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I tracked down my impostor

theguardian.com

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Re: I tracked down my impostor

#91

Post by hellbannedguy »

kfoley wrote: post #6

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 Reddi…

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.

Re: I tracked down my impostor

#93

Post by MrsPeaches »

dakial1 wrote: post #63

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 le…

> 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

Re: I tracked down my impostor

#94

Post by SubiculumCode »

kfoley wrote: post #6

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 Reddi…

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

Re: I tracked down my impostor

#95

Post by DoubleGlazing »

kfoley wrote: post #6

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 Reddi…

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.

Re: I tracked down my impostor

#96

Post by chki »

green_space wrote: post #90
bombcar wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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...

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

Re: I tracked down my impostor

#97

Post by yesenadam »

dorkwood wrote: post #12
oh_sigh wrote: post #5

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.

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.

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...

Re: I tracked down my impostor

#98

Post by whatshisface »

DoubleGlazing wrote: post #95
kfoley wrote: post #6

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 Reddi…

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…

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.

Re: I tracked down my impostor

#99

Post by IshKebab »

autophagian wrote: post #19

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.

Classic article about a picture without showing the picture.

Re: I tracked down my impostor

#100

Post by mkl »

worker767424 wrote: post #86
chrisseaton wrote: post #26

> 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 keep waiting for someone to find a plagiarism checker retained a copy of their work and sue for copyright infringement.

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...

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