Here's the best argument yet for avoiding fake schools. Why bother paying good money for an easily-confirmed-as-bogus milled degree, when you can pass off a fake degree from an RA Gold Standard school for free?

If it's an RA Gold Standard Ivy League Mill like Yale they will confirm your bogus PhD for potential employers all over the world. They won't even notice if you spell the administrator's name wrong. And when they get caught they will lie about it and blame it all on your employer too. What mill goes the extra mile like that?

After Error by Yale, Anger and a Court Fight Ensue

Quote:By JOHN SCHWARTZ
Published: October 29, 2009

A major Korean university is engaged in a heated legal battle with [regionally accredited] Yale University, bringing a culture preoccupied with honor into a clash with bare-knuckled American lawyering.

Dongguk University, a 103-year-old Buddhist institution based in Seoul, has accused Yale of negligence and a cover-up after it mistakenly confirmed a Dongguk professor's claims of having a Ph.D. from Yale. Robert A. Weiner, the lead lawyer for Dongguk, said Yale's response to the ensuing scandal added insult to the injury, and he denounced "the cultural arrogance of not recognizing the harm you're doing in Korean culture."

Yale argues that while it had made mistakes, it did nothing that merited court action.

The controversy began in 2005, when Dongguk hired Shin Jeong-ah, a rising star in the art world, as a professor. Shortly after her hiring, questions about her credentials arose and Dongguk sent a letter to Yale asking for authentication of a document provided by Ms. Shin. The document, which appeared to have been signed by a Yale administrator, stated that Ms. Shin had earned the doctoral degree.

The confirmation letter was a fake, but the Yale administrator whose name was on it confirmed its authenticity in a fax to Dongguk, apparently not checking the university's records or even noticing that the administrator's name had been misspelled.

Dongguk officials and Korean reporters pressed Yale on the question of Ms. Shin's degree again in 2007 as rumors persisted. After checking its records, Yale announced that Ms. Shin had no degree but also initially denied having received the original inquiry from Dongguk and said documents suggesting otherwise had been forged.

The growing scandal made headlines in Korea and became known there as Shin-gate. Ms. Shin resigned and was eventually convicted of falsifying records and of embezzlement. Yale did not reveal its mistake in confirming the 2005 letter until later that year, saying the error had occurred "in the rush of business." Yale issued an apology to Dongguk on Dec. 29, 2007.

Dongguk filed suit for $50 million the next year in Federal District Court in Connecticut, saying Yale had engaged in "reckless" and "wanton" conduct, and had defamed Dongguk, which "was publicly humiliated and deeply shamed in the eyes of the Korean population." The university said it lost millions in contributions and the opportunity to build a new law school.

Yale fought back with briefs arguing that despite the error, it had caused no harm. "Instead of facing up to its own responsibility for hiring such a person," the university argued, "Dongguk seeks to shift the blame for its own inadequate efforts on to Yale."

Settlement negotiations broke down last year, and earlier this month Dongguk filed new papers with potentially embarrassing internal e-mail messages from Yale showing anxious discussions of the growing scandal, including a professor's warning that the incident "seems to have 'litigation' written all over it."?

Mr. Weiner said "the documents we have prove that Yale was not only grossly negligent, but lied once they knew the truth."

Tom Conroy, a Yale spokesman, said there was no negligence or recklessness. If the case goes to trial, Mr. Conroy said, "we think the jury will certainly consider the fact that the chairman of Dongguk's board was convicted of soliciting and receiving an illegal government subsidy from Ms. Shin's lover, who was an adviser to the Korean president."

Mr. Weiner said he was outraged by the Yale tactics, which he said constituted "attacking the victim"? and "an effort to deflect attention from Yale's wrongful acts" with titillation that has nothing to do with the lawsuit. If Yale had responded accurately when first asked about Ms. Shin's claims, he said, the worst of the scandal could have been avoided.

