"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…
The whole story probably isn't true or it has been grossly exagerated.
I tracked down my impostor
51–60 of 248 posts
Re: I tracked down my impostor
#52For 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.
Interesting how the test score is 80% in the twitter thread and 95% in the article.
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 ;)
Re: I tracked down my impostor
#53> 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?
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.
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.
Re: I tracked down my impostor
#54Reminds 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 Reddi…
they agreed with every word you said?
Re: I tracked down my impostor
#55For 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.
Interesting how the test score is 80% in the twitter thread and 95% in the article.
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.
Re: I tracked down my impostor
#56For 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.
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.
Re: I tracked down my impostor
#57> 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?
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.
Re: I tracked down my impostor
#58> 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?
I know it's common for undergrad work in the UK. I don't know about post-grad.
It is. At least where I worked (well-known British university).
Re: I tracked down my impostor
#59Earlier quoted context omitted.
I am very certain he did, whether we have a name for it or not.
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 f…
> 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.
Re: I tracked down my impostor
#60Well 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.
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.