06-19-2008, 04:57 PM
ham Wrote:self-plagiarism is common in academia;
That is true. It is not uncommon for one guy to re-write his dissertation or portions thereof and milk several articles out of it. Bear got an entire book out of his.
But that doesn't look like the case here. It looks like one guy got 15 buddies to write an article, then submitted it as his work alone. If he had stopped there nobody likely would have been the wiser. But then he brought it around again 8 months later, this time giving proper credit, probably because he lusted after the star billing you mentioned. That's a huge difference. If this is what it appears to be, we are talking academic fraud, pure and simple.
At least Douglas wrote his 8-month wonder himself, and only had his pals on his committee. Looks like Gollin cut out the heavy lifting and just had his pals write the whole thing for him.