[HN Gopher] I tracked down my impostor
___________________________________________________________________
I tracked down my impostor
Author : vanilla-almond
Score : 421 points
Date : 2021-03-27 18:02 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.theguardian.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.theguardian.com)
| dakial1 wrote:
| This seems a case of a high level mythomaniac. Funnily enough
| I've encountered some in the recent years that got me thinking if
| this kind of psycho disease was increasing or simply I got more
| knowledgeable in a way that I started spotting it. I really don't
| know, because we can clearly spot this kind of people today
| (Trump anyone?) but is it getting worse or have they always been
| there?
|
| It something impressive the lenghts these kind of people go with
| their lies and deception, keeping a straight face even when the
| lie is obvious.
| MrsPeaches wrote:
| > that got me thinking if this kind of psycho disease was
| increasing or simply I got more knowledgeable in a way that I
| started spotting it
|
| Just FYI it's known as the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon or the
| Frequency illusion [1]
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frequency_illusion
| formerly_proven wrote:
| I'm pretty sure people who habitually lie about basically
| everything (Sayre's law applies, for some weird reason) are
| simply believing their own lies and cannot consistently tell
| reality from their made-up world. Any conflict between reality
| and their world is met with a defensive response (straight up
| acting like something was not brought up, shallow dismissals,
| changing topics, aggression).
|
| I didn't know there's a special word for this - mythomaniac - I
| just figured these guys are somewhere on the
| psychopath/sociopath scale.
|
| Edit: Trump put a slightly different twist on it, he lied as a
| show of power/dominance by lying about something which is
| immediately and obviously false, then observing that no one
| speaks up (i.e. submitting to his power).
| disabled wrote:
| I have been a victim of this, and it is still an ongoing matter.
| If you don't want to find yourself a victim of these kinds of
| people, then you better keep these two links as a reference, and
| always take them to heart:
|
| Narcissists Online:
| http://www.issendai.com/psychology/narcissism/narcissists-on...
|
| What to Remember When Dealing with a Narcissist:
| http://www.issendai.com/psychology/narcissism/narcissists-wh...
|
| People who do this sort of stuff have narcissistic traits at
| minimum, which of course is an armchair diagnosis. But, these
| people really do not need to meet the criteria for narcissistic
| personality disorder. All you need to know is that they are
| people who will harm you in some incredibly hurtful way, because
| they have contempt for you being yourself.
|
| Some of these people have antisocial traits, and are malignant
| narcissists. Some of them outright have both narcissistic
| personality disorder and antisocial personality disorder.
|
| Regardless, these people tend to masquerade as "entrepreneurs",
| "researchers", "thinkers", "doers", or as "authors", when their
| entire works are just plagiarized material from others. People
| make entire livings off of such grifts and it becomes a central
| identity, if not their only identity. Of course, it is always
| about getting the next award or accolade, even though it is
| "empty" to them because they have intrinsically low self-esteem
| and an unbelievably fragile ego. But, of course they would never
| want you to know that.
| [deleted]
| N00bN00b wrote:
| I doubt it's a narcissist and I'm saying that as a narcissist
| myself.
|
| That fragile ego basically means narcissists are afraid of
| humiliation. On top that, mentally everything is build around
| shoring up my ego to compensate for the low self esteem. My
| ego. Not someone else's ego. I'd have to do some really weird
| mental gymnastics to be satisfied with copying someone else's
| work, that would just lower my ego even more. I guess it's
| doable if I straight up _believe_ I 'm that other person? But
| now we're talking about something really special and uncommon.
| Not just a narcissist anymore. The narcissistic self deception
| is involuntary, I can't just say "well, I know I'm copying the
| work of that person, but now I believe that's me." It doesn't
| work like that.
|
| The person doing this clearly knew there was considerable risk
| of getting caught and being exposed. That's someone that
| doesn't give a fuck about the social consequences.
|
| So you were closer with the malignants, but it's probably just
| a sociopath (ASPD). A lot more rare in general and more willing
| to take risks.
| numpad0 wrote:
| I don't quite understand the downvotes. Narcissists,
| psychopaths, autistic, etc are technical terms, not an
| abstract labeling for "smart person with completely inhuman
| thinking".
|
| Pointing at who seems to be an insane man and calling him a
| "narcissist" is like pointing at a Chrome window and saying
| "this folder on Desktop" and okay grandma I get it but that
| is technically wrong. OP is just explaining the situation.
|
| The Internet when I grew up was abundant of horror stories
| around encounter with insane person, and there were
| definitely multiple different modes of failure, like charging
| towards the storyteller with a knife in hand, the person
| leaving the identity behind as if it was nothing, storyteller
| being the unreliable narrator, etc etc. Usually the best
| response seemed to be either to display a skill that the
| imposter can't replicate, or applying hard rules that allows
| no alternate interpretations so that they cannot elongate the
| drama.
|
| I don't know which cliche suggests which diagnosis and
| armchair diagnosis is at best useless, but it is true that
| there are types, and if OP thinks it's not the same type as
| his own, that is at least an anecdatapoint.
|
| e: ok I didn't read the top comment. Clinical distinction
| don't matter, you just have to know how to defend against.
| And it's documented. That is right. I'll keep this comment as
| a shame to myself.
| sillysaurusx wrote:
| Mm, no, I think I agree with your original assessment. You
| and the top comment both seem correct.
|
| (Also, no need to think of it as a shame game. It's more
| interesting to learn something.)
|
| Let's put it this way. If you're mistaken, then I don't
| understand it either, so hopefully someone will explain.
|
| More concretely, reading the list of how to defend against
| narcissism, it felt like lots of people tend to have some
| of these traits, but usually not all of them. If it's a
| partial match, how should you interpret it? Is there some
| sort of narcissistic meter that goes up as you accumulate
| points?
|
| It seems hard to define.
| rriepe wrote:
| > The narcissistic self deception is involuntary
|
| Self-aware narcissists are pretty rare too. Can you e-mail
| me? Info in profile.
| aiisjustanif wrote:
| What evidence is there that it is rare?
| N00bN00b wrote:
| I'd say it's fairly rare. Most therapists often won't
| diagnose patients, because it's considered not helpful to
| the trust relationship and trying to make someone that's
| narcissistic understand that they are narcissistic is...
| Hard, because of the splitting and the disconnect between
| the internal self image and the external presentation.
|
| They'll often mirror or turn it back on you and there's
| not much you can say at that point ("I'm a narcissist?
| No! You are a narcissist!"). It's a tricky disorder.
| N00bN00b wrote:
| Here:
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/narcissism/comments/mde5fh/biweekl
| y...
|
| It's my post/sub. You're free to dig in my history and/or
| DM me.
|
| And of course there are plenty more self aware narcissists
| to hang out with as well.
| sillysaurusx wrote:
| You created /r/narcissism, and also label yourself a
| narcissist? That has to be some kind of high score or
| something. :)
|
| Very interesting. Thanks for posting it.
| rriepe wrote:
| Thanks. Contacted you there.
| Veen wrote:
| > Regardless, these people tend to masquerade as
| "entrepreneurs", "researchers", "thinkers", "doers", or as
| "authors"
|
| And activists.
