Journal Otter's Journal: Plagiarizing physicists; double-jawed morays 1
1) arXiv pulls nearly 70 papers from Turkish physicists at four universities in a massive plagiarism scandal.
The trouble began last November, when Salti and another graduate student, Oktay Aydogdu, underwent oral examinations for their PhDs. Although both had an extensive list of publications in gravitational physics, they struggled to answer even basic, high-school-level questions, according to Özgür Sariog brevelu, an associate professor at METU. "They didn't know fundamental stuff like newtonian mechanics," he says.
Suspicious, one of Sariog brevelu's colleagues, Ays cedile Karasu, began to look through the duo's publication record. Using Google, she quickly turned up a paper from which it seemed the students had lifted several lengthy sections. By mid-February, faculty members had identified dozens of articles on arXiv that they say seemed to be partly or completely plagiarized.
2) Moray eels can thrust their toothed pharyngeal jaws forward to drag large prey into their gullets.
The discovery of this mechanism in the reticulated moray eel (Muraena retifera) is notable in several respects. First, it is a classic example of discovery-based science, stemming from an inspirational "oh wow!" moment. Such moments are crucial to the study of living organisms, for they complement the approach of testing a priori hypotheses with statistical analyses of large data sets. In this case, Mehta and Wainwright combined intellectual curiosity and visualization technology to reveal the moray eel's unusual behaviour. They had previously found that several types of eel do not use suction at all during feeding. This led them to search for alternative ways in which these predators could transport their prey into the oesophagus. By recording high-speed videos of eel feeding events in the laboratory, the mechanism became clear: the videos show the pharyngeal jaws projecting far forward into the mouth cavity to latch onto the food.
They aren't. (Score:2)
The plagiarism thing does not at all surprise me, mostly because I have 1) had to contact an editor because one of their people had plagiarized my work and 2) saw a lot of published papers during my research in college that said the exact same things, using the same exact words. We're not just talking about student papers, either. I mea