Comments on: Apocrypha Now?

By: Maud Newton: Blog

Maud Newton: Blog — Thu, 19 Jul 2007 01:47:57 +0000

[...] dissertation about a village that did not exist? Scott McLemee wants to know. Princeton grads say yes. (See [...]

By: LarryC

LarryC — Wed, 18 Jul 2007 09:03:47 +0000

This Princeton story fairly reeks of an urban legend.

By: John Emerson

John Emerson — Mon, 16 Jul 2007 04:27:05 +0000

Chris: name?

By: Chris

Chris — Mon, 16 Jul 2007 03:50:32 +0000

In Australia,in the nineties, an Indian researcher at the Mental Health Research Institute came up with a very impressive article on seasonality in schizophrenia, showing that people born in winter were at considerably higher risk. His employers – the Institute’s Board of Management – did, however, have two questions:

1) How did you get 2,785 research subjects (all figures approximate recreations) when the MHRI files only include 578?
2) On closer examination, the otherwise unrecorded Swiss university you say you got your degree from appears to be housed on a vacant lot; is there anything here we should know about?

He moved on. Which was, however, only the start of the story. When last heard of he was occupying a similarly senior position at an American research institution, from whence he kept a close track of the conferences and seminars given by every academic on the Board that sacked him, and from whence he would send anonymous alerts to the drug squads of the country where the conference or seminar was to be held, alerting them that a known drug kingpin would be traveling there under a false passport in the name of Professor Q.

There’s a lesson in that, I’m sure.

By: Jonathan Goldberg

Jonathan Goldberg — Sun, 15 Jul 2007 18:47:13 +0000

Like others, I would like actual names and other verifiable details before taking this as known to be true. I don’t see any obligation on anyone’s part to keep it secret.

I saw a related, although much less juicy, case back in the 1970s. It involved a graduate student named William Spear in the now-defunct Sociology Departement at Washington University in St. Louis. He finished his dissertation, was awarded his PhD, and obtained a teaching post at St. Louis University. However, along the way he cleared up an incomplete in a history seminar taught by a visiting professor named John Brewer (in answer to your question, yes) by forging Brewer’s name on a change of grade form.

He was caught because he boasted about his feat to some of his students at SLU. One of them took him seriously enough to check. His degree was revoked and he was fired.

By: Dan Simon

Dan Simon — Sun, 15 Jul 2007 14:19:56 +0000

Come to think of it, I seem to recall reading somewhere about a math PhD. candidate whose defense of his thesis, in which he proved various properties of some highly obscure class of mathematical object, was going swimmingly until one of the committee members asked whether the class could be shown to be non-empty…

Anyone hear this one? Is it apocryphal? How does it compare with Scott’s/Kieran’s example?

By: eb

eb — Sat, 14 Jul 2007 21:43:26 +0000

Or maybe full details will come out years from now in a post entitled: “Apocrypha Now Redux.”

By: anonymous

anonymous — Sat, 14 Jul 2007 18:06:04 +0000

The Mafia will speak for ourselves…

By: Nabakov

Nabakov — Sat, 14 Jul 2007 17:58:54 +0000

Wait til y’all discover this post and the consequent thread comments were all just fictional too.

By: John Emerson

John Emerson — Sat, 14 Jul 2007 09:51:08 +0000

If someone emails me the names involved, I’ll post them here while preserving the anonymity of my source. Who was the adviser? Who was the fraud? Who was the other fraud who discovered the original fraud?

People like that make the Mafia look bad, and the Mafia shouldn’t protect them.

By: Jon H

Jon H — Sat, 14 Jul 2007 07:45:33 +0000

” specialists in Italian History may or at least should have slightly higher standards for authenticity than high school english teachers.”

Maybe it’s a risk factor of excessive specialization.

“I’m afraid I didn’t catch the fraud – my work is on the next valley over”.

By: thuringwethil

thuringwethil — Sat, 14 Jul 2007 07:40:57 +0000

“The world needs a computer program which can generate fake historical theses” Well there is one that will generate fake Computer Science papers. It can be found here.

By: albert

albert — Sat, 14 Jul 2007 05:42:12 +0000

OT question for Brett or others about Bellesiles. If he got his award in (April) 2001, what was known about his misconduct before that date?

By: Kieran Healy

Kieran Healy — Sat, 14 Jul 2007 02:24:25 +0000

I checked with a friend of mine who was in the program around that time, and they confirmed the story as true—that the archive was a fabrication , etc.

By: Syl

Syl — Sat, 14 Jul 2007 00:48:53 +0000

The story is definitely correct and took place at Princeton, although I never heard the part about actually making up an entire village (just the archival material). As I remember it, there was another juicy aspect to this. The person who uncovered the fraudulent dissertation was himself uncovered to be a fraud who had faked letters of recommendation to get into Princeton in the first place. This was a case of one cheater recognizing another.