| longshui wrote:
| when it is in a circle where the people know more or less who
| is who, its unlikely to happen any masquerading
|
| sometimes there are misunderstandings and some in the circle
| may have the impression that there is some masquerading going
| on
|
| sooner or later, I guess, things naturally clarify as time
| flows and the views are prettier
| disabled wrote:
| It is not a figment of my imagination: There were things
| going on besides multiple forms of outright plagiarism
| within several submissions. Because there are often
| multiple forms of plagiarism occurring in the same
| submission, once you catch it, it's pretty clear cut that
| it was deliberate. It is not only in writing but at actual
| conferences when she gives speeches.
|
| The individual I mention is known to wear a custom "code
| t-shirt" of the program (aka "product") that she claims to
| be her original work, to conferences and meetups. The
| t-shirt along with the code itself has the /exact same
| specific variable names/ that I provided via email to a
| colleague years ago. She is also seen wearing this t-shirt
| in several media publications. She also publishes
| "research" based on this "work" in peer-reviewed journal
| articles. It really is quite disgusting.
| longshui wrote:
| I was not talking about your experience , by any means,
| sorry if you understood that I was aluding to your
| comment, its not the actual situation at all
|
| I was comenting on the parent of my comment, not on your
| comment, and I was talking, clearly, in a general sense,
| in a quite specific situation that is absolutely
| different then your experience
| snvzz wrote:
| A popular label they pick these days is Moralist.
|
| https://aeon.co/essays/how-the-cruel-moraliser-uses-a-halo-t...
| de_nied wrote:
| Really enjoyed reading this. Fantastic essay.
|
| I disagree that the label is "moralist". The essay outlines
| various types of moralism, which I think is important to
| distinct them. Such as vain vs cruel and pure vs impure
| moralism.
|
| However, regardless of all that, there are two important
| questions to ask when dealing with moralism. First, what's
| the motivation? Second, what's the method of implementation?
| A cruel moralist is motivated by self-validation in moral
| superiority, and a vain moralist is motivated by group-
| validation (vanity) that uses moralism as a tool (their
| method of implementation).
|
| In this case, it is vanity that is the motivation, but
| _narcissism_ in how they go about doing it. Moralism is
| neither a motivation, nor a method of execution.
| cycomanic wrote:
| I really don't see any connection. Can you elaborate.
| imesh wrote:
| Our neighbor started doing this with my dad. My dad was a
| school teacher and didn't have any sort of content to
| plagiarize. The man started buying the same clothing as my
| father, the same surfboard, same car, dyed his hair the same
| color and got the same haircut, got fake glasses in the same
| style and even started copying his mannerisms. It was bizarre.
| We moved shortly after it started for unrelated reasons but it
| was pretty terrifying as a young kid.
|
| Interestingly enough, he was a PHD student.
| fnord77 wrote:
| I bet PhD programs attract narcissists like flies to ...
|
| In a way, a PhD could be seen as the ultimate intellectual
| validation.
| moksly wrote:
| A tip to get rid of an annoying neighbour perhaps? :p
| nvarsj wrote:
| I was also a victim of this. At my first engineering job, I
| came up with a novel way to handle project estimation for a
| very large company, using a combination of basic statistical
| techniques (hierarchical linear regression, markov chains). It
| replaced an existing terrible model by the resident PhD in
| statistics, which was doing a very simple 2 degree fitted
| curve.
|
| Anyways, this person seemed to really dislike our team and what
| we had accomplished, and was constantly trying to road block us
| for a long time. Then out of the blue, he asked us to come and
| explain it to him. I thought he was reconciling, and we showed
| him all the details and spent a while so he could understand.
| We provided him the implementation as well. Then 3-4 weeks
| later, he quit to go work at Apple. It seemed like he'd stolen
| our work to improve his career.
| [deleted]
| jacquesm wrote:
| If he took the implementation with him to Apple that's IP
| theft. Did you mention this to legal at your employer? They
| might have a case there.
| nvarsj wrote:
| Maybe we should have. This was well over a decade ago now.
| It wasn't something we could easily prove either. We just
| had strong suspicions based on the timing and his behavior.
| jacquesm wrote:
| It wouldn't surprise me at all. One of the things that we
| check for during technical DD is to ensure that all of
| the IP the company claims as theirs really is theirs.
| Large dumps of code into a repo just after incorporation
| or just after a new hire are pretty suspicious and
| require an explanation, such an explanation isn't always
| available.
|
| Good team leads / code reviewers / laywers can be real
| assets because they will stop such a thing before it gets
| to the stage of doing significant damage to the company.
|
| If you have a 1000x programmer on your team you may have
| a problem (or you've hired Fabrice).
|
| Copyright lawsuits have one interesting property: the
| statue of limitations starts when you first became aware
| of the infringement, not when the deed was done. So you
| may _still_ have a case, even today, because technically
| you are still unaware that the infringement happened, it
| may have happened, but you have no proof. If such proof
| ever surfaces then that would be the point in time to
| trigger the suit, and such proof can be obtained through
| the weirdest channels.
|
| I once became aware a company had been started by an ex
| employee based on a large body of code that I wrote, and
| through sheer chance I found a tiny sliver of really hard
| proof. That's what set the ball rolling.
| Anthony-G wrote:
| In case any case any readers don't know who "Fabrice" is:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fabrice_Bellard
| 13of40 wrote:
| About 15 years ago I worked on a command line shell that was
| adding a remoting feature which would allow you to execute a
| shell command on a remote machine. When the first cut of this
| came out, it seemed like it worked fine, but I decided to try
| it across a high latency connection - specifically setting up
| an inbound connection to the public internet and routing it
| from our office in the US to a proxy in Hong Kong and back.
| It performed about like a connection over a 300 baud modem.
| So I spent a weekend furiously creating a private build that
| reduced the number of handshakes and added streaming
| compression that ultimately increased the throughput by
| something like a factor of 20. On Monday I shared this work
| with the extended engineering team, and...crickets. I was
| just a tester after all, you know. The perf was improved
| after that, but nobody acknowledged the real world testing
| I'd done, much less the analysis and POC dev work. But flash
| forward a few years, and my career has progressed. Suddenly I
| am a manager in a performance review meeting where the
| promotion of someone I used to work with was up for
| discussion. I sat across the table from the person's boss
| when he capped off his argument for promotion with
| (paraphrasing), "and let's all remember, this is the genius
| who figured out we needed to add compression to our remoting
| stream."
| WoodenChair wrote:
| This is a crazy story. Especially the part where the person just
| claimed the other person's work as his own, not even pretending
| they were doing another version of it (more typical plagiarism).
| A small version of this happened to me many years ago. A dude who
| was a technical editor on my first book (and actually seemed to
| get fired by the publisher, because another technical editor
| replaced him midway through), claimed to be an author of the book
| on Stack Overflow and his own web page/resume. Truly bizarre
| because only my name was on the cover.
| VectorLock wrote:
| So this guy just got found out, got kicked out of school, changed
| his social media profiles and then just... evaporated? Just
| running around out there doing whatever with another guy's
| tattoos?
| niels_bom wrote:
| I wouldn't be surprised if he'd just started copying someone
| else.
| spfzero wrote:
| Or even if this wasn't the only guy he was copying at the
| same time.
| wunderflix wrote:
| What a crazy story. Reminds me of the movie "Following" by
| Christopher Nolan. Similarly, a weird person who is stalking
| people. Worth a watch...
| [deleted]
| oh_sigh wrote:
| Is there any verification of this story? The way it ends with "As
| told to Amy Sedghi" makes me think this is some spoken word story
| rather than some journalistic recounting of events.