Lanny Davis, a White House official in the Clinton administration and a partner of Mr. Weiner at the law firm McDermott Will & Emery, said he was disappointed in Yale, which is his alma mater, and in its president, Richard C. Levin -- who, he said, had "dishonored the slogan, 'light and truth,'"? that can be found in Latin on the university's seal.

Mr. Conroy, the Yale spokesman, said, "I have no idea what that means."

The university, he said, made "an innocent mistake, and we apologized."

Regionally accredited University of Pennsylvania grad Gloria Bachmann is among those accused in the NY Times of signing off on bogus drug company "research" that killed innocent patients.


Dr. Gloria Bachmann

Doctors prescribed, women died! Where are Klempner and his Klone Kollective to whine about it? Sorry, don't care about dead patients of RA doctors. Nope, not interested in bogus research prepared by drug companies to market their murderous "healing" concoctions. Obviously because the Klones have ulterior motives, such as protecting the billion dollar endowments of the higher education cartel from cut-rate competitors.

Will stalker Bill Huffman be posting gems like this in response to this story? Don't hold your breath.

Quote:Academic fraud seems to frequently go hand-in-hand with other crimes. These type of people don't generally get enough time for their crimes, IMHO.

Quote:By NATASHA SINGER
Published: August 4, 2009

Newly unveiled court documents show that ghostwriters paid by a pharmaceutical company played a major role in producing 26 scientific papers backing the use of hormone replacement therapy in women, suggesting that the level of hidden industry influence on medical literature is broader than previously known.



The articles, published in medical journals between 1998 and 2005, emphasized the benefits and de-emphasized the risks of taking hormones to protect against maladies like aging skin, heart disease and dementia. That supposed medical consensus benefited Wyeth, the pharmaceutical company that paid a medical communications firm to draft the papers, as sales of its hormone drugs, called Premarin and Prempro, soared to nearly $2 billion in 2001.

But the seeming consensus fell apart in 2002 when a huge federal study on hormone therapy was stopped after researchers found that menopausal women who took certain hormones had an increased risk of invasive breast cancer, heart disease and stroke. A later study found that hormones increased the risk of dementia in older patients.

The ghostwritten papers were typically review articles, in which an author weighs a large body of medical research and offers a bottom-line judgment about how to treat a particular ailment. The articles appeared in 18 medical journals, including The American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology and The International Journal of Cardiology.



The articles did not disclose Wyeth's role in initiating and paying for the work. Elsevier, the publisher of some of the journals, said it was disturbed by the allegations of ghostwriting and would investigate.

The documents on ghostwriting were uncovered by lawyers suing Wyeth and were made public after a request in court from PLoS Medicine, a medical journal from the Public Library of Science, and The New York Times.

A spokesman for Wyeth said that the articles were scientifically accurate and that pharmaceutical companies routinely hired medical writing companies to assist authors in drafting manuscripts.

The court documents provide a detailed paper trail showing how Wyeth contracted with a medical communications company to outline articles, draft them and then solicit top physicians to sign their names, even though many of the doctors contributed little or no writing. The documents suggest the practice went well beyond the case of Wyeth and hormone therapy, involving numerous drugs from other pharmaceutical companies.

"It's almost like steroids and baseball," said Dr. Joseph S. Ross, an assistant professor of geriatrics at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York, who has conducted research on ghostwriting. "You don't know who was using and who wasn't; you don't know which articles are tainted and which aren't."

Because physicians rely on medical literature, the concern about ghostwriting is that doctors might change their prescribing habits after reading certain articles, unaware they were commissioned by a drug company.

"The filter is missing when the reader does not know that the germ of an article came from the manufacturer," said James Szaller, a lawyer in Cleveland who has spent four years going through the ghostwriting documents on behalf of hormone therapy plaintiffs.

Wyeth faces about 8,400 lawsuits from women who claim that the company's hormone drugs caused them to develop illnesses. Twenty-three of the 31 cases that had been set for trial were resolved in Wyeth's favor; the company has also settled with five plaintiffs. Others cases are on appeal.

