Yet another example of Wegman plagiarism
by Tim Lambert, Deltoid, September 21, 2011
Andrew Gelman details yet another case of apparent plagiarism by Edward Wegman. This one is a copy and paste from Wikipedia that manages to introduce an obvious error, claiming that a d-dimensional cube has only 2d vertices instead of 2^d. Gelman gets all sarcastic:
[Note to Drs. Wegman and Said: You can replace "2^n" by "2n" only if n=1 or 2. I checked by following the principles of statistical computation and making a graph in R: curve (2^x-2x, from=-2, to=5). I know it's a pain to do superscripts in Word, but next time you should really put in the effort to do it right.]
Hat tip: John Mashey.
Comment by JM:
There are many more problems in that article (detailed writeup soon at DC's place).
But while people are awaiting that, here's a related topic to discuss. Somehow, some people started with Strange Scholarship in the Wegman Report, and claim that the WR was unscathed, except for some possible minor copying of text, easily fixable by a few quotes.
This was fairly bizarre, given that 20-25% of the pages of SSWR showed plagiarism, but even there, much of the analysis was of the biases and errors introduced, often in support of Memes and Themes.
As I wrote, p.3: "Obvious plagiarism needs so little explanation that fabrications are not generally enumerated, especially as some errors might be attributed to incompetence. Either issue is taken seriously in academe."
For the sake of simplicity in academic misconduct committees (although GMU has now just passed the 18-month mark and still counting, without an inquiry report to anyone), Ray had just focused on the plagiarism, not the falsification/fabrication.
For that, I later wrote the 12-page Strange Falsifications in the Wegman Report. When someone is not just plagiarizing but falsifying, those cases are much easier to find and display amidst the plagiarized text.
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