| [deleted]
| ectopod wrote:
| It just means that Amy Sedghi interviewed him, and then wrote
| it from a first person pov. It's not unusual.
| uniqueid wrote:
| The claim is unusual. My guess is this article (or the
| alleged events it describes) is part of someone's art project
| or experiment.
| ghaff wrote:
| Well, the person telling a story is a real person and it's
| been printed in not only the Guardian but the BBC and I
| assume elsewhere. These are news organizations that do at
| least a modicum of fact-checking.
| uniqueid wrote:
| These are news organizations that do at least a
| modicum of fact-checking.
|
| Depending on the situation, it could be impossible for a
| fact-checker to prove that the two people in the story
| had an agreement and a prior relationship. Not to
| mention, it's a novelty item in the 'Lifestyle' section,
| not a report on an arms accord or something.
| agency wrote:
| And the guy is clearly a real scholar: https://scholar.go
| ogle.com/citations?user=0g9Hm1cAAAAJ&hl=en...
| [deleted]
| uniqueid wrote:
| I noticed that. It's why afaic the most plausible
| explanation -- considering the incredible claims -- is
| that this is part of some experiment that has socially
| redeeming value.
| ketamine__ wrote:
| Why aren't there any pictures of this imposter? Surely
| respecting his privacy isn't warranted since he's public with
| his imposter persona.
|
| Not surprised I'm getting downvoted by people that support
| abusers.
| [deleted]
| dorkwood wrote:
| Malcolm X's autobiography is "as told to Alex Haley". I believe
| it's a common phrase used when an article is written by a
| journalist, but from the first-person perspective of the
| interviewee.
| mkl wrote:
| Yes. Some other well-known ones are Richard Feynman's _Surely
| you 're joking Mr. Feynman_ and _What do you care what other
| people think?_ , which are "as told to Ralph Leighton".
| yesenadam wrote:
| That's maybe not the most comforting example - Alex Haley's
| _Roots_ was both convicted of plagiarism _and_ seemed to be
| very amateurishly researched, to put it mildly. At least it
| was called "fiction", although it was sold in non-fiction
| sections. And the central claim was presented as if true; "he
| claimed to have traced his family lineage back to Kunta
| Kinte, an African taken from the village of Juffure in what
| is now The Gambia". The wikipedia page is fascinating, e.g.
|
| "Donald R. Wright, a historian of the West African slave
| trade, found that elders and griots in The Gambia could not
| provide detailed information on people living before the
| mid-19th century, but everyone had heard of Kunta Kinte.
| Haley had told his story to so many people, and his version
| of his family history had been assimilated into the oral
| traditions of The Gambia. Haley had created a case of
| circular reporting, in which people repeated his words back
| to him."
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roots:_The_Saga_of_an_American.
| ..
| Jamie9912 wrote:
| I totally thought this was just a bizarre way of explaining how
| he overcame imposter syndrome
| matt-attack wrote:
| What an incredibly odd story. I wonder if the man suffered from
| mental illness.
| jmercouris wrote:
| I am very certain he did, whether we have a name for it or not.
| cbanek wrote:
| While you're probably right, I always find it oddly weird
| sometimes how logical these things can be. Like copying
| tattoos and mannerisms. On one hand, it doesn't make sense to
| pretend to be someone else, but if you look past that, the
| steps were frighteningly logical. And this is where I think
| it dovetails into other scams. I'm not sure if the scammer is
| above it, a part of it, or unaware of it sometimes, but what
| they present and what you see isn't really the whole story.
| jshmrsn wrote:
| Actually, I'm confused by the logic of that. If you were
| plagiarizing someone, wouldn't you want to be look
| different from the original author so you don't remind
| people of them and get caught? His hand tattoos meant that
| anyone who know the original author and encountered the
| copycat would immediately be suspicious even if they
| weren't familiar with the subject matter.
| ironmagma wrote:
| But the only definition we have for mental illness is whether
| your situation falls under some category that we have a name
| for. It's a slippery (and fuzzy) enough slope having
| designations for illnesses that encompass a huge portion of
| the human condition (see Rosenhan). Much worse if we also
| include things that don't have entries in the DSM. It would
| be trivial enough to say that anyone you have even mild
| distaste for has a mental illness.
| lazyasciiart wrote:
| Even DSM-IV had "otherwise unspecified mental disorder" as
| a diagnosis. https://dsm.psychiatryonline.org/doi/10.1176/a
| ppi.books.9780...
| mannykannot wrote:
| We don't have to go down that slippery slope. It is not
| plausible that the specific issue here is something that
| encompasses a huge portion of the human condition.
| Alternatively, if it is a manifestation of something that
| is, but at a much lower level than with this individual,
| there are prominent things in the DSM for which this is
| also the case.
| Sebb767 wrote:
| > But the only definition we have for mental illness is
| whether your situation falls under some category that we
| have a name for.
|
| The one I heard was a variation of "does the person suffer
| due to the condition or cause harm to other people". That
| was a side course in university. I actually like that one a
| lot, since there's really not a clear line between an
| illness and just being different.
| getlawgdon wrote:
| That doesn't make sense. Define harm. Carelessness can
| cause injury and isn't mental illness, etc.
| ironmagma wrote:
| It also doesn't make a meaningful distinction from non-
| mental illness though, like chronic pain or even poverty.
| [deleted]
| turingexam wrote:
| I had a sort of similar incident happen with the youtuber Siraj
| Raval who was ripping off people's original projects (without
| attribution) and making videos about them -- and spun a career
| out of it.
|
| It took many attempts to get him to attribute my project (in
| accordance with its license) although he was caught repeating
| this type of behavior later on.
| autophagian wrote:
| For the curious: this emerged as a twitter thread back in Jan
| https://twitter.com/mattlodder/status/1350192856154198016 . In
| it, Dr. Lodder posts a comparison between his tattoos and his
| imposters, as well as a talk his imposter gave based on his work,
| while dressed as him. Creepy.
| nchelluri wrote:
| Interesting how the test score is 80% in the twitter thread and
| 95% in the article.
| Gimpei wrote:
| Having done tertiary coursework in both the UK and the US, I
| can tell you that it's much much much more difficult to get
| an 80 in the UK than a 95 in the US. Even a 70 is hard. A 70
| is like an A in the US thirty years ago.
| Sebb767 wrote:
| I thought the same thing. Through the twitter thread
| references a magazine article, while the original article on
| talks about "something [he] wrote", so they _might_ be
| different pieces.
|
| EDIT: Or the imposter gave the interview and added a mark up
| ;)
| ajcp wrote:
| Given he's a UK prof if he was told the paper was given an
| 'A' in the UK that can be anywhere from 70-100, while in the
| US it is 90-100. He might have initially split the
| difference, and then corrected it/was corrected for the
| article.
| worker767424 wrote:
| > in the US it is 90-100
|
| In a science or engineering class, it might be everything
| above 40%.
| cammikebrown wrote:
| I really did not enjoy getting 40% on every test in math
| and physics and receiving a B. I do not feel like I
| learned the material that well. My very first freshman
| mechanics midterm grade, a 67, was an A+, and gave me a
| false sense of adequacy. Maybe they could figure out how
| to teach better?
| jrumbut wrote:
| I love tests like that, so long as there are some easy
| enough problems so you don't risk not knowing where to
| start.
|
| It shows you what the next level is, reminds you that
| there's more depth to the subject than you can master in
| 12 weeks.
