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Who Gets Hurt? Examining Infamous Plagiarism Scandals Have you ever wondered who

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Question

Who Gets Hurt? Examining Infamous Plagiarism Scandals

Have you ever wondered who gets hurt when students, teachers, journalists, scientists, and other authors are dishonest researchers and writers? Occasionally we read about people who plagiarize their work, try to cheat their way through college, invent news features, copy from others, or fabricate research results. Earlier in the chapter you learned about anesthesiologist Yoshitaka Fujii, who wrote 172 bogus scientific papers, 126 of which were based on imaginary research studies. Two shocking cases in medical research rival Fujii'sfabrications in gravity and scope.

Former British surgeon Andrew Wakefield published an article in the reputable medical journal The Lancet that seemed to provide evidence that a common immunization against measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) could cause autism. Wakefield had fabricated evidence and was found guilty of professional misconduct. He lost his license to practice as a medical doctor. His fraudulent research, however, caused a precipitous drop in vaccinations in the United Kingdom and Ireland. In the words of one pediatrician, “That paper killed children.”

German anesthesiologist Joachim Boldt was fired from his professorship and is being investigated for allegedly manipulating data in his drug trials that led to more than 90 now suspect papers. Although no research subjects were directly harmed, Boldt's fraudulent drug research could have put millions of patients at risk.

Your Task: Investigate the cases of Andrew Wakefield, Joachim Boldt, Stephen Ambrose, Jayson Blair, Doris Kearns Goodwin, Jonah Lehrer, Kaavya Viswanathan, or other infamous plagiarists. Consider these authors' transgressions, their excuses, and the consequences of their actions. Gather your research results and summarize your insights in a memo report to your instructor.

Explanation / Answer

Solution:

Andrew Wakefield is known for the infamous fraudulent 1998 research paper and is a former medical researcher and gastroenterolist. In one of his researches , he found that Crohn’s disease can be resulted from the measles virus and thus he stated that there is a close relationship between the measles vaccine and autism. Due to the unwillingness of the parents to vaccinate their children after reading his article, many deaths of children were reported.

Similarly one of the famous case in which drug research fraud was found is of Joachim Boldt was a former professor and researcher and it was claimed that without any kind of solid research, he presented his findings in the research papers which was based on anesthesia & Analgesia. However there was not reporting of any kind of harm to the patients due to this but out of 91 articles presented by him, 10 were found to be plagiarized. and because of this his title of Professor was taken away by the University of Giessen.

Stephen Edward Ambrose is famous as a historian &biographer of President Nixon and Eisenhower.. He was accused of using plagiarizing content from the book of Wings Of Morning as some of the contents were used in his book titled The Wild Blue. In fact in the investigation by Forbes, at least six of books were found having some kind of plagiarism. He stated that his main job is storytelling and not to discuss his documents despite willing to quote the passages written by the other writers he could not d it he was unaware about the writers,

Jayson Blair was working the New York Times and he was accused of plagiarism as he fabricated many information. Although there are many works which are still under question, but the article which he presented in New York Times which was originally of San Antonio Express News reporter Macarena Hernandez is the most demining,. He stated that i the stated dates, he was visiting the city but later it was found to be false. After further investigations, he had to resign from his designation when some more pieces of plagiarism was presented to him.

Doris Kearns Goodwin is a well known historian and political commentator. She wrote many books on famous public personalities including President Lyndon Johnson. In 2002, he books were found of plagiarism from the books of other authors such as The Lost Prince by Hank Searl and Her Life and Time by Lynne McTaggart in her book the Fitzgeralds.. She confessed that she is guilty of not quoting the writers of these books. Despite having private settlement with McTaggar, she had to resign from the post at Pulitzer Prize Board

Jonah Lehrer is a famous American writer but many of the irregularities were found in his work as far as intellectual content is concerned. In most of his books, he used the significant amount of contents of other writers and in order to defend this he stated that he did not require any kind of permission to use these resources as he was also having the co-title of these materials.

Kaavya Viswanathan who wrote Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild and Got a life is accused of extraordinary plagiarism. most of the contents of her book seems to be very much similar to the novels Sloppy Firsts and 2003 Novel Second Helpings by Megan F. McCafferty. This resulted in the termination of her contract with the Brown publishers and the film which was about to shoot on her novel.