January 23, 2008

The Scene of the Crime

Posted by Eric at 11:33 pm | Category: Academia, Ethics, Links, Literature

Via Ars Technica, there’s apparently a new database online called Deja Vu, which catalogues duplicate (or near duplicate) entries in MEDLINE, using an algorithm very similar to BLAST.

The majority of the entries retained in the database seem to be cases of outright plagiarism. Going through a few of the entries is like dredging the bottoms of the academic pool; most of the journals are pretty obscure or quite poor in quality, and I bet most of the authors are pretty unknown, too. It’s a strange world down in the pits…

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One Response to “The Scene of the Crime”

  1. The Futile Cycle » Blog Archive » The First Casualty Says:
    February 3rd, 2008 at 3:31 pm

    [...] the first major casualty of the etBLAST algorithm and Deja Vu database has been found at Harvard Medical School, where Prof. Lee Simon’s review paper has been found [...]

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