As a current resident, I feel obligated to point out that there have actually been some real improvements in the past 10 years on resident work hours. The most important ones being:
* No more than 80 hours worked in a week (Many surgery residencies previously averaged up to 100.)
* No more than 30 hours in a row (Previously 36 was the standard; 48 was not unheard of.)
* 4 days completely off out of every 4 weeks.
There are some loopholes (e.g. you can stretch the 80 hours to 88 if the time is categorized creatively) and abuses (some programs encourage their residents to under-report time), but I think it's generally a big step in the right direction for patient safety and resident quality of life.
Something to think about: These rules only apply to residents, who are always supervised to at least some extent. They don't apply to attendings (fully boarded doctors). So you won't be treated by a resident who hasn't slept in 72 hours, but if you're in a non-teaching hospital it's still possible that the non-resident doctor treating you there hasn't slept in 72 hours.

Leon, a family friend, died on December 8th and his funeral is being held today. He loved lengthy discussion and bullshit sessions revolving around science and technology and I'm sure is loving it that slashdot is part of his send-off.

I have (as far as I know) never been maliciously plagiarized, but I have been surprised at how many times I've been plagiarized by papers that cite my own. Clearly, they're not trying to hide anything, or they wouldn't have bothered to cite the paper that they're copying from, but there seem to be many authors who don't see anything wrong with lifting a paragraph and just changing a couple words. Certainly the few I've contacted about doing this have seemed very surprised that I should think there's anything wrong with it. Obviously this kind of thing isn't as serious as what's being alleged in TFA, since none of them were claiming credit for my ideas or work, but I think it is a point along the continuum of laziness and dishonesty of grabbing something that's someone else's rather than doing it yourself.