|
| As long as you get the letter grade you deserve in the
| end, why not have an interesting challenge along the way?
| lupire wrote:
| You aren't supposed to learn everything in one semester.
| You are supposed to make adequate progress, and the tests
| are broad enough to catch as much as possible of what
| you've learned.
| Aeolun wrote:
| That sounds silly. Give me a test that I can actually
| reasonably learn the material for any day.
| samatman wrote:
| It's perfectly human to want to pass with a perfect
| score, but this undermines the purpose of a test.
|
| A test which has a significant fraction of scores at the
| right side of the distribution has saturated the range:
| there are differences in comprehension and mastery
| between one 100% and another, which aren't being measured
| by the test.
|
| The platonic form of a perfect test would have exactly
| one student per class who got every question correct, but
| that's impossible to reach except by luck. So a teacher
| is stuck between writing a test which is too difficult
| for everyone, and one which is too easy for a substantial
| fraction of the class. They should pick the first over
| the second.
|
| While that can feel frustrating (I know, I've been
| there!) it's likely that you _in fact_ learned the
| material better than you would have in a class where your
| level of mastery allowed you to score perfectly for an A+
| and in the mid 80s for a B.
| kortilla wrote:
| > So a teacher is stuck between writing a test which is
| too difficult for everyone, and one which is too easy for
| a substantial fraction of the class.
|
| No, the teacher is not stuck here. It is rarely the
| purpose of an academic test to plot students on a wide
| distribution. That's just something fun for teachers to
| do to look for exceptional students.
|
| If the purpose of a test is to determine if an individual
| student passes some bar of understanding, then there is
| absolutely no reason to make it extremely difficult and
| then give A's to those who got >50% correct.
| bostik wrote:
| When I held the information security basics course back
| in the university, I always made sure the grading scale
| was included on the exam sheet. 55% to pass, 95% for top
| grade.
|
| Because of its wide applicability to business
| environments overall, the course was mandatory for some
| non-CS students. And boy, they _hated_ it.
| spfzero wrote:
| Boy it sure wasn't when I was an undergrad EE.
| felipemnoa wrote:
| don't forget about the curve
| joejerryronnie wrote:
| In a high priced private US university, you may get an A
| just for showing up.
| astrange wrote:
| Those private US universities are actually free. Their
| endowments are large enough they can provide 100% tuition
| aid if you can't afford them. The problem is getting in.
| ajcp wrote:
| I assure you neither "high priced" nor "private" are
| necessary for this. In fact, those institutions have more
| to lose for doing so than a "low price public US
| university"
| rincebrain wrote:
| I was very confused when I clicked this article, as I
| recognized a lot of the details - then looking in my browser
| history, this also turned up as a story on Vice in February
| [1], where I had read it.
|
| [1] - https://www.vice.com/en/article/5dp4gx/professor-
| catfished-b...
| IshKebab wrote:
| Classic article about a picture without showing the picture.
| kergonath wrote:
| That's some dedication. And some nerve. I wonder why he'd try
| that in academia; there are probably other jobs in which his
| skills would be more useful.
| vletal wrote:
| Nice burn.
|
| Joking aside, I agree. There is so many things you could
| achieve while successfully impersonating someone. Seems like
| the best you can do in academia is to ruin someone's career.
| In this case it seemed fortunately "harmless" though.
| bombcar wrote:
| Academia is one where the chickens won't come home to roost
| - as in you won't actually be called to DO what you're
| impostering to be able to do.
|
| Fake being a surgeon and they'll assign you to surgery,
| etc.
| [deleted]
| cycomanic wrote:
| Actually I say it's the other way around. In academia
| you're most likely to get caught. The communities are
| just to small for things to get unnoticed. You have many
| people reading everything related to the field, so people
| are likely to notice at some point. I'd say if the
| imposter would have gone for a PhD it would have come out
| at the latest.
|
| Judging by some of the revelations in other business it
| seems not exceptional for people to add things to their
| cv's they've never done. And it's much less likely to
| ever come out, because people are less likely to check
| (and it might also be more difficult to check)
| green_space wrote:
| Psychiatry is a field where you can get away it. Zholia
| Alemi successfully masqueraded as a qualified
| psychiatrist for 23 years
| https://www.newsandstar.co.uk/news/17230748.doctor-faked-
| wil...
| kergonath wrote:
| You can be a fake academic and build a career on
| plagiarism. However, stealing someone's identity is
| dangerous, as academic fields tend to be quite small
| social networks, and someone is bound to notice. It's
| also much more difficult to wiggle out of identity theft
| lawsuits than universities' ethics rules.
| d0mine wrote:
| It tells us something about psychiatry as a field.
| Imagine faking being a programmer or a physicist for 20
| years: a trivial Fizz Buzz-like test would reveal the
| truth for the former, and the failure to reproduce
| research results--for the latter.
| sillysaurusx wrote:
| At massive (non-FAANG) companies, it's more common than
| you might think. Surprisingly.
| chki wrote:
| Gert Postel (a German mailman) also managed to be a fake
| psychiatrist for 17 years; it's a very unsettling story
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gert_Postel
| https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gert_Postel
| cycomanic wrote:
| There have been several cases of people posing as doctors
| without any qualifications ("catch me if you can" is a
| movie about a famous case for example).
| chris_f wrote:
| This is an interesting talk by Frank Abagnale (the real
| life person the story was based on) at Google.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vsMydMDi3rI
| redler wrote:
| "Is anyone here a marine biologist?!"
| TimTheTinker wrote:
| Literary criticism in particular.
|
| Relevant xkcd: https://xkcd.com/451/
| foobiekr wrote:
| You should listen to the "dr death" podcast [1]. Season
| one was actually terrifying and is, in fact, what happens
| when an imposter pretends to be a surgeon.
|
| [1] https://wondery.com/shows/dr-death/
| psychiatrist24 wrote:
| Not sure - where can you get by with submitting another
| person's work?
| passenger wrote:
| Software Development?
| psychiatrist24 wrote:
| But if the client has a specific requirement, nobody else
| will have coded the same thing.
|
| Maybe in some cases you can link together some open
| source projects and pretend you did a lot of work.
| volume wrote:
| maybe it's was his form or version of performance art, or
| simply an experiment that took on a life of it's own? I
| wonder if that's what Die Antwoord is about.
| brandonmenc wrote:
| > a comparison between his tattoos and his imposters
|
| There is nothing very special or original about his tattoos.
| Just about everyone has tattoos that look like this nowadays.
| Anyone can walk in and select these out of a flash book.
|
| This is like complaining that someone is wearing the same
| t-shirt.
|
| Yes, I realize the imposter is mimicking other aspects of his
| personality, but I see a dozen copies of this guy walking
| around every day.
| anoncake wrote:
| Where do you live that just about everyone has a hand tattoo
| with some sort of rose and the word "more" on the knuckles?
| brandonmenc wrote:
| Any major city? These are trends. It's like asking where do
| you live where just about everyone is wearing a Nike shirt.
|
| Do an image search for "more knuckle tattoo" and "hand rose
| tattoo" you'll see tons.
| soylentgraham wrote:
| Moredore
| zck wrote:
| The tattoos weren't a coincidence. The imposter was
| specifically impersonating him. The imposter went so far as
| to get the _same exact words_ tattooed on both hands.
|
| The dedication to impersonating Dr. Lodder is why it's
| concerning. The imposter wasn't just submitting Lodder's work
| as his own; he _permanently altered his body_ to appear more
| like Lodder.
