Archive for the ‘plagiarize’ tag
Cheating’s just not worth it
I’ve never understood why researchers or authors cheat or plagiarize. Either what you’re lying/cheating on is completely inconsequential, and hence its not worth it to risk your career/reputation over being caught, or its a big deal and sooner or later someone will verify it.
And as Derek Lowe’s blog In the Pipeline points out in a recent post, it’s especially not worth it when someone is extorting you. Apparently a postdoc in Peter Schultz’s renowned group at Scripps named Zhiwen Zhang did a little fudging in some published papers on incorporating glycosylated amino acids into proteins.
Around the time that the Schultz lab was starting to have difficulty replicating Zhang’s work, Zhang apparently began receiving e-mails at his new faculty position at the University of Texas which demanded he send $4000 to an address in San Diego or “you lose job… Texas will fire you before you tenure”
The San Diego police were apparently involved and, although they found a suspect, Zhang did not press charges (presumably to avoid publicizing his fib?). Eventually, though, the extortionist sent an anonymous letter to Scripps, University of Texas, and a number of publications, and Zhang was denied tenure.
Who was our mystery blackmailist? And who knew what and when? I have no idea, but I will say two things:
- Don’t cheat in a publication. Like I said before, it either doesn’t matter enough to risk your career or it matters a great deal and, in that case, you’ll be caught when someone tries to replicate your work.
- It’s only in the era of the internet that such a thing gets spread so widely and so quickly.
