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Fred Herzfeld is partly right, in that he explains the trigger for breaches
of ethics. Currently, academic success is based on filling quotas, which, as
mature people know, always produces absurdities. (Consider the ratio of PhD
production to job production.) But plagiarism occurs not because of stress, but
because of what persons of bad character are willing to do when under stress.
And that, boys and girls, is our psychology lesson for today ... - Lance
Nizami
In a message dated 7/7/2009 3:45:14 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time,
herzfeld@xxxxxxxxxxxx writes:
Dear
List
I find it interesting that we discuss what a reviewer or editor
should do how to behave. Not one
word of why this happens. It
happens (my personal opinion) that there are a number of
reasons:
1. For members of the academic community there is
the well known PP. Many schools require at least
one, but hopefully more,
publications per year to promote an academic to assistant professor or
higher. That is how Publish or Perish came along.
2.
For members of industrial research organizations (Bell Labs, the former David
Sarnoff Research
Center, and many others) the number of publications
reflects on your salary and internal and
external
promotions.
3. From 1 and 2 above we can conclude that the
number of publications we can list on our CV
contributes in some
proportion to the increases in our salaries (among other factors), and in the
eligibility for promotion to some higher research or management
level.
4. From 1,2,and 3 I am led to the conclusion that
the problem lies not in ourselves buy in our
employers.
Fred
==========================================
Fred
Herzfeld, MIT '54
78 Glynn Marsh Drive #59
Brunswick,
Ga.31525
USA
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