New Survey Shows That Plagiarism Creates Job Opportunities

WASHINGTON, D.C.- Plagiarism is back in the headlines. The German Education Minister Annette Schavan recently resigned because of allegations of plagiarism in her doctoral dissertation. There was also significant outrage when it became public that the now discredited science journalist Jonah Lehrer was paid $20,000 to speak at the Knight Foundation about plagiarism and other forms of journalistic misconduct that he has engaged in.

Christopher Robin of the Winnie Foundation feels that plagiarists are unfairly maligned. His foundation conducted a survey, which proved that plagiarism scandals usually result in weeks of extensive reporting and investigations, thus providing new job opportunities for investigative journalists and academic committees. "Plagiarists create jobs for others. They should be seen as heroes and not as villains, especially during a recession when there aren't too many jobs out there."

Robin also said that plagiarism may soon become a highly attractive career for US college graduates. "Lehrer is becoming an excellent role model. He shows that you can earn good money while you are engaging in plagiarism. Even if you are caught, you still receive large honoraria to speak about your misconduct. Plagiarists have excellent job security."

Meanwhile, the Cocaine Retailer Association of Chicago (CRAC) says that at least three of its members are applying to the Knight Foundation for an opportunity to give a lecture. "They would like to speak about how wrong it is to sell drugs and some of them would be willing to do it for only half of the Lehrer honorarium."

Image Credit: Bengt Ruda's chair and a plagiarized version via Wikimedia Commons

Council Of Muslim-Americans (COMA) Says Next Pope Should Be An American Muslim Woman

WASHINGTON, D.C.- Pope Benedict XVI surprised everyone by announcing that he is going to retire. He will be the first pope in nearly 700 years to resign, because most popes retain their office until they die.

The Council Of Muslim-Americans (COMA) responded to this announcement by pointing out a long tradition of anti-Muslim discrimination among Catholic clergy. At a press conference, the COMA spokesperson Abdullah Abdullah said that this was an opportunity for the Catholic Church to prove that it has moved beyond Islamophobia.

"We have reviewed the religious affiliations of all the previous popes and we noted that none of them have been Muslim. This is clearly a sign of anti-Muslim discrimination and Islamophobia. There has also never been an American pope and none of the popes have been women. As proud Americans and advocates for the rights of women, we believe that the Vatican should engage in papal equality and choose an American Muslim woman as the next pope."

Image Credit: Pope Innocent, Fresco at the cloister Sacro Speco via Wikimedia Commons

Professor Hands Out "Erase Undesirable Data Points" Coupons To PhD Students

TIJUANA- Obtaining a PhD in the life sciences now routinely takes six or seven years, whereas 30 or 40 years ago, students could graduate from a PhD program in just 3 or 4 years. The University of California, Tijuana (UCT) hired a consultancy firm to help them identify the reasons for the prolonged PhD duration. The consultants found the culprit: Data outliers.

Richard ("Dick") Tator is a Professor for Complementary and Alternative Science (CAS) at UCT and explains the findings.

“If a PhD student conducts an experiment with eight mice and five respond one way, but three mice the opposite way, most students then have to conduct additional experiments with many more mice to obtain a definitive, statistically significant result. This can prolong the duration of a PhD by months or even years.”

Professor Tator has now come up with a very innovative program to address this problem. He hands out “coupons” to his students which allow them to simply erase any data points which are interfering with the statistical significance of the results or which do not conform with the anticipated findings.

Lay Zee is a student in Professor Tator’s laboratory and is a big fan of the new system. “Dick is just a wonderful mentor. He basically allows every graduate student to earn up to three coupons a year, and each coupon is good for up to two years. So you do not have to use them all up at once and you can keep them in stock for a future data point that does not support your hypothesis.”

Lay says that Professor Tator gives out one “erase undesirable data coupon” for performing three chores, such as walking his dog, picking up Professor Tator’s laundry and baby-sitting his children. Lay feels that implementing “erase undesirable data coupons” is a win-win situation for everyone.

“I get to graduate sooner and we get to publish our results faster. Some of my friends in other programs are going to be stuck in their PhD program for another two or three years, performing mundane experiments, just to ensure that they will have statistically valid results, whereas I am already receiving job offers.”

Tator’s colleagues are also impressed with his innovative approach. Knott Eggsist is a professor of philosophy and UCT and admits that he is a bit envious.