| luckylion wrote:
| > The imposter wasn't just submitting Lodder's work as his
| own; he _permanently altered his body_ to appear more like
| Lodder.
|
| That might be a coincidence though. He didn't submit _only_
| Lodder 's work & bio, but also that of others in tattoo
| studies.
|
| From the article: We discovered he'd also taken magazine
| articles I'd written and added footnotes to them, stolen
| catalogue essays I'd authored, and taken other people's
| work from old books and paraphrased it.
|
| He might steal work from everyone but because Hipsters All
| Look The Same, Matt Lodder feels like that guy is copying
| his personality when they've just read the same magazines
| and books and then selected the same tattoos out of the
| catalogue.
| glangdale wrote:
| I'm enjoying the comments from people who have read a couple
| of comments here on HN and looked at the pictures in the
| original article and come to hold forth on how "it's probably
| just a coincidence".
|
| They're apparently so excited that they can slag off an
| academic for having tattoos that are, in their minds, Not All
| That, that they are excusing themselves from the difficult
| work of reading TFA.
|
| "Yes, I realize the imposter is mimicking other aspects of
| his personality"
|
| ... like, umm, copying vast tracts of his academic work?
| brandonmenc wrote:
| I read the article. I agree that there is a creepy imposter
| after this guy.
|
| I was only commenting on his tattoos, which are unoriginal
| and a dime a dozen. The imposter getting those same tattoos
| is - in this day and age - equivalent to having an
| identical wardrobe.
|
| Yes, in addition to the actually bizarre and creepy copying
| of the academic work.
| Ansil849 wrote:
| I think the positive here is that more people got to learn about
| the person's work. Sure he didn't get credited, but the important
| thing should be his research, not himself.
|
| And the tattoos I can't even begin to understand what the issue
| is. Walking down a busy street, I can't begin to count how many
| mimicked tattoos I see.
| vletal wrote:
| Like maybe if it was cited properly...
| kebman wrote:
| Man, this is just sad...
| kfoley wrote:
| Reminds me of something I experienced on HN and Reddit, though my
| case was a far less significant level.
|
| I posted a comment on HN in response to some article about Emacs.
| Later that day I saw someone had copied my comment word for word
| in reply to the same article on Reddit.
|
| I still have no idea why someone would do that. I thought at
| first it was some kind of karma farming operation but the post
| history of the Reddit user didn't really fit that profile.
| Plus,it seems like r/emacs would be a really poor choice for
| that.
|
| I've always been curious to know why someone would do something
| like this. It's interesting to read about it happening on a way
| larger scale.
| easton wrote:
| I once found a link on reddit that I had posted on HN, and in
| it, several people had word for word copied comments from the
| HN thread without attribution. I presumed it was karma farming
| too, since they had gotten a lot of upvotes but not a lot of
| responses. reddit's anti-evil team didn't though, so I guess it
| was just people that wanted to "retweet".
| jancsika wrote:
| > I still have no idea why someone would do that.
|
| It's a fundamental way to learn.
|
| E.g., suppose people tell me I'm a real funny person. Let me
| test that.
|
| 1. I remember a joke from a professional funny person widely
| considered to be one of the best.
|
| 2. I tell that joke to the people who told me I'm a real funny
| person.
|
| 3. I measure the laughter I get.
|
| If the laughter is different-- e.g., if the people tell me this
| is by far the funniest thing I've ever said, then I know I've
| got a lot more to learn about jokes. On the other hand, if it's
| the same amount of laughter I usually get, perhaps I've got a
| real talent here.
|
| Of course, it _could_ be these are just close friends and they
| are primed to think anything I say is funny. Nevertheless, just
| the act of telling that joke as if it were my own gives me the
| experience of the timing and emphasis of that comic. It 's a
| gain of knowledge.
|
| That process is an order of magnitude faster on Reddit with
| control-v. Who know, maybe it even makes that person a bit more
| cynical about "karma" points. If so, they've at least become a
| less naive person.
| mannykannot wrote:
| Copying a post is completely unlike this. There is nothing in
| doing so that compares to improving one's delivery of a joke.
| nchelluri wrote:
| I understand what you are saying about copying someone to
| learn. I'm just not sure I agree it applies to digital media
| or bits especially in the exact same context (in response to
| the same article).
| m463 wrote:
| (slightly off-topic)
|
| When I was young, all my jokes were from somewhere else (101
| funny jokes!) and people thought they were funny. My problem
| was remembering them.
|
| Nowadays everybody has seen all the good ones ("Bring me my
| brown pants!")
|
| So now the problem with telling jokes from a "professional
| funny person" is that if you've heard it before, chances are
| others have too and you're getting polite laughter.
| imagica wrote:
| Retelling helps learning a lot more than copying verbatim.
| malwarebytess wrote:
| I post other people's answers that I've read, but it's always
| with attribution or at least with "copied from x". I imagine if
| someone did the same with your post but didn't provide
| attribution it was out of pure laziness. When I post on /g/, an
| anonymous message board, I often copy paste other answers or
| code without attribution since it's easier and people don't
| usually care where it came from, and no one will care whether I
| wrote it or not. I imagine I'm not alone in this.
| hellbannedguy wrote:
| I bet it was Reddit internal bots.
|
| I feel that company scrapes sites continuity, trying to elevate
| their discussions--- which are basically a mad three word race
| to the fart joke.
| mannykannot wrote:
| Maybe they think it's the smart thing to do - in fact, maybe
| they have a degree in doing it!
| cortesoft wrote:
| There was a Reddit bot a few years ago (aptly named
| 'trappedinreddit') that would automatically post the previous
| top comment on reposts. Predictably, those comments would get
| upvoted again, and trappedinreddit would end up with the top
| comment on most posts. It lasted a few months before the bot
| was outed and it went away.
| worker767424 wrote:
| Sweet, sweet karma. And then you go sell the account.
| [deleted]
| okamiueru wrote:
| Interesting. Do you know what the marked value is for
| karma? Is the value tied to something practical, e.g.
| easier to pass spam filters with an account?
| numpad0 wrote:
| I assume the actual value would be in history of an
| account as a whole, and karma is a simplified
| explanation.
|
| There's no easy way to identify comments on the Internet
| as stolen, so with enough dedication it'll be possible to
| create a system that generate profiles with years worth
| of life by just mishmashing elements. That will help bots
| pass spam filter developer on top of existing filter
| itself.
| StellarTabi wrote:
| Karma? It doesn't get more valuable after you have enough
| to get you past the "you didn't register your account
| yesterday" type automod filters. Anyone buying accounts
| for "huge karma" didn't fully research how Reddit works.
| If you have low karma in one specific sub (because you
| are trolling or spamming), no amount of shameless repost
| karma in r/funny will protect from the "you are posting
| too frequently" message you'll only get in the sub you
| are getting downvoted in.
|
| Accounts that will likely get big offers will have a
| large number of followers, mod large subreddits or
| targeted subreddits.
|
| Having an active account before the 2016 Russia thing is
| also worth something. When you want to spread
| misinformation or do shill marketing, it helps a lot to
| see any of the following when checking a user's Reddit
| profile:
|
| - the user didn't register a month ago.
|
| - the user didn't register just to talk exclusively on
| this subject/product.
|
| - the user registered before Russia's IRA became active
| on Reddit.
