Some stuff for 05.07.2012

(1) Stephen Hawking's party for time-travellers. I wonder whether it was organized in order to drag attention from the recent $100 bet he lost :-)

(2) Three (!) stories in the last Nature issue about the collapse of Spanish science happening right now: [1], [2], [3]

Take care,

Misha

Two most useful papers of this week :-)

(1) D. Kobak, S. Shpilkin, M. S. Pshenichnikov, "Statistical anomalies in 2011-2012 Russian elections revealed by 2D correlation analysis", arXiv:1205.0741

A solid scientific base for what basically everyone knows already :-) Also, unlike previous analyses appearing on the internet, this one is in English, so everyone can understand it and spread the word.

(2) H. C. Mayer, R. Krechetnikov, "Walking with coffee: Why does it spill?", Phys. Rev. E 85, 046117 (2012). There is also a popular synopsis about it.

I was used to think that spilling coffee while walking (and then making innocent eyes and speeding up) was my own problem, because I basically break everything I touch. This article made me feel normal, just as everyone else. Finally, there is a scientific base for spilling coffee!

Take care,

Misha

Politics and scientific misconduct

It turned out that a paper, published in 2009 by Iranian science minister Kamran Daneshjou has plagiarized a 2002 paper by W. Lee et al. Here is a blog post about it. Later, Nature published a long news article, where other cases of plagiarism are revealed.

This is not a very recent story, somehow: a month ago the Los Angeles Times was doubting the validity of Daneshjou's PhD degree.

This is kind of popular among politicians: a few years ago Russian president Putin was accused in plagiarizing his PhD thesis.

P.S. According to Nature's new investigation there are two Iranian ministers involved.

Some photos from Zürich

(Ensuring security)

(Free entrance for everybody? No.)

Took it from here (Russian).

I wonder whether this applies to students, postdocs ad guest scientists as well...