“Professors in the humanities also have dogs that need to be walked and our students are also stuck in a PhD program for a very long time, sometimes as long as 8 or 9 years. We would love to have something similar to Dick’s coupons, but our problem is that we do not really have any actual data in the humanities.”

“How do you erase a data point that never even existed?”, Eggsist asks. After a brief pause, his eyes light up and he then nods vigorously, “Now that would be a great dissertation topic!”

Eggsist then talks about an equally innovative program that his department might implement.

“We are considering an entirely different approach in the philosophy department. We have determined that PhD in philosophy is prolonged unnecessarily because one has to deal with all the complex and long-winded thoughts of German philosophers. We will therefore start using an ‘Erase a German philosopher coupon’. With each coupon, our students will be able to write their dissertation and pretend that for example Hegel, Kant or Nietzsche or any other German philosopher of their choosing never existed and simply ignore all their writings.”

Academic Publisher Unveils New Journal Which Prevents All Access To Its Content

AMSTERDAM - Academic publishers are currently under attack by scientists, governments and the general public for hiding the majority of published research articles behind paywalls. Readers have to pay either a one-time access fee of up to $50 to read one article or obtain an annual subscription to the journal in order to access the research findings. The access fees for research articles generate multi-billion dollar profits for academic publishers, but this lucrative industry is having a hard time justifying the fees. Since the bulk of research is funded through government grants, most people feel that the research articles which summarize and document the public-funded research should be freely available to the public. Some academic publishers are gradually giving in to these demands and are now offering "open access" publishing. In this model, researchers pay a fee to cover the publication costs, but the publications are then available without any fees to all readers.

Not all academic publishers agree with this approach. Else Beer, the CEO of the prominent academic publisher Elsebeer, has condemned the open access approach and is instead betting on a new line of closed-access journals. Beer unveiled the new closed-access journal "Facts of Life" at a press conference.

"We realize that there is a big push towards open access publishing in science, but few people think about the problems that come with open access. If everyone is able to access a scientific paper, it is far more likely that they will read the paper and perhaps even try to replicate the results. This is a huge problem for scientists who routinely publish irreproducible results, as well as for scientists who want to keep their tools and scientific methods secret."

Unlike previous closed access journals in which articles are hidden behind a paywall and can be accessed after paying a fee, "Facts of Life" guarantees that nobody other than the author can access the published article. This allows scientists to include the article as a published paper on their CV and cite their work, without ever having to worry that someone else might read the article. Beer expects that this new concept will be embraced by many researchers

The physician-scientist and poet Yuri Zhivago is among the first researchers to submit manuscripts to the new journal. "It is a blessing to have this journal", Zhivago commented, "I have at least three manuscripts that contain experiments that cannot be replicated.  Now I can publish them without having to worry about my tenure committee criticizing me for having too few publications. If I published them in an open access journal, I would eventually have to retract the papers and this would could damage my reputation as a researcher. By publishing in "Facts of Life", I can be sure that nobody will ever be able to accuse me of publishing fraudulent data."

Beer is confident that there are many other Zhivagos out there who need a completely closed-access journal. "We are taking closed access publishing to a new level and we think that we provide a much-needed forum for all the researchers want to publish but have no sound data." She is convinced that other publishers will follow suit when they see the success of the "completely closed access" model.    

NRA Says Hansel and Gretel Should Have Had Guns

WASHINGTON, December 22, 2012 - The National Rifle-Manufacturer Association (NRA) held a press conference in Washington, D.C. to offer "meaningful contributions" in the debate about education reform.  This highly anticipated press conference was chaired by Charlton TheRock, president and Grand Wizard of the NRA. TheRock read out a prepared press statement to an audience of over 100 journalists:

"Members of the mainstream media are quick to condemn the NRA, but their hateful rhetoric ignores what the NRA really stands for: caring about the future of American children. We have noticed that American education system is broken. Children are not taught traditional American values any more. Instead, they are becoming godless and unpatriotic creatures who spend most of their time surfing websites such as YouSpace, MyTube and Tweeter. Our generation used to read books, while today's generation facebooks.The main causes of America's education crisis are the hateful anti-gun rhetoric and the removal of guns from children's books. If children were exposed to gun friendly statements by teachers and to guns in children's books, they would be able to take pride in the American tradition of gun-ownership. They would also learn that guns are important problem-solving tools and could incorporate guns into their daily lives."

