Columbia Official Is Accused of Plagiarizing Dissertation From Wikipedia

[Prairie Gates]

Source: The New York Times

An official in charge of diversity, equity and inclusion at Columbia University’s Irving Medical Center was accused this week of plagiarizing large sections of his doctoral dissertation, according to an anonymous complaint filed with the university.

The 55-page complaint accused the official, Alade McKen, of copying material in his 2021 dissertation at Iowa State University from more than two dozen other scholars and from Wikipedia, which is written and edited by volunteers from the general public.

The complaint was published online Thursday by The Washington Free Beacon, a conservative news website that led a campaign last year against the former president of Harvard University, Claudine Gay. She resigned in January following accusations of plagiarism and after her response to antisemitism on campus was criticized.

Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/29/nyregion/columbia-medical-plagiarism-wikipedia.html

---

If you're doing any kind of DEI work in academe and you're not squeaky clean, damn but they're coming for you.

[sinkingfeeling]

1. Another NYT hit piece on an Ivy League school's DEI official?

[Prairie Gates]

5. The hit piece was by the right wing Washington Free Beacon

The NY Times considers it news, apparently. That the Washington Free Beacon is basically selecting anybody in a DEI position and going through their dissertations with a fine-tooth comb is, I suppose, part of the story, but the NY Times feels comfortable playing the "neutral transmitter" of information here.

[FakeNoose]

8. How many conservative-leaning academics are also guilty of plagiarizing?

Who is more likely to steal another person's work and present it as his or her own?
Maybe there's an opportunity to take down some of the opposition here. Hmmm.....

[Prairie Gates]

9. Yes, the thing about this game is that anyone can play

[IbogaProject]

12. Catch is we need some ill gotten loot to fund it

This is being funded by either Putin, or some other wealthy fascist pig.

[DJ Synikus Makisimus]

2. Sounds like a fascist attempt at another hatchet job, but I wanna see the diss and compare.

Depending on the discipline, it's not at all weird to QUOTE two dozen other scholars' works. Let's see the specifics of these allegations, the allegedly plagiarized passages (with proper citations to the originals), and the entire dissertation. Also, citing anything from Wikipedia in a diss is a real stretch, and probably a tell that this is bogus. Basic info on any subject, which is what Wikipedia is, would be known to both scholar and his/her committee before a student is advanced to candidacy (the step before writing a dissertation) in a doctoral program. While one might include such information in a dissertation, particularly one destined for publication, one wouldn't need to crib a Wikipedia entry. A doctoral candidate would know. Of course, said doctoral candidate could have WRITTEN (or rewritten) the Wikipedia entry in question. I'd also want to know who was on the committee that oversaw both the dissertation and the defense. Issues of plagiarism should be caught DURING the process, so their integrity is in question as well.

[Angrybob2001]

3. my first though as well

It would not surprise me in the least if this person was one of the editors for the wiki entry. We'll never hear how this turns out of course, all that's needed is the allegations for the court of public opinion.

I honestly can't imagine a scenario where someone reaching their dissertation stage and deciding, "here let me google something real quick and print that off."

[Prairie Gates]

7. The Wikipedia text was the same back to 2013; his diss was in completed in 2021

So he edited the Wkipedia entry to add his knowledge, and then, eight years later, used that same text, but modified it slightly?

[Prairie Gates]

4. There's one in the article

It's pretty bad.

[Igel]

10. That's not hard to find.

Looked at comparisons a day or three ago--maybe yesterday, maybe Wednesday, maybe Tuesday. "Recently."

Now, a lot of times you have little choice in what you say. "The definition of pH based on [H+] concentration is ..." and you're going to say the same thing a million others have said in the last decade. Like having to quote that "Washington DC is the capital of the United States." Background noise. But some of the quotes were fairly idiosyncratic and while probably not novel utterances they'd be rare, and you get 10, 15, 30 of them in a passage and you're pretty much left with "they cribbed this."

They were lazy. Or assumed nobody would notice. Unlike one professor in my dept. in the '90s who would spend days in the library verifying every reference--looking them up if local, using databases if he couldn't actually peruse the original. His students would get comments like "You cite ______ but on page 231 as you claimed your quote is not to be found. Correct it." And it would be found by the PhD candidate not on page 231 but straddling pp. 231-2.

[MichMan]

6. If true, they should rescind his degree

[Igel]

11. That seldom happens.

First, nobody cares about most instances. There's a bit of political bias in this, in that very often the physical sciences rely less on failure to attribute and more often on analysis of collected data and methodology, so the plagiarism is more likely in the literature review. And if it's not, the data are still valuable and useful--and if the graduate doesn't deliver in the lab or in the field then who cares, the person's a loser who gets bumped into management or education. But if you're into the social sciences or humanities, all that your rep stands on is words. Not many (C) in those fields, apart from econ and some outlier fields.

Tribes protect their own. You fake data, you're deep-6ed. You plagiarize your theses, and you're given a chance to correct them--or somebody says that it's really the school's fault for not making sufficiently explicit the expectations to avoid plagiarism. Or some other crap. The point is that there are different standards by field and since who goes into a field has a decided political/ideological/etc./etc. skew, those standards will necessarily reflect the same underlying skewness.

[NJCher]

14. Oh, they care

You know who cares? The unions--the teacher's unions.

I am active in the teacher's union and I could tell you story upon story. The most egregious is that we had 2 state college (now universities) presidents who were found to plagiarize or even worse, just make up citations that didn't even exist. One claimed he wrote 50 articles; the union looked them up and they were not to be found.

You would think people smart enough to get into these places would be a little more strategic in their claims, but they're not. The union used it as a pressure tactic against the administration on various issues.

Did they have to resign? One eventually did, but I don't recall if it was strictly because of the plagiarism. The other one was in cahoots with a politician and was basically covering the area in asphalt at the bequest of the construction contractors. They were building buildings that couldn't even hope to fill with classes. Eventually that politician went by the wayside and the college president was gone for some other reason.

But the damage was done: To fill the slots, they started letting anybody in because they wanted the tuition $$. I left because I couldn't stand the quality of the students. It hurt financially, too. It was a good paying job and it took me a year to find something the equivalent.

Anyway, long story short: the people who care have an axe to grind. Regardless, it shouldn't be happening and says standards are not being adhered to. Scholars who are supposed to supervise this activity are not doing their jobs. I looked at their side-by-sides at this link, and it's way over the top:

https://freebeacon.com/campus/columbia-university-hospital-dei-chief-is-serial-plagiarist-complaint-alleges/

Of course it is entirely possible this is made up BS, just like the impeachment hearings in the House.

[Prairie Gates]

15. Data fakery is rampant in academic STEM fields

Retraction Watch is never short of materials.

[NJCher]

13. on the other hand

The RW thinks of the NY Times as "fake news." I'm not standing up for the NY Times, which I find atrocious, but here's a story by James B. Stewart, columnist at the NY Times, who wrote a book called Unscripted. He and his co-author Rachel Abrams gave a talk at our library this last Thursday and he told this story:

He gave a couple T-shirts with the NY Times logo on them to his nephew in Texas. They were small T-shirts and the nephew gave them to his kids. The two children were on the playground when some other children joined them and said, "The NY Times! That's fake news!"