?c=plag;idno=5240451.0001.004;format=pdf ...by the way, the above is how a true full length paper should look like. No one yet provided with copies of these two 'papers': Davidenko, N., Beaumont, J., Davidenko, J.M., and Jalife, J. (1997). Spatio-temporal evolution of spiral wave activity. Biophys. J. 72:2 A370, June 1997. Beaumont, J., Davidenko, N., Davidenko, J.M., and Jalife, J. (1995). A model study of changes in excitability of ventricular muscle cells with repetitive stimulation. Inhibition, facilitation, and hysteresis. Am. J. Physiol. 268; 37:H1-H14, 1995.

TakeruK Once again, thank you for taking the time thinking about this issue and writing a detailed response. However, there are few points with which I disagree with you: 1) The classification of kinds of publications - this is straightforward - a conference abstract is not a journal paper, and the first should not be presented as if it is the second. Many scientific societies have a major conference and a flagship journal. Many times those societies archive abstracts from their major conference in their flagship journal website. But this does not make any of these abstracts a journal paper. For example, the Cognitive Science Society have a journal called Cognitive Science. They also have an annual meeting to which you can send conference proceedings (6 pages long papers) or alternatively only an abstract. The acceptance rate for the Cognitive Science society journal is about 1:6-1:7. The acceptance rate of a conference proceedings is about 1:3 or 1:4 (depending on the year). The acceptance rate of abstracts is higher than 9:10 (they basically just filter out abstracts that have nothing to do with the conference topic or are poorly writen). In his CV Davidenko has the following categories: (i) Peer-Reviewed Articles; (ii) Peer-Reviewed Conference Proceedings ; (iii) Conference Abstracts However, he presented one Conference Abstracts under Peer-Reviewed Articles (the 1997 'paper', on which he presumably was a first author), and half dozen Conference Abstracts under Peer-Reviewed Conference Proceedings. It seems that he 'misplaces' conference abstract under the two other categories the way he likes. This is on top of the fabrication of the 1995 journal paper, where he placed his name instead of someone else. These issues have been taken place in multiple copies of his CV, for almost two decades. 2) Regarding the damage to the community - without being too dramatic, this cannot be easily quantified as it can be quite excessive. To quote from the article: ‘Biffing-up’ a CV is not a victimless act. Being accepted to a prestigious University, in part based on false information, involves stealing a spot from someone more worthy. Inflating credentials in federal grant applications may be considered as an act of fraud and it involves the abuse of tax payer money. Given the limited resources, it also means that funding was prevented from others, more capable scientists. Getting a faculty position while having an academic career that is based on lies comes on the expense of more worthy candidates who applied for that position. Finlay, a chronically dishonest individual can be toxic in any organization, moreover in the academia— The cover up or tolerance of a misconduct by some key University personnel is likely to create substantial tension and even conflicts within the institute, as many of the other institute affiliates are likely to be uncomfortable with such behavior being tolerated. In an organization that value or even only protect dishonest individuals, honest people suffer most. Beyond these, what is the lesson to be learned by students? ...that if you were successful in getting away with cheating long enough, you can keep your position as a Professor, and mentor and teach University students while being payed by tax payer money? Ho can you even start counting on such a person to do his job as a Professor? How do you quantify the corrosive impact of keeping such a person in a position of a Professor? Keeping him means the blurring of the boundary between right and wrong.

You will do great as a politician. More seriously. Clearly, as a graduate student you are most vulnerable, and you should hope someone higher-up will do the job. Too often they will not. What then?

Including in your CV a manuscript that doesn't exist, and/or to which you didn't contribute (after placing your name instead of someone else name) is a very interesting error to make, to begin with. Specifically when you only have a handful of publications, and given that the publication list is one of the most (if not the most) important aspect of an academic CV. I don't know. Maybe there are some cultural issues here. this sort of CV 'mistakes' may become the norm in some cultures : https://www.topuniversities.com/blog/lying-your-cv-facts ...It is after all the post-truth era. It is way too comfortable to include false details in a CV for years, that just turned to boost your qualifications, and when being discovered claiming it was an 'honest typo'. I will be willing to accept the omission of couple of publications as an error. But making up publications with your name on them?? How can this be an honest error?

Are you kidding? You used the word "MAYBE" three time, but you didn't provide a copy of those two papers with N Davidenko as an author. If someone has been so 'negligent' in writing his CV with such errors ( to include in his NIH bio-sketch, and likely in his grad school applications, postdoc applications, , grant applications, applications for faculty positions...) , consistently for almost two decades, multiple versions, can this person be trusted when he reports the findings from a research study? These non-existent papers are from 1995 and 1997. The versions of the CV that can be found online are from 2007 onward. Don't you think that by 2007 he should have know if he is an author on a paper or not? Since when one includes a paper in his CV as a PUBLISHED PAPER (with page numbers and everything) before even knowing if he is going to be included as a contributor???