"Just look at how fairy-tales such as the story of Hansel and Gretel are taught at schools. The parents of Hansel and Gretel cannot afford to feed their children and are forced to abandon them in a forest. Hansel and Gretel accidentally wander into the house of an evil atheist witch who captures them and intends to eat them. During a moment of luck, Gretel manages to push the witch into the oven and escape with her brother Hansel.When liberals read the story, they are quick to blame the parents for abandoning Hansel and Gretel. This was not the mistake that Hansel and Gretel's parents made. The real mistake was that they left them in the forest without giving them any guns. If either Hansel or Gretel had been carrying guns, they could have shot the witch upon first contact, right after they took their first bite of the gingerbread house."

"We reconstructed the Hansel and Gretel story in our Civil War Reenactment Center and identified nine points in the story during which Hansel and Gretel had a clear line of fire and could have killed the witch if either of them had carried a gun.   In today's communist, fascist and gay economy, we could all be faced with a situation in which we have to abandon our children in a forest. We do not want our children to depend on luck. If you have to leave your children in a forest, please give them guns. It is the opinion of the NRA that providing firearms to children would protect them from witches, goblins, communists, gnomes, environmentalists, feminists and other evil entities. Our Founding Fathers would have wanted Hansel and Gretel to carry firearms. To help clarify this point and to educate children, parents and teachers, the NRA will soon  publish an annotated edition of Grimm's fairy-tales in which we will point out all the opportunities to evade evil with the help of guns." 

After listening to the statement, multiple journalists raised their hands to ask questions.  TheRock dismissed those requests and said, "We will not be taking any questions. Too many people in America have asked too many questions. Now is the time for answers and not for questions."

Image Credit: Hänsel und Gretel, Mein erstes Märchenbuch, Verlag Wilh. Effenberger, Stuttgart, end of the 19th century. The painting is in the public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

Study Reveals That Cold-Hearted People May Have A Slightly Higher Cardiac Temperature

NOVEMBER 5, 2012 - LOS ANGELES, California - A sensational new study was presented at the   Annual Conference of the American Society for Innovative Cardiologists. In a study conducted by the cardiologist Dr. Baskin at the Klondike Bar University, fifty-two participants were enrolled for an evaluation of their cardiac temperature. 

Each study participant was individually taken to an examination room in the university hospital and given a Nutella sandwich. Before the participants were able to eat the sandwich, they were asked to walk across a hallway to sign a document in the conference room. Unbeknownst to the study participants, a five year old child was waiting in the hallway for each of the study participants. Upon encountering each participant, the child began crying and demanded to have a bite of the Nutella sandwich. Study participants who gave the child either the whole sandwich or part of it were classified as warm-hearted. On the other hand, participants who ignored the child were considered cold-hearted. Based on these interactions, 39 of the fifty-two participants were cold-hearted while 11 participants showed signs of warm-heartedness. Two subjects had to be excluded  from the study because the child tripped them and removed the Nutella sandwich from the participants before the research team could ascertain whether or not the participants would voluntarily share the sandwich.

Following this initial portion of the study, the participants then underwent a cardiac catheterization performed by Dr. Robbins, another lead investigator in the research team. In this procedure, a catheter containing a temperature probe was advanced via the femoral artery into the aorta and then the left chamber of the heart. Measurements of the actual heart temperature were conducted in at least five different areas of the heart. 

To the surprise of the researchers, the average temperature of the heart in the cold-hearted participant group was slightly higher (37.1 degrees Celsius) than the temperature in the warm-hearted group (36.9 degrees Celsius), although this difference was not statistically significant. At a press conference, Dr. Robbins stated that these findings may represent a major paradigm shift in how the expressions "warm-hearted" and "cold-hearted" are used:

"Our data suggest that there is actually a trend for so-called 'warm-hearted' people to have a lower heart temperature. Even though this is not yet statistically significant, we believe that by increasing the number of study participants, we may soon be able to demonstrate that the 'warm-hearted' people need to be re-classified as 'cold-hearted'. This represents a semantic paradigm shift." 

Some novelists have expressed concerns about these findings and vowed to continue using the  terms "warm-hearted" and "cold-hearted" in the conventional sense, even if the scientific data contradicts this usage.

Goethe's Blog: Coffee Shop

I am in a coffee shop.

Sipping Lipton tea, because I do not have enough money for a cappuccino.