Doug Petkus, a spokesman for Wyeth, said the articles on hormone therapy were scientifically sound and subjected to rigorous review by outside experts on behalf of the medical journals that published them.

Although Wyeth continues to work with medical writing firms, the company adopted a policy in 2006 mandating that authors become involved early in the publication process and that any financial assistance by Wyeth or contributions by medical writers be acknowledged in the published text, said Stephen Urbanczyk, a lawyer representing Wyeth.

Doctors have long debated the merits and risks of hormone therapy to treat the symptoms of menopause. Although studies have shown that hormones have benefits like reducing the incidence of hip fractures, they have also shown that the drugs can increase the risk of various cancers.

At one time, the Premarin family of drugs, which dominated the market for hormone therapy, was among Wyeth's best-selling brands. And the company worked with several ghostwriting companies to maintain that dominance.

In 1997, for example, DesignWrite, a medical communications company in Princeton, N.J., proposed to Wyeth a two-year plan that would include the preparation of about 30 articles for publication in medical journals.

The development of an article on the treatment of menopausal hot flashes and night sweats illustrates DesignWrite's methodology.

Sometime in 2003, a DesignWrite employee wrote a 14-page outline of the article; the author was listed as "TBD" -- to be decided. In July 2003, DesignWrite sent the outline to Dr. Gloria Bachmann, a professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the Robert Wood Johnson Medical School in New Brunswick, N.J.

Dr. Bachmann responded in an e-mail message to DesignWrite: "Outline is excellent as written.' In September 2003, DesignWrite e-mailed Dr. Bachmann the first draft of the article. She also pronounced that "excellent" and added, "I only had one correction which I highlighted in red."

The article, a nearly verbatim copy of the DesignWrite draft, appeared in 2005 in The Journal of Reproductive Medicine, with Dr. Bachmann listed as the primary author. It described hormone drugs as the?"gold standard" for treating hot flashes and was less enthusiastic about other therapies.

The acknowledgments thanked several medical writers for their "editorial assistance," not disclosing that those writers worked for DesignWrite, which charged Wyeth $25,000 to generate the article.

Dr. Bachmann, who has 30 years of research and clinical experience in menopause, said she played a major role in the publication by lending her expertise. Her e-mail messages do not reflect contributions she may have made during phone calls and in-person meetings, she said.

"There was a need for a review article and I said 'Yes, I will review the draft and make sure it is accurate,'" Dr. Bachmann said in an interview Tuesday. "This is my work, this is what I believe, this is reflective of my view."

In response to a query from a reporter, Michael Platt, the president of DesignWrite, wrote that the company "has not, and will not, participate in the publication of any material in which it does not have complete confidence in the scientific validity of the content, based upon the best available data."

As medical journals learn more about ghostwriting through documents released in lawsuits and in Congress, some editors have started asking authors harder questions. A few leading journals, like The Journal of the American Medical Association, have instituted authorship forms that require contributors to detail their role in an article and to disclose conflicts of interest.

But many journals have yet to take such steps.

Quote:In his approach to National Security Agency surveillance, as well as CIA renditions, drone assassinations, and military detention, President Obama has to a surprising extent embraced the expanded executive powers championed by his conservative predecessor, George W. Bush. This bipartisan affirmation of the imperial executive could "reverberate for generations," warns Jack Balkin, a specialist on First Amendment freedoms at Yale Law School. And consider these but some of the early fruits from the hybrid seeds that the Global War on Terror has planted on American soil. Yet surprisingly few Americans seem aware of the toll that this already endless war has taken on our civil liberties.

Did nosborne just run out of anything else to write? Was he completely bereft of any cogent thoughts? How else could you explain his characterization of PhD-turned-trucker Steve Levicoff as "one of the country's foremost experts on church-state relations?"

degreediscussion thread

Even Levicoff, someone who usually only hears compliments about his ability to his ability to back his rig up and park, has to feel that Noz has overdone it this time.

You've come a long way baby!  As David Bowie sang, ain't there a woman I can sock in the jaw?