|
| - the user didn't stop exclusively participating in porn
| or sports subreddits just to make this comment.
|
| - the user is writing enough quality comments that they
| don't feel compelled to delete most, if not all, of them.
|
| - the user is not making contradictory claims (there is a
| famous example of someone claiming to be a cis woman in
| computers who had clearly cis male comments in several
| cis male oriented subreddits, one of them called
| something like "semen rentension". They were called out.
|
| - the user posts in subreddits that are on good terms
| with the subreddit we found their suspicious comment in.
|
| Source: I'm a Reddit moderator and work at a marketing
| startup.
| livre wrote:
| Many subreddits automatically delete posts or comments
| from users with low karma. Also people trust users with
| older accounts and a good amount of karma more than new
| users or people with low karma.
| cortesoft wrote:
| Do many people on Reddit actually check an account
| history before deciding whether to upvote or downvote
| something?
| livre wrote:
| The power users do, moderators do, those obsessed with
| reposters and bots too but I don't think the majority
| cares enough to check that. Most just follow the initial
| votes, so if the users who were early decided it was
| worth upvoting the rest of the people will generally just
| follow along. I think that's why selling votes is also
| profitable, you can get your post to the frontpage if it
| is good enough and you bought a few hundred early
| upvotes.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| Keep in mind this is either a subreddit or Automoderator
| setting.
|
| Subs can limit _posts_ to users with some minimal karma
| or age. Typically this still permits _comment_ , though
| harvesting comment karma is then incentivised.
|
| Automoderator, a rule-driven automated moderation tool,
| can actively interact with posts and comments based on
| various criteria, including automatically holding or
| removing posts or comments, messaging submitters, and
| other actions. This is heavily used on highly-active
| subs, and pretty well documented.
| baud147258 wrote:
| I remember someone telling how his Steam review was copied
| verbatim... Maybe it was for the 'awards' users can get on
| their reviews?
| headmelted wrote:
| Others have said bots, I'd lean more towards someone thought it
| sounded like a clever reply, went to reddit where the same
| conversation was taking place and posted it in the thread in
| hopes of scoring some cheap karma.
| m463 wrote:
| I think there are some direct ways to profit (like
| "recommending" items from amazon that are from top-sales
| statistics)
|
| I wonder at all the indirect ways though. Maybe the account is
| enhanced to a reasonable reputation and is "banked" for later.
| Maybe there are levels of reputation that unlock abilities
| either on or off the site.
|
| Or maybe some people are addicted to those silly internet
| points.
|
| I'm surprised HN has a visible "score". I remember other sites
| would cap it at some value, basically reputation: excellent.
| [deleted]
| SubiculumCode wrote:
| I mean its plagiarism, but motivation was probably something
| like: I liked this comment i read on HN. It answers a question
| that is being discussed in reddit. I could attribute it, or
| just copy and paste...or so goes the modervn internet share
| brendoelfrendo wrote:
| It's almost always bot accounts. Reddit is decent at catching
| bots so the botters copy legitimate comments, build a post
| history, and then switch to scamming or spamming after the
| account has some credibility.
| FDSGSG wrote:
| >Reddit is decent at catching bots
|
| I don't think you've tried to bot reddit.
| duxup wrote:
| >Reddit is decent at catching bots
|
| I don't know about that so much. I'm seeing a lot more
| straight up spam on reddit that looks easy to spot, but I
| think reddit gave up or something...
| brendoelfrendo wrote:
| Totally possible. Maybe enough people figured out how to
| game their detection so they gave up, or if it was so
| gameable in the first place it was never as good as I'm
| remembering.
| DoubleGlazing wrote:
| Happened to a friend of mine. He'd posted an article on a
| website devoted to a specific form of fluid dynamics
| discussion. This was a site with less than 50 active users.
|
| Someone submitted the article (edited to sound more academic)
| to a journal - and with extra authors added. The journal almost
| published it, but they didn't because at the last minute one of
| their reviewers felt they recognized the content as having been
| published before.
|
| I think the moral of the story is that some people are up to no
| good and we'll never understand why.
| aero-glide2 wrote:
| >specific form of fluid dynamics discussion I've been
| searching for niche forums such as this, if you don't mind,
| which forum was that?
| bbarnett wrote:
| Could be for a US H1-B VISA. Skilled category counts things
| like published works...
| whatshisface wrote:
| Reminds me of something I experienced on HN and Reddit,
| though my case was a far less significant level. There was a
| Reddit bot a few years ago (aptly named 'trappedinreddit')
| that would automatically post the previous top comment on
| reposts. I bet it was Reddit internal bots. That process is
| an order of magnitude faster on Reddit than control-v.
| tinus_hn wrote:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26605151
|
| Is this some bizarre coincidence?
| Kpourdeilami wrote:
| OP is just trying to be funny but it seems like it
| confused a lot of people
| niels_bom wrote:
| Is this a meta-joke? 4h ago somebody posted your exact
| first sentence. :-/
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26604648
| boogies wrote:
| (and second, third, and almost exact fourth)
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26605151
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26606165
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26605093
| u801e wrote:
| Are you making an attempt at humor or are you just copying
| and pasting parts of comments to make your own comment?
| AussieWog93 wrote:
| Given the context, it's clearly a joke. Pretty clever and
| funny too, IMO.
| sjfidsfkds wrote:
| > I bet it was Reddit internal bots.
|
| This is a compelling idea, but I think they wouldn't be so
| obvious about it.
| luckylion wrote:
| Did it make sense in the thread on reddit?
|
| There are a couple of bots (I hope) on Stack Overflow that re-
| post answers to other questions that are vaguely related based
| on keywords or tags. They usually didn't make sense in the
| question context, but were upvoted by people for some reason.
| pmiller2 wrote:
| Maybe they're upvoted by other bots as well?
| dylan604 wrote:
| Could it be an attempt to at legitimacy to fake accounts so
| they seem less fake on cursory glances? Using these accounts to
| support that the profile they are really trying to use is not
| fake?
| sokoloff wrote:
| That seems like so much more pointless effort (to find a good
| comment about a topic, find the right subreddit, and post it)
| as compared to actually just wasting time on Reddit on some
| topic that you're actually interested in.
| nerdponx wrote:
| This is always an issue on Reddit.
| gverrilla wrote:
| they agreed with every word you said?
| personlurking wrote:
| I used to have a niche blog that was an off-shoot of a more
| popular blog I did within the same general area of knowledge. I
| would put in many, many hours doing deep dives into foreign
| historical archives and translating what I found into English
| for my niche blog.
|
| I would also read any MSM news in English that came out about
| the general topic. I would often find pieces of my research
| inserted into these articles, by different outlets and
| different authors. Never any credit given. Sometimes the entire
| article was centered around something I'd uncovered, and
| published 4-5 days after posting it in my blog.
| technick wrote:
| It's not illegal to kill yourself.
| dkdbejwi383 wrote:
| Reminds me of something I experienced on HN and Reddit, though my
| case was a far less significant level. I posted a comment on HN
| in response to some article about Emacs. Later that day I saw
| someone had copied my comment word for word in reply to the same
| article on Reddit. I still have no idea why someone would do
| that. I thought at first it was some kind of karma farming
| operation but the post history of the Reddit user didn't really
| fit that profile. Plus,it seems like r/emacs would be a really
| poor choice for that. I've always been curious to know why
| someone would do something like this. It's interesting to read
| about it happening on a way larger scale.
