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Drunken lemurs?

By Lawrence B. Ebert, Esq.

The Feb. 20 "Dilbert" comic strip is derived from the actual story of an Iowa man fired last year for posting a "Dilbert" strip at the office implying his bosses were "drunken lemurs." The current variant included:

Do you think drunken lemurs are like managers?"

Wally replies: "No. Some lemurs can hold their liquor."

Elsewhere

Note that Ohio University stripped Jay Gunasekera (former mechanical engineering chairman) of his distinguished professorship in February following an investigation into his role in a plagiarism problem. Part of a story from the Athens Post sounded like a re-make of the Poshard Problem at SIU: According to several distinguished professors who attended the November meeting, Gunasekera said he was not familiar with American academic standards when his book was published in 1989. Before Ohio, Gunasekera taught in Australia and Sri Lanka (but not in Madagascar, home of lemurs).

The Ohio Post wrote: In the book?s introduction, Gunasekera thanks Mehta for his ?valuable contributions to the material in this work.??The text was virtually identical to the source from which it was taken,? said Gar Rothwell, distinguished professor of environmental and plant biology. ?One does not use the work of others without giving credit for it.? One can only wonder what Professor Rothwell would think of page 54 of Poshard's Ph.D. thesis.

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See also

http://ipbiz.blogspot.com/2005/04/harvard-crimson-on-reprimand-of.html

http://ipbiz.blogspot.com/2007/03/cavalier-daily-on-plagiarism-of-doris.html

and from authorskeptics -->

"[W]hat I did 20 years ago was a significant lapse in proper academic practice . . . ."
PROFESSOR LAURENCE TRIBE, official statement on his book, God Save This Honorable Court, 4/13/05

InsideHigherEd wrote: Harvard University found that Lawrence H. Tribe committed a ?serious lapse? by failing to credit the work of another scholar in a book Tribe, a law professor, wrote 20 years ago, the Associated Press reported. But the inquiry also found that Tribe?s error was not intentional.

Full post as published by IPBiz on February 22, 2008 (boomark / email).