Now instead of being the cause of drunken barroom brawls, women at RA universities like Columbia get to participate.  Has the "gold standard" of higher education evolved into the Golden Gloves?

Columbia Professor Charged With Punching University Employee

Quote:November 10, 2009, 5:31 pm

By LISA W. FODERARO

A [regionally accredited] Columbia University professor has been charged with assault and harassment after an another Columbia employee accused him of punching her in the eye at an Upper West Side bar Friday night.

The professor, Lionel McIntyre, 59, was arrested on Monday, three days after the confrontation. According to a police report, Professor McIntyre and Camille Davis, a theater production manager in the university’s School of the Arts, were having a discussion that “escalated in a verbal dispute” and Mr. McIntyre punched Ms. Davis in the right eye.

The encounter happened in Toast, a popular, noisy bar and restaurant on Broadway near campus, where the chatter often runs to current events and politics. Professor McIntyre liked to engage fellow patrons on the subject of race, according to one regular customer, Daniel Morgan, who considers himself a close acquaintance of both Professor McIntyre and Ms. Davis.

A Columbia spokesman, Robert Hornsby, declined to say whether Professor McIntyre was suspended. “The university is not offering any comment,” he said.

It was unclear why Ms. Davis, who suffered bruising and swelling, according to the police report, did not immediately go to the police. Neither she nor Professor McIntyre responded to phone and e-mail messages; the professor’s lawyer, Richard Abraham, also did not return phone messages. Professor McIntyre was released without bail after a court appearance. The arrest was reported Tuesday in The New York Post and The Columbia Spectator.

An associate professor in the practice of community development, Mr. McIntyre teaches courses about community development and directs the university’s Urban Technical Assistance Project, which was created in 1995 within Columbia’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation. Its mission is to provide urban planning expertise and technical help to inner-city communities.

He received a master of science degree in urban planning from Columbia in 1988. Between 1993 and 1999, he headed the university’s Graduate Program in Urban Planning. According to a university biography, Mr. McIntyre worked in civil rights and labor organizing in the South in the 1960s and 1970s.

Sheila Danzig!  

Telling the Anna Ticknor story (again).  Smart strong women...Gollin and Klempner Klones tremble in fear!  "Passive aggressive mood swings, must take more meds, uncontrollable urge to post bathroom metaphor on obscure internet discussion boards..."

Distance Learning: It Is Older Than You Think

Quote:The most popular approach to distance learning today is the online degree program offered by many online universities. However distance learning started long before the Internet was even a dream

Published on November 06, 2009

by Sheila Danzig

(Sheila Danzig and OfficialWire)

FORT LAUDERDALE, FL

If you thought distance learning is a relatively new way to earn a college degree, think again! Online degree programs have only become popular in the last decade or so, but earning a degree by distance learning has been possible for more than 100 years! Prestigious universities in the United Kingdom, like Oxford and Cambridge, helped students earn a college degree at outlying locations, without setting foot on that university’s campus.

In the nineteenth century, Anna Ticknor, a Boston activist, developed a program that helped women to take college courses at home. Now women could get an education – in an era when many university campuses still refused to allow female students to enroll. Universities throughout the country adopted similar programs. Students could now take correspondence courses and graduate from programs hundreds of miles from their homes.

The World War II era witnessed a failed attempt at radioed correspondence courses. Educators didn’t stop trying to use mass media for distance learning, however, and television’s increasing popularity in the 1960s made this vision a reality. Degree programs offered through colleges such as Coastline, located in California, allowed working adults to finish a college education.

Some universities continue to offer televised courses for core courses such as English Composition. Students watch the televised program or videotapes during their free time. Testing is often offered through the university’s student extension centers, allowing students to schedule a time to come in and take the test during their free time.