| xenonite wrote:
| Well: Reminds me of something I experienced on HN and Reddit,
| though my case was a far less significant level. I posted a
| comment on HN in response to some article about Emacs. Later
| that day I saw someone had copied my comment word for word in
| reply to the same article on Reddit. I still have no idea why
| someone would do that. I thought at first it was some kind of
| karma farming operation but the post history of the Reddit user
| didn't really fit that profile. Plus,it seems like r/emacs
| would be a really poor choice for that. I've always been
| curious to know why someone would do something like this. It's
| interesting to read about it happening on a way larger scale.
| mahalol wrote:
| Well, this is definitely the kind of content I wouldn't be
| surprised to read on reddit, but a bit disappointing to see
| it on HN.
| kvirani wrote:
| I just did the same thing (out of laziness of course) and
| then saw this great point. Deleted mine.
| UShouldBWorking wrote:
| This is definitely the kind of content I wouldn't be
| surprised to read on reddit, but a bit disappointing to see
| it on HN
| k33n wrote:
| Obviously made up.
| getlawgdon wrote:
| I find this certainty of rejection as disturbing as the
| certainty of immediate belief, only it's worse since it
| includes no reasoning.
| guenthert wrote:
| I wouldn't say obviously made up, but the story sure is
| incredible.
| mycologos wrote:
| What makes you say that?
| fnord77 wrote:
| overactive mirroring neurons? j/k, I'm sure this pathology is
| very complex.
| rin72ka wrote:
| second that
| foobar33333 wrote:
| Very sus
| WrtCdEvrydy wrote:
| Bro, I heard of plagiarism of a paper but not like a whole
| person.
| csense wrote:
| Getting the same tattoos as your target?
|
| That's one dedicated identity thief.
| pizzapill wrote:
| From the twitter link posted here it seems that "their" field
| of study is tattoos. The video of the talk of the impostor has
| a slide in the background with Victorian era tattoos. Seems
| like they both take them very seriously.
| imagica wrote:
| But a sad thing overall, imagine he's stuck with this identity
| now but it no longer bears fruits for him. I assume this person
| didn't have much of an identity in the first place..
| chrisseaton wrote:
| > Some of the work should have been spotted by plagiarism
| checkers
|
| I've been in postgraduate academia and industry, and been
| involved in multiple conferences at different levels. I'm not
| aware of anyone ever running a plagiarism detector on any
| submitted work at all. Do other people do this? Should the people
| I work with have been doing it?
| jonnat wrote:
| My daughter is in 5th grade, attending school virtually due to
| the pandemic, and she has all her submitted assignments
| automatically verified by plagiarism checkers. In fact, she's
| encouraged to use online plagiarism checkers herself before
| submission to avoid false positives.
| dylan604 wrote:
| It's been a minute since I was in 5th grade. I'm trying to
| remember what kind of assignments I would have had where I
| could have plagiarized something that would not have been
| immediately obvious to the teacher.
| sgerenser wrote:
| Only thing I could think of is passing off big brother's
| book report as my own. Would a plagiarism detector to work
| in that situation? Does every report and essay a child
| writes get added to the database for future works to be
| checked against?
| tkgally wrote:
| My mother was a fourth- and fifth-grade teacher in
| California fifty years ago. She would sometimes have her
| students write stories, and once one girl turned in a
| delightful little story that stood out from the others. My
| mother thought she showed real talent and praised her to
| the skies, showed the story to other teachers, brought it
| home and showed it to our family, etc. A year or two later,
| my mother happened across exactly the same story in a
| children's book in the library. It was clear that the girl
| had just copied her story out of the book. My mother was
| really sad about the whole thing for quite a while.
| analog31 wrote:
| Of course it would have been unheard of when I was in 5th
| grade because our assignments weren't even computer
| readable. In my day, we were expected to copy articles from
| the World Book Encyclopedia, and they were graded on
| neatness.
|
| But my kids both recently graduated from high school. There
| is a tendency for teachers of each grade to prepare kids
| for subsequent grades. I can imagine hearing: "They will
| have to do this in sixth grade, so we're preparing them
| now" without questioning why it's done in any grade. This
| makes the curriculum seem more "advanced."
|
| I actually don't think my kids had to use turnitin. At
| least, I never heard about it. A bigger concern is writing
| stuff that might be reviewed by employers, law enforcement,
| and so forth, or subjected to some kind of automated
| analysis in the future. They've heard about the social
| credit score. They're all familiar with the lesson: "Don't
| write anything that you would not want to see on the front
| page of the newspaper."
|
| I'm lucky that anything I ever wrote in school is now in
| the bit bucket.
| Veen wrote:
| My partner finds it frustrating that she has to edit out
| "false positives" even when she knows damn well she hasn't
| plagiarised.
| oasisbob wrote:
| How obnoxious. I would hate that too, and would be tempted
| to refuse. Is that a common thing to do these days? With
| the seriousness of academic dishonesty charges, I don't see
| why students would put up with this.
|
| If someone wants to bring meritless flimsy accusations, I
| wouldn't want to help them do their homework in running
| down all the accidental matches found by their commercial
| provider, let alone rewrite my work in the process.
| unishark wrote:
| They aren't accusations just match scores. The scores are
| pretty meaningless unless there's a really good match.
| Obviously one shouldn't use that alone to determine
| guilt. Charges are decided by professors and committees,
| not turnitin. Yes some students might be concerned about
| the partial matches to the point of anxiety, but the
| solution is to simply assuage those fears. Because
| unfortunately, too many others habitually cheat with a
| misguided confidence that they can get away with it. Not
| to mention a completely warped sense of the risk versus
| reward for what they are doing. Making them go through
| turnitin is a way to dissuade doing that. Letting them
| see the scores before they submit the assignment is also
| a nicer way to push back. As opposed to having to hand
| out F's to get the point across.
| Veen wrote:
| > the solution is to simply assuage those fears
|
| The parent commenter's experience suggests that teachers
| are not doing that; instead, they're encouraging people
| to rewrite non-plagiarised work so that it doesn't
| trigger partial matches.
|
| That is my experience too: teachers don't want the hassle
| of figuring out what a false positive really means.
| ksaj wrote:
| Editors have to do that already, so if she doesn't have an
| editor, it probably is her job.
|
| In High School, I did a (very) short co-op copyrighting for
| a radio station. At the time I thought it was pretty
| ridiculous that I had to basically reword everything to
| mean the same thing, but differently. As a grown-up and
| seeing the same stories in different papers struck me as
| ultra-lazy, and then I realized why all that copyrighting
| had to be done.
| smogcutter wrote:
| "Copywriting", just fyi in case it's one of those "word I
| hear but rarely see written" things and not autocorrect.
| anamexis wrote:
| I had an run-in with a plagiarism checker in undergrad (USA,
| 2008). A professor ran a research paper I had submitted through
| a plagiarism checker and it came back a 100% match. (I had
| researched and written the paper myself.) It led to a very
| awkward meeting which started with him saying "I think we both
| know why you're here" and me having no idea why I was there.
|
| Luckily it ended with him resubmitting the paper to the checker
| and it coming back clean. (I got an A.)
| murderfs wrote:
| > It led to a very awkward meeting which started with him
| saying "I think we both know why you're here" and me having
| no idea why I was there.
|
| I had this happen once, except it was because someone else in
| one of his other classes had the same name as me.
| TwoBit wrote:
| What was the cause of the false positive?
