Nerd Scandal: Plagiarism and Crossword Puzzles

Well, well, well ...

"The Saudi Arabia of Maple Syrup"

Smuggling, shenanigans, and skulduggery!  Oh, Canada.

Great Moments in Research: Peer Review Fraud

I'm resurrecting the sarcastic "Great Moments in Research" tag to report yet another massive scandal in scientific research publication.  Ugh:

In August 2015, the publisher Springer retracted 64 articles from 10 different subscription journals “after editorial checks spotted fake email addresses, and subsequent internal investigations uncovered fabricated peer review reports,” according to a statement on their website. The retractions came only months after BioMed Central, an open-access publisher also owned by Springer, retracted 43 articles for the same reason. 

“This is officially becoming a trend,” Alison McCook wrote on the blog Retraction Watch, referring to the increasing number of retractions due to fabricated peer reviews. Since it was first reported 3 years ago, when South Korean researcher Hyung-in Moon admitted to having invented e-mail addresses so that he could provide “peer reviews” of his own manuscripts, more than 250 articles have been retracted because of fake reviews — about 15% of the total number of retractions.

Jon Stewart vs. IRS "Lost Emails" Nonsense

The Daily Show
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"Borders on criminal stupidity" ... and, why, yes, I do have a old blog category tag called "felony stupidity"!

Remy vs. the VA Scandal

I've always enjoyed Remy's work, and I've posted a number of his other videos before (he has his own category tag here, so click on it see cleverly done political humor like the NSA Slow Jam or the TSA Christmas videos).  He's always been witty and incisive and hilarious and just a little goofy.  It's funny and kind of cute.  This time, though, he's taken things to a whole new level.  The first time I saw the video I was cheerfully listening along and then my jaw dropped.  He went there.  It was bold. Ballsy. Brutal.  And brilliant.  Sometime you need a comedian to savage the news and people behind it.  I'm not even sure it counts as "humor" or "satire" anymore ... but I am sure that I've never loved him as much as I do right now.

Nerd News: UK University Admissions Service Sells Access To Student Data

Selling out to the tune of 12 million pounds sterling.

Nerd News: Publishers Withdraw 120+ Fake Research Papers

Here's the sordid tale:

The publishers Springer and IEEE are removing more than 120 papers from their subscription services after a French researcher discovered that the works were computer-generated nonsense. 

Over the past two years, computer scientist Cyril Labbé of Joseph Fourier University in Grenoble, France, has catalogued computer-generated papers that made it into more than 30 published conference proceedings between 2008 and 2013. 

The "nerds behaving badly" tag is for the publishers who clearly had sloppy vetting practices.  My response:

The NSA, LOVEINT, and Twitter

"LOVEINT"?  Seriously?  You guys suck.  Since every joke is a tiny revolution, Twitterers strike back with a hilarious hashtag, #NSAPickUpLines.

I also can't help re-posting Remy's satire:

 

The Anthony Weiner Pseudonym Generator!

HA!  Anthony Weiner/Carlos Danger the slimy New York pol is back in the news, and the only reasonable response is to mock him mercilessly.  What's your pseudonym?  Mine's Raul Verboten!

Nothing Is So Obvious That You Don't Have To Spell It Out

Quote of the day on the increasingly scandal-ridden British government health care deathtrap NHS:

People working in the NHS need to know that they, and not some faceless administrator, Whitehall mandarin or government minister, are responsible for what happens to patients in their care. 

I can't believe things have reached such a miserable depth that the editorialist actually felt he had to explain this to people working in the NHS.  RELATED: Here.

Chinese Nerd News: Exams, Cheating, and Riots, Oh My!

*facepalm*

Latest NHS Skulduggery

True story: I was just chatting with a British friend of mine who was extolling the NHS and telling me "Don't believe the crap in the American media" about its various failings.  Almost instantly afterwards when I got home, I saw this horrible news item about a cover-up of babies' deaths at a Cumbria hospital ... and the story was not in the US news.  Nope, this is in the BBC, which also ran this editorial beginning:

In an interview on BBC radio, Care Quality Commission chairman David Prior described the allegation that his organisation covered up failings as "shocking". 

But perhaps the truly most shocking element of all this is that we are not really that surprised. 

The findings laid bare by consultants Grant Thornton on Wednesday confirms something that is becoming clearer and clearer as the months go by: that in the early part of the 21st century a rotten culture developed in the NHS in England that put self-interest ahead of patients. 

In short, the NHS stopped caring.