The most popular approach to distance learning today, however, is the online degree program offered by many online universities. Students who live anywhere in the world can log on to a computer and access their virtual classrooms through the worldwide web. Furthermore, they don’t have to wait for a class to be televised or a videotape to be issued. Most online distance learning programs are accessible to students 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

The vast majority of students who try online learning would never go back to traditional classroom education. This is because distance learning programs offer freedom, flexibility and convenience unmatched by traditional college degree programs. Unfortunately, though, many fake degree scams have been threatening the reputation of online degree programs. Furthermore, most students don’t know how to tell the difference between a legitimate online degree graduate university and a fake degree scam or a diploma mill.

To combat this, distance learning experts such as Sheila Danzig have developed websites such as www.Degree.Com to protect students from these scams and diploma mills. All of the colleges and universities listed at this site offer accredited online degree programs. It is important that ONLY accredited programs be considered by students or they will have nothing to show for their money and work.

For more information about online colleges, online degree graduate programs and universities that feature programs in which you’re interested, www.degree.com. Take advantage of the wide variety of online resources and informative articles available free to distance learning students. You may be surprised by how much you learn!

Contact
Sheila Danzig
Sheila Danzig
sheila@danzig.com
Tel: (954) 445-0107

Has the fellow often hailed here (and here, here and here) as "Stalker Steve" been rehabilitated and fully recovered from his statist ways?  

Here's the controversy.  Inside Higher Ed posted the following story about students being prevented from exercising their First Amendment rights in support of Second Amendment rights:

Quote:Community College Sued Over Limits on Rallies

Two students -- backed by the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education -- are suing the Tarrant County College District, charging that its limits on rallies are violations of First Amendment rights, the Associated Press reported. The college permits protest activities only in a limited free speech zone, and requires advance permission to schedule events there. College officials say that the rules are consistent with federal and state requirements. But the students say that they are being blocked from engaging in legitimate protest. The students want to rally on behalf of the right to carry concealed weapons on campus and they say that they are being barred from wearing empty holsters on campus as an expression of their views.

Quote:Ring Wing Agitation Handbook Lesson One
Posted by Diogenes on November 6, 2009 at 10:00am EST

If you don't like a reasonable policy that doesn't agree with your canned ideology, claim it a free speech issue even though its not and grab as many headlines as possible. And before all the lefties out there start crowing "amen," they learned this from you in the 60's. Behind every right wing agit-prop activity is a little bit o' Mao. Just ask $600,000 a year David Horowitz.

Quote:Posted by Steve Foerster on November 6, 2009 at 11:15am EST

Of course it's a free speech issue! When you tell students they can't wear t-shirts and empty holsters as a way to express their views, what could that possibly be other than censorship? And when you have tiny free speech zones, what else could the rest of the campus be other than a place where speech isn't free?

If you want to disagree with these students on this issue, that's fine. But they have a right to be heard, and that right is being systematically disrespected here.

Why screw around paying for Liberian accreditation for your mill, only to make a paltry $2 million for all your hard work, when you can score an easy $3.7 million from the US government as a professor at a "gold standard" RA university??

No need to even bother with all that tedious research--just copy off your students.

Fifty counts of wire fraud, 17 counts of money laundering and one count of making false statements to the government? Sounds a lot more severe than, say, the couple of puny counts of mail fraud and money laundering that Dixie was charged with. Wonder why the clones haven't mentioned a single word about it?

Where is Florida's resident investigative genius Goose to take a bow? Surely he must have solved this one all by himself, maybe while on his way to a judgment debtor exam?

UF professor, wife charged with fraud

Quote:They are accused of fraudulently obtaining $3.7 million in contracts.
By Nathan Crabbe
Staff writer

Published: Saturday, October 31, 2009 at 6:01 a.m.
Last Modified: Friday, October 30, 2009 at 10:52 p.m.

A [regionally accredited] University of Florida nuclear engineering professor and his wife were arrested Friday in Gainesville on charges they fraudulently obtained $3.7 million in government contracts and diverted money into personal bank accounts to buy cars and homes.