| mannykannot wrote:
| The professor submitted one of his own papers by mistake?
| anamexis wrote:
| I can only theorize. Perhaps due to some error, the web
| upload submitted a 0 byte file which perfectly matched
| another 0 byte file.
| Veen wrote:
| I know it's common for undergrad work in the UK. I don't know
| about post-grad.
| kergonath wrote:
| It is. At least where I worked (well-known British
| university).
| zwayhowder wrote:
| It is pretty normal for most universities to require all
| assignments be submitted via TurnItIn or a similar tool that
| can do aggregated plagiarism checks not just against published
| articles but also assignments submitted by other students.
|
| But it doesn't apply to conference papers as far as I know or
| journal articles either. (As in when submitting to a journal
| for publication).
| worker767424 wrote:
| I keep waiting for someone to find a plagiarism checker
| retained a copy of their work and sue for copyright
| infringement.
| mkl wrote:
| Of course they retain a copy; that's part of how they detect
| plagiarism. It's been ruled fair use in the US [1], and if it
| hadn't it would be in the terms and conditions. You can opt
| out of retention on TurnItIn, but it's the default.
|
| [1] https://www.turnitin.com/blog/top-15-misconceptions-
| about-tu...
| analog31 wrote:
| Does it satisfy FERPA? If my paper were in their database,
| and all or part of it was revealed to another student in
| the process of claiming a match, that would be a violation
| of my FERPA rights.
| lazyasciiart wrote:
| Only if it was personally identifiable.
| worker767424 wrote:
| I think that ruling is only for the Fourth Circuit.
| [deleted]
| Sebb767 wrote:
| Here in Germany, at least thesis works will usually be required
| as PDF and ran through a checker (which will then, in turn,
| register the work). It doesn't seem to be overly important (it
| seems, for example, everyone copies that required front page ;)
| ), but they did catch a missing source in the thesis of a
| friend of mine, so they do look at it.
| cbanek wrote:
| Well they say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery (that
| mediocrity can pay to greatness). I wonder what this imposter
| thinks every time he looks down at the tattoos on his hands that
| will remind him of what he's done for quite a while, if not
| forever.
| ajcp wrote:
| Right? Hopefully he didn't get them purely for the scam. He
| could genuinely like the tatts and general style of the guy.
| Hipster kitsch isn't even that unique.
| luckylion wrote:
| That's what I was thinking. The picture reminded me of that
| one story about a Hipster going after some website over an
| article claiming all Hipster look alike that he found used
| his picture without permission ... only to find out that it
| wasn't him.
|
| From the pictures of him and his colleague it seems that the
| people who study tattoos are into getting tattoos as well, I
| find it absolutely plausible that the guy got them
| separately. It's not like Letters On Fingers is such a new
| concept that everyone who does that copied him.
| irscott wrote:
| He had both a flower on his hand and the letters tattooed
| on his knuckles. Know More isn't a particularly common
| knuckle tattoo and to also have the same style of flower on
| the hand is definitely suspect.
|
| Even that type of flower as a hand tattoo isn't very
| common.
| luckylion wrote:
| I wouldn't know how common it is, it just looked somewhat
| cliche to me, so I figured it wouldn't be rare. Like
| stickers on a mac book.
|
| Somebody should create a registry where people can lay
| claim to their tattoo's originality. Add blockchain, call
| it TATS, instant hit.
| irscott wrote:
| Shit, make em NFTs and make a fortune.
| ksm1717 wrote:
| Agreed. Given every single other (less specific) detail
| that was copied, yea... right the tattoos were probably a
| coincidence.
| glangdale wrote:
| Did you read the article as well as look at the pictures?
|
| You do know that it's about someone who plagiarized another
| person's academic papers as, apparently, his entire output
| as a Master's student?
| unixhero wrote:
| I would report it to the Police.
| squarefoot wrote:
| "We never contacted the police, because we didn't think he'd done
| anything illegal. It was really an issue of academic misconduct."
|
| He should have contacted the Police immediately. What if a crime
| was committed nearby where the impostor was located under false
| identity, and he was later taken into custody instead? I don't
| know if it qualifies as a crime, but assuming someone else's
| identity can lead to very dangerous consequences.
| birdyrooster wrote:
| Not to mention these imposter types often assume a catalog of
| different identities and participate in other frauds.
| baud147258 wrote:
| I'm not sure the impostor was using the academic's identity,
| just his (and other people's) work
| jopsen wrote:
| He copied his tattoo!
|
| That's some dedication.. on the flip side it's hard not to
| feel sorry for someone being so dumb.
| [deleted]
| nomdep wrote:
| The whole story probably isn't true or it has been grossly
| exagerated.
| macintux wrote:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26604886
| nomdep wrote:
| Aha! So the reason he didn't file a police report was: "He
| never actually claimed to be me, he just stole all my
| moves"
| https://twitter.com/mattlodder/status/1350379466313396224
| jopsen wrote:
| Still, making money of copyright infringement is often a
| crime.
|
| But if it's not a movie or music, I guess it might not
| matter so much.
|
| (on the other hand, the police probably has better things
| to do)
| duxup wrote:
| Why do you think that?
| ghaff wrote:
| Well, they were in different countries so I'm not sure how
| receptive the police in California would have been. Contacting
| the school seems like an appropriate step.
| worker767424 wrote:
| I feel like this was an Ed Sheeran music video.
| mmaunder wrote:
| Twist: The article is written by the imposter who discredited and
| then disappeared the real Dr Lodder.
| otachack wrote:
| _spoiler warning_
|
| Perfect Blue vibes!
| parsimo2010 wrote:
| I expect that in my lifetime there will be (or already has
| been) an imposter that gets a leg up on someone in this way and
| pulls it off- "no, I wrote the article first, they stole it
| from me and published it. Here are my drafts which predate
| their submission. Fire them, not me."
| Qub3d wrote:
| As the imposter this is a really dangerous gambit, though. If
| it succeeds, and that person stops doing academic work, who
| does the imposter plagiarize from?
| luckylion wrote:
| Success predicts success. Maybe it works out: you get
| funding, you're regarded as a smart scientist etc, so your
| work is judged with that in mind.
|
| Especially in those parts of social sciences that are very
| essay-heavy and don't deal with disprovable claims and
| experiments, the difference between "that's total nonsense"
| and "another intelligent contribution by a fellow scholar"
| might be mostly knowing the author.
|
| They could transition into postmodern studies and use the
| Postmodern Generator [1] to get their new stuff.
|
| [1]: https://www.elsewhere.org/pomo/
| parsimo2010 wrote:
| I suppose they would have to find someone else to
| plagiarize if they wanted to continue their con. I don't
| think an impostor would set out to do this, they would
| prepare it as a backup plan in case they were discovered.
| At that point it's dangerous, but the alternative is to
| give up and confess. That would make it seem like a worthy
| last ditch effort. Maybe if they pull it off they aren't
| interested in sustaining the con long term, but rather just
| enough to solidify their gains and move on to something
| else.
| tinus_hn wrote:
| Directed by M Night Shyamalan
| swayvil wrote:
| That's a disappointingly remote kind of tracking-down.
|
| You need to meet him in person. He sounds like an awesome freak.
| There is way more to this story than just "plagiarism".
| Yaa101 wrote:
| These people are called chimeras, some of them are so dangerous
| that they replace a person in real time, yes meaning that they
| kill the person to take it's place. Nature brings strange
| creatures.
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