And because I can get free hot water refills without having to buy more teabags.

As long as I keep on sipping my tea, they cannot kick me out and I get to use their free Wi-fi.

I think I have hit rock bottom.

I have $ 370,000 in student loans – not a big surprise after getting a B.A. in philosophy, attending four years of medical school, two years of law school and even a Master of Divinity.

But no real job. Probably because I have never applied for a full-time job.

I get by, teaching at community colleges as an adjunct professor and tutoring some lazy high school students who are not very bright but happen to have rich parents. This is enough to pay my rent, but I do not have health insurance and I cannot defer my loan payments any longer.

I know that I am smarter than all the other professors and students, and I do not care that they do not recognize my brilliance. The fact that they think I am a loser is the best proof for my superiority. The unrecognized genius. 

The sad thing is that I am so smart that I know I am ignorant. They are so ignorant that they think they are smart. I like these two sentences. Maybe one day I will turn them into an aphorism.

The lady at the counter is glaring at me. I do not care. 

I keep on sipping my homeopathic Lipton tea. I think it is my sixth hot water refill, all from one teabag. If homeopathy works, than the tea buzz should get stronger with every refill. No buzz yet, but I probably just need to dilute it further. 

I think I know why I am so lazy. I am not afraid. Once I realized that I was smarter than every other person, I lost both - my ambition and my conscience.

As I am going through my email on my laptop, I see one email that does excite me. it bears the symbol of the elite hackers. Hacking into databases, uncovering secrets that nobody else has access to, this sounds like something I want to devote myself to. True knowledge, occult knowledge. I might make some money, too.

 All I need to do is to click on this link and I will join the ranks of the greatest hackers that have ever lived on this planet.  

I think I am going to be a hacker.

Image via Wikimedia: Painting by Johann Heinrich Wilhelm Tischbein - Goethe in the Roman Campagna, 1787 

Phflogging

The word "blog" is a portmanteau derived from "web" and "log", because the earliest "blogs" were simply online diaries or online logs. I thought that it might be fun to create fictional blogs for famous literary or philosophical figures that are living in the present and sharing their personal thoughts with the world in the form of blog posts. I therefore proudly coined the portmanteau "flog", derived from "fictional" and "blog", but the “f” could represent a number of other f-words, such as "frustration", “funny” or “fake”. The words "flog" and “flogging” would also evoke images of literary characters being flogged by the challenges of contemporary life, i.e. imagine Goethe struggling with the fact that he has just written down a brilliant poem, but for some unfathomable reason, Windows Vista has crashed, his USB flash drive has become unreadable and the poem is lost forever. 

I googled the term "flog", just to make sure that it was truly unique and novel, but Wikipedia revealed that the word has already been taken. In digispeak, “flog” is used in a whole host of contexts, including “fictional blog”, “food blog”, “fake blog”. I then decided to coin a new portmanteau (I only recently learned what this word means, so I have the urge to keep on using it) – “phlog”, derived from “philosophical blog”. It turns out that “phlog” is already in use, apparently for a blog written with a Gopher protocol. I don’t really understand what that means, but I know that I cannot use it.

I have finally come up with a truly original portmanteau: “Phflog” – philosophical fictional blog. It is pronounced /fflɒɡ/ and the only way to distinguish it from just plain old “flog” is that “phflog” has a prolonged “f” sound in the beginning. I will soon start with some phflog-posts, probably some for Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and for Friedrich Nietzsche, both of them living in the present day USA. The phflogs will contain fragments of their writings or quotes from their books, intermingled with some present day events. This is a bit of an experiment and I would like to see where it goes.

Lady Gaga's Brother May Convert to Islam

OCTOBER 19, 2012 GOTHAM CITY, NY - Joey Germanotta is not as famous as his older sister Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta, who is also known as "Lady Gaga". This could change in light of Joey's recent press conference in the Gotham City Public Library. In a meeting room packed with 29 tweeters, 14 bloggers and one journalist, Joey announced that he was considering a conversion to Islam. While most of his audience stared at him with obvious shock and incredulity, the first tweets regarding the announcement were already being transmitted to the outside world, together with the new Twitter hashtags #joeymuslim and #ladygagabrotherislam.

