Academic Fraud

Ward Churchill, Colorado Univ, has been found guilty of academic fraud, including plagiarism, by a committee five full professors. That link was to the full report (124pgs), but the one in the header has some highlights. Highlighting the highlights, he is biased in his analysis and interpretations, and there are two-and-a-half pages of passages he copied from other works without giving them credit. In conclusion, all five profs say he committed serious misconduct, two recommended a two-year suspension w/o pay, two said they could outright firing him (revocation of tenure and dismissal) but should do the milder suspension, and the fifth says they could and should fire him.

In some ways this is a triumph of peer review, in that they weeded out someone (another person) who was falsifying work. In other ways, it is an absolute failure that he got this far, and will seriously damage the credability of science. If it ever made it to the news headlines, that is, for good or bad.