So, yeah. I don't need to "believe the crap in the American media" about the grotesqueries of the NHS and government-run health care.  The British media will do it just fine.  Meanwhile, 30 aggrieved families are taking legal action over infant and maternal deaths and injuries at that house of horrors hospital where the deaths and injuries went, as the news report, says, "unnoticed."  How damning.

A Cartoonist Vs. the AP and James Rosen Scandal

Indeed.  Click to enlarge for more detail.

All the President's Men

Quote of the Day: Eric Holder's "Off the Record" Meeting

Here's an understatement:

"There is an uncomfortable irony in the fact that an attorney general investigating his policy for spying on the media is asking the media to keep his words secret."

Y'THINK?  Besides, when you find that media outlets from the New York Times to Fox News are refusing to go to your meeting, you're doing it wrong.  As for the few outlets who are going to the Holder meeting, they should probably leak everything immediately.  

The Washington Post Jumps the Shark

You all know that I appreciate beautiful shoes as much as the next girl, but really, Washington Post?  When we have Scandal-a-palooza blowing up all around us on multiple fronts, with ramifications for everything from press freedom to foreign policy, this is what you print?  

I personally don't give a good gorram if this person, as the news story drools, "wears Manolo Blahniks and Christian Louboutins into the Oval Office."   She is not Carrie Bradshaw, and this is not Sex and the City: White House Edition.

I am pleased to note, though, that when I read the story, the very first reader comment on the bottom was this:

6:55 PM EDT
Without a doubt, the stupidest piece I've ever read in the Washington Post.

Stupid with a side of sexism.  All together now to the WaPo: PFFFFFFFTTTTTTT!!!!!

Quote of the Day: On Obama and Journalism

From the guys at TechDirt:

The Obama administration has used the Espionage Act against more cases of whistleblowing to the press than all other Presidents combined. 

... Obama said that "journalists should not be at legal risk for doing their jobs," but that the "focus must be on those who break the law." Oh really? Then why did your own DOJ claim that a journalist was an aider and abettor and/or co-conspirator for reporting on a leak -- just like tons of other reporters?  

President Obama sounds like someone campaigning against his own policies. Either Eric Holder and the DOJ have "gone rogue" or the President is hastily pretending that his administration is not doing what it clearly has been doing for years.

Captain Shirk: Francesco Schettino Now On Trial

Schettino, you'll recall, is the despicable captain of the Costa Concordia.  Yes, the captain who abandoned his ship, crew, and passengers when it capsized.  (Remember this?)  The dirtbag is now on trial for manslaughter.

Quote of the Day: "Welcome to Dumb and Dumber."

Via the Other McCain, this quotation by CBS journalist Bob Schieffer is about Scandal-a-Palooza, and it's quite long (hence the fold), but it's worth a look:

Satire Alert: May Madness Scandal-a-Palooza Brackets

March Madness is (sadly) finished, but a wag at Ricochet has something new for us to play with!  Click to enlarge so you can see all the chicanery, hubris, and moral laxity:

"I am not a crook."

Caveat: This is a joke.  I do NOT support irresponsible talk about actual impeachment efforts, because - let's face it - they're doomed to fail and will only backfire. 

Ask Not For Whom the IRS Trolls. It Trolls For Thee.

While everybody in a justified uproar about the IRS scandal (and the hearings this week only made its wretched "leadership" look worse), there's a new response/"defense" making the rounds on social media, and I just have to shake my head.  Some lefty people are actually defending the IRS.  They do this despite the fact that the IRS confessed to purposefully going after particular organizations based specifically on their political (and now apparently even religious) convictions.  And you don't think this sort of behavior is wrong?  Really?  Really?

Apparently these folks are fine with the capricious abuse of power as long as it's their team doing the abusing.  The overarching principle that "abuse of power is bad" seems to go right past them.  Partisan ideology makes people blind, blind, blind.  Guys, the government beast that today bites the neighbor whom you hate can tomorrow just as easily bite you.

I've give you this as the quote of the day:

The IRS targeting citizens for political reasons is not simply another Washington scandal. At issue is something that strikes at the very heart of who we are as a people, what we believe as Americans and what this country has always stood for. 

The First Amendment was written to protect many different types of expression. But the Founding Fathers' primary concern -- and a first principle for every generation of Americans that followed -- was the protection of political speech. Apparently, the IRS was even targeting people who criticized how the country was being run. 

Protecting citizens' right to speak out against their government has always been an integral part of what separates us from tyrannical regimes. What the IRS did is how the KGB used to target dissidents. It is how they deal with troublemakers in China. 

It is not how we treat American citizens. Our Constitution guarantees it. 

... This is not about Republican vs. Democrat or conservative vs. liberal. It is about arrogant and unrestrained government vs. the rule of law. 

Preach!