Lady Gaga in Japan
via Wikimedia / Giorgio Zeniquel 

One blogger immediately asked: "What is it that attracted you to the Muslim faith? Have you met Muslims and read books about Islam?" Joey responded by saying, "I do not really know any Muslims and haven't read any books, but I kind of know that Muslim men get to boss around women and blow up stuff, which sounds pretty cool!"

When Joey was asked whether his decision had anything to do with Lady Gaga, he screamed, "This is my press conference and this has nothing to do with Stef! I hated growing up as her little brother, because she always wanted to be the center of the attention. She got to be in all the high school musicals and wear those great costumes. I also wanted to be in the musicals but nobody cared about me. It used to be all about Stef, Stef, Stef! But this will change now, and my decisions have nothing to do with her." In closing, Joey said that he had not decided if and when he would eventually become Muslim, but he would hold another press conference once he had made up his mind. He also encouraged everybody to follow him on Twitter @joeykingoftheworld.

In a rare display of harmony, two rival Muslim organizations COCA (Central Organization of Compassion in America) and COLA (Central Organization of Light in America) issued a joint statement following Joey's press conference:

 "We hope that Joey will soon join the Muslim faith and we see this as a reward for the great work that our organizations have done during the past years. We realize that becoming part of our faith is enough of an incentive, but Joey and other people should know that new celebrity converts receive a free iPad 2, preloaded with Muslim apps such as iHumility. We would also like to use this opportunity to remind Muslims that they need to increase their donations to our organizations in order to support our tireless efforts." 

Joey's announcement also elicited very critical comments. An organization of conservative American fathers called "Don't Ask, Don't Sin" (DADS) issued the following statement: 

"It is the culture of feminism, Marxism, fascism, homosexuality and Darwinism that is propagated by our liberal elites which makes victims like Joey convert to Islam. If Joey were able to assert his manhood in our own culture, we would not lose him to Shariah-wielding Islamists."

An earlier version of this article was originally published in the Huffington Post 

Four Year Old Boy Is Suspended From Pre-School For Plagiarism

SEPTEMBER 2, 2012 CHICAGO, IL – The Wisdom Truth Fortitude (WTF) Academy is the nation’s best elite pre-school. For an annual tuition of $57,000, three-year old child prodigies can enroll in the WTF Academy if they can pass a highly competitive entrance examination. When the WTF students graduate two years later, most of them have acquired the cognitive maturity that is normally found in middle school students. WTF Academy proudly advertises that 87% of its graduates ultimately end up going to an Ivy League college, and over half of these are accepted into these colleges before they become teenagers. This past week WTF Academy made headlines when it suspended the four-year old student Axel Foley for plagiarism.

Principal Edward Rooney made the decision after a plagiarism committee reviewed Axel’s work during the preceding year. The committee found numerous examples of misconduct, including recycling parts of an essay he had written when he was three years old and fabricating quotes of fellow students when he covered a bake sale for the pre-school newspaper. However, the most blatant case of Axel’s plagiarism was identified by his “Introduction to Postmodern Analysis” class teacher Ms. Derrida, who was grading a short story that Axel wrote. Ms. Derrida noticed that Axel used the phrase "You are made out of cardboard boxes, you must have a story to tell." Ms. Derrida knew that she had heard this phrase before, but could not remember where. “When I showed our standard anti-plagiarism video ‘Plagiarism in the Elementary Classroom’ to the incoming class of students, I finally realized what Axel had done”, Ms. Derrida explained. Apparently, Axel used the last line of that video for his short story. “Plagiarizing an anti-plagiarism video is one of the most egregious crimes that one can imagine”, Mr. Rooney stated at a press conference, “this is why we decided to immediately suspend Axel from WTF.”

Plagiarism has received a lot of press recently in light of the Jonah Lehrer controversy, the Harvard cheating ring and the fact that the German defense minister Guttenberg had to resign because large portions of his doctoral thesis were plagiarized. After Axel’s suspension and these other scandals, elite pre-schools all over the country are currently assembling plagiarism committees to review the work of the pre-schoolers. When we asked Axel for a comment, he responded with the words “If you copy from one author, it's plagiarism. If you copy from two, it's research.” 

How To Suck At Your Religion

Copyright © 2012 Matthew Inman.

A  really interesting comic entitled "How To Suck At Your Religion" can be found on "The Oatmeal" and forces you to ask yourself questions such as:

‎"Do you validate your beliefs by constantly trying to convince others to believe the same thing?"

‎"Do you mock other religions for believing crazy things.....?" 

Read more here: