University of Maryland President Accused of Plagiarism

University of Maryland President Accused of Plagiarism

This has become so common that people are becoming desensitized to it. Plagiarism used to be a very serious charge in higher education.

The Daily Wire reports:

University of Maryland President Copied Rocket Science Paper From Aussie Student

University of Maryland President Darryll Pines appears to have committed significant plagiarism, lifting large portions of two academic journal articles from a tutorial website made years prior by an Australian student, a Daily Wire investigation found.

A 1,500-word stretch of a 5,000-word paper by Pines and a co-author published in 2002 — accounting for nearly a third of the paper — is virtually identical to a tutorial website called “Surfing the Wavelets” published in 1996 by Joshua Altmann, who at the time of publishing was a university student in Australia.

Pines does not cite or mention Altmann or the website, which says it was last updated in October 1996. Pines and his co-author, Liming Salvino, then recycled much of that paper, including almost all the uncredited Altmann language, for another peer-reviewed paper in 2006.

Pines, a rocket scientist and diversity activist, does not appear to have made any changes to Altmann’s work except removing some sentences and Americanizing the Australian’s British spelling (turning “analyse” to “analyze,” e.g.) — but Pines missed two such words, “endeavour” and “modelling,” which remain in his work with the spelling commonly used abroad.

Pines’s systematic editing of British words suggests he did copy the language, but deliberately manipulated Altmann’s text to look like his own. The finding of significant past plagiarism comes after Pines this month presented what he said was “faculty research” defending a pro-Palestine rally planned for October 7, but which actually came from ChatGPT.

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