Ozlam Fisek is an independent analyst in Florida, with an interest in documenting trends in academic publishing and an avid fan of PubPeer.
On Wednesday, June 25, 2025, Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Secretary Scott Turner announced the relocation of HUD headquarters to Alexandria, Virginia, where National Science Foundation (NSF) staff are currently sited. As NBC4 Washington reported, NSF employees promptly staged a protest, filling the hallways in Alexandria, chanting, shaking their fists, and forcing HUD’s press announcement […]
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On April 9th, I reported that more than two dozen articles by National Science Foundation (NSF) director Sethuraman Panchanathan had been called out for verbatim copying without citing sources, some of which were copyrighted. Two weeks later, on April 24th, Panchanathan announced his departure from NSF, but did not provide a reason. He returned to […]
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A previous Minding the Campus article reported apparent plagiarism in an article by Sethuraman Panchanathan, the director of the National Science Foundation (NSF). Panchanathan’s article was published by the Association of Computing Machinery (ACM), but it copied extensively, without citation or quotation marks or copyright permission, from an article copyrighted by the Institute of Electrical […]
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Harvard’s student newspaper recently reported that the university revoked the tenure of Harvard Business School (HBS) professor Francesca Gino. Gino was accused of tampering with data. But Harvard previously excused the plagiarism of its former president, Claudine Gay. On March 12, 2024, U.S. District Judge Myong J. Joun ordered that Exhibit 5 be unsealed in the case Gino […]
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A recent Minding the Campus article reported that more than two dozen publications, co-authored by Arizona State University (ASU) professor Sethuraman Panchanathan, have been flagged on PubPeer. Panchanathan is the director of the National Science Foundation (NSF), which outsources plagiarism investigations to the universities it funds. If you were a university funded by NSF, would […]
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A Chinese student at the University of Minnesota (UMN) was expelled for allegedly using artificial intelligence (AI) on a test in 2024. The student is suing UMN officials for violating his Fourteenth Amendment right to due process. The test in question was a preliminary doctoral exam in UMN’s School of Public Health. UMN’s disciplinary Hearing […]
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I have previously reported through two Minding the Campus articles (here and here) that the National Science Foundation (NSF) director, Sethuraman Panchanathan, published a paper through the Association of Computing Machinery (ACM) that copied an uncited source previously published through the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). In addition to copying from IEEE for […]
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Tufts University in the Boston, Massachusetts metro area ranks 37th on the U.S. News and World Report and boasts an endowment exceeding $2 billion. Between 2019-2023, the American public funded Tufts research to the tune of $230 million per year, primarily through the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), the U.S. Agency for […]
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My recent article on Minding the Campus examined a paper by National Science Foundation (NSF) director Sethuraman Panchanathan, published by the Association of Computing Machinery (ACM). ACM refused to investigate Panchanathan’s uncited copying from a paper published by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). The PubPeer website reported that Panchanathan wrote an October […]
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Federal agencies pay for research at colleges and universities. Those institutions also charge overhead—called Facilities and Administrative (F&A) or indirect costs—by billing the agency at a fixed rate applied to the direct costs. Arizona State University (ASU) charges 57 percent for F&A. When a professor spends $100,000 of grant money on direct costs, ASU collects […]
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I wrote an article for Minding the Campus a while back titled “Harvard’s Plagiarism Review Process is a Joke.” The article mentioned, in passing, that Harvard doesn’t have a faculty senate and doesn’t have a chapter of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP). Without a senate, the faculty have no formal representation to approve […]
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Harvard recently submitted an obfuscated and unsigned summary of its plagiarism “review process” to Representative Virginia Foxx’s congressional committee, Committee for Education and the Workforce. The document is a mishmash of the terms: “investigation,” “inquiry,” and “assessment.” Harvard had previously circulated a draft of an interim policy on research misconduct. There is no indication of […]
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Colleges and K-12 schools penalize students for written work that copies from a source without quotation marks and citations. But many colleges provide wiggle room for faculty. Harvard allowed its former president, Claudine Gay, to correct the record by adding quotation marks and citations long after papers were published. Imagine a school being unwilling to […]
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