Samim Anghaie, 60, and his wife, Sousan Anghaie, 55, are accused of submitting false information, including research taken from UF students without their knowledge, in contract proposals to NASA, the U.S. Air Force and the U.S. Navy. They are alleged to have diverted hundreds of thousands of dollars earned from those contracts into their bank accounts and the accounts of their sons.

Anghaie started at UF in 1980 and was director of its Innovative Nuclear Space Power and Propulsion Institute. He and his wife also operated a Gainesville-based research company, New Era Technology.

In February, federal agents raided Samim Anghaie's UF office and seized the couple's property in the investigation. UF subsequently put him on administrative leave and cut off his access to funding, awards and university resources. He remains on leave.

University officials released a statement Friday saying they were cooperating with the investigation but could not comment about a personnel matter until its conclusion.

A federal grand jury indicted the couple on charges of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, 50 counts of wire fraud, conspiracy to commit money laundering, 17 counts of money laundering and one count of making false statements to the government. Sousan Anghaie also is charged in a separate count with making false statements.

They were arrested Friday morning by federal agents and had their first appearances in U.S. District Court in Gainesville. A $50,000 bond was set and they were released, according to federal officials.

If convicted, they face a maximum of 20 years' imprisonment on each of the conspiracy, wire fraud and money laundering charges, and a maximum term of five years' imprisonment on each of the charges of making false statements.

Hundreds of thousands of dollars obtained from the contracts were diverted from New Era into the personal accounts of the couple and their sons, according to the indictment. The money was used to buy six vehicles as well as homes in Gainesville, Connecticut, Fort Lauderdale and Tampa, the indictment alleges.

The indictment also alleges that the couple submitted contract proposals and reports containing research and other work they falsely claimed were done by New Era. The information was taken from research projects, papers, theses and presentations of graduate and doctoral students at UF and used without their knowledge or permission, the indictment alleges.

The couple also submitted test information that they said was done at New Era but was done at the institute, UF's Major Analytical Instrumentation Center and a lab located in Russia, the indictment alleges. The indictment also alleges the couple falsely represented the company's number of employees, created fictitious employment records and submitted false conflict of interest forms to UF.

Their attorney, Lloyd Vipperman Jr., said Friday he was unable to comment on the case under court rules.

Remember, at Charter Oak (RA) you can earn a degree in under three hours with a single GRE test.

Here are my thoughts on the matter -

Diploma Mill: 0

Degree Mill: 1 - 50

Substandard: 50 - 200

Unaccredited: 300 - 500

Accredited: 500+

Not only have the deadly double-threat PhD duo of ass-scratching George "Dumbass" Gollin and his equine-countenanced spouse Melanie "Conflict of Interest Officer"? Loots turned the University of Illinois into a national academic joke, they have fouled up the football program as well!

Despite coach Ron "The Mook" Zook's outstanding recruiting of scholarly student/athletes such as Juice "Physics Major" Williams and Arrelious "Brain Surgeon"? Benn, the Illini continue to flop like fish on a hot pier.

And the reason is simple: the U of I "Conflict of Interest"? Scandal!

Michigan can become bowl eligible by beating floundering Illinois

Quote:Posted: 4:19 p.m. Today
CHAMPAIGN - No one, not even Ron Zook, can explain what's happened to Illinois this year.

Expected to contend for a Jan. 1 bowl game with a four-year starter at quarterback (Juice Williams) and one of college football"s most talented receivers (Arrelious Benn), the Illini are, instead, the worst team in the Big Ten.

They haven't beat a Football Bowl Subdivision team since last Nov. 1, haven't lost a game by fewer than 10 points this year, and epitomize dysfunction with personnel issues on both sides of the ball and a coach in Zook who most fans want fired but the university, because of an ongoing admissions scandal, might be forced to keep.

Zook received a vote of confidence from athletic director Ron Guenther at halftime of last week's loss to Purdue.

He said he was appreciative of the gesture, but focused on bigger things - like snapping Illinois' five-game losing streak today against Michigan (3:30 p.m., ABC).

"No one saw this coming," Zook said. ...