STOLEN RESEARCH

Here is today's example of Unbearable Crap:

A friend of mine says that when she was in graduate school, at a major university, her original research was stolen by one of her professors who published it as his own.

That definitely qualifies as Unbearable Crap.

I have expelled several of my own students for plagiarism, usually for copying essays or parts of essays from the Web and putting their own names on these "borrowed" or "mixed" essays.
Students need to be taught the value of original work, honesty, and integrity.

But some college professors seem to think they are above the law. What about ethics? What about academic integrity, as well as acacdemic freedom? What about fundamental social values, like honesty?

As most of my own students would say, a lie is still a lie, no matter who tells it.

Stolen research gets the Unbearable Academic Crap award for today.

Copyright 2011 by Roger R. Angle

"HANGMAN" CRAP

Here is the first line of a novel called "Hangman" by a famous mystery writer:
"The pictures had photographed her...."

What? Does that many any sense at all? What the hell does it mean?

Pictures don't photograph people. That kind of nonsense bothers me. It's bad writing. And it bothers me that a major publishing house spent good money to publish it, and a lot of readers are spending good money to buy it.

It should have said, "The photographs showed her..."
An easy fix.

I can't believe such gobbledygook got published. Don't they have copy editors? At least for the first page? And it's from HarperCollins, a major publishing house.

Unfortunately, this is fairly typical of major publishing houses these days.

This qualifies as Unbearable Crap.

(For those who want to know, here is the full Hangman line:
"The pictures had photographed her swollen, battered, and bruised--a puffy lip, two black eyes, a bloated and bright face."
So the rest of the sentence makes sense. And it distracts you from the nonsensical beginning.
BTW, the book is by Faye Kellerman.)

Copyright 2011 by Roger R. Angle