A quick fix for plagiarism

November 8, 2013

It doesn’t seem right. In fact it sounds like an abdication of responsibilities and like covering up a crime if and when the crime is discovered.

But it also sounds a simple fix. A stroke of genius – somewhat crooked but very clever. Just eliminate the plagiarism by punctuation!

If accused of plagiarism, just put the impugned text within quotation marks!

Retraction Watch has the story:

PNAS has a curious correction in a recent issue. A group from Toronto and Mount Sinai in New York, it seems, had been rather too liberal in their use of text from a previously published paper by another researcher — what we might call plagiarism, in a less charitable mood.

To paraphrase Beyoncé: If you like it, better put some quotation marks around it. But we’re pretty sure she meant before, not after, the fact.

The article, “Structural basis for substrate specificity and catalysis of human histone acetyltransferase 1,” had appeared in May 2012, in other words, some 17 months ago. It has been cited twice, according to Thomson Scientific’s Web of Knowledge.

……..

Parthun is Mark Parthun, a professor at Ohio State University. It was he who brought the misused text to PNAS’s attention. He tells us:

I read this paper with great interest because my lab also studies the Hat1 enzyme.  While reading this, a number of the passages in the Introduction and Discussion sections started to sound very familiar.  These passages were familiar because they were plagiarized from a review article I had published earlier (Parthun, M.R. Oncogene 26:5319–5328, 2007).  I also found some sentences that were plagiarized from another manuscript from another lab (Campos, et al, NSMB 2010).  I brought this plagiarism to the attention of the editors at PNAS and suggested that this manuscript be retracted.  After more than a year, PNAS published a correction (http://www.pnas.org/content/110/45/18339.full).  This correction lists all of the passages that were plagiarized and simply says that they should have had quotation marks around them.  This seems like a woefully inadequate response.  PNAS has essentially made plagiarism irrelevant because if you are caught, all you have to do is retroactively say that you should have used quotations.  Is this a common practice with journals.  I hope not because I think this represents a serious step in the erosion of scientific ethics.

….

We asked Daniel Salisbury, a PNAS editor, why the journal opted to correct rather than retract the paper. This was his reply:

In light of recent concerns from the author of the plagiarized text, we are following up with the PNAS authors’ institution.

Parthun, who said he received a similar message, was not impressed:

My problem with his response [is] that they are simply passing the buck.  I would have thought that PNAS had the ultimate responsibility for the manuscripts that it publishes.  I don’t understand why they need Mount Sinai to tell them when something is improper.

To which we say, we agree.

We’ve emailed Plotnikov for comment and will update this post if we hear from him. Meanwhile, although we think there might be room in science publishing for correcting improperly attributed text, an instance of multiple examples of frank plagiarism such as this probably isn’t the test case.

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Another human intervention for the survival of unfit species

November 8, 2013

I believe the entire thrust of “conservationism” in protecting unfit species and sanctioning successful species is fundamentally unsound. It is the survival of the unfit. It is no sustainable way to proceed. If humans are to intervene then it should be in the genetic adaptation of  a weak species to help that species to survive in the long term and not in “protecting” the habitat of the weak species by eradicating successful species so that the weak species continues in a state of being unfit for survival.

And now the very successful brown rats on the Isles of Scilly are to be culled in favour of sea birds that they threaten. Rather than kill the rats and perpetuate the sea birds in their unfit state, surely we ought to be adapting the sea birds to be able to survive in the new environment they live in.

Johnny Birks, chair of the Mammal Society, said: “Brown rats are not native to Britain… it’s our own fault they are so widespread and that makes it right for us to repair the damage we’ve caused.”

He added that the eradication could benefit the Scilly shrew and other species found on the islands, but it was key that the rats did not reinvade.

A convoluted – and rather sick – argument if ever there was one. To just remove the competitive pressures that the weak species is subject to is to try and prevent evolution. It may work in the short term but provides no long term future for the weak species. In fact it prevents them from responding to evolutionary pressures. The rats have taken advantage of the new environment created by humans and have thrived. The sea birds and other species have failed to do that. The paradigm cannot be  “Kill all immigrants” to freeze the unfit native species in their untenable positions. If the answer is to limit the successful species then the present thrust of “conservationism” leads logically – and inevitably – to the culling of humans as the preferred solution.

The weak have a guaranteed place in heaven anyway. Either help them to change or let them die out. But don’t lock them into the unfit state they find themselves in.

BBC: 

A project aimed at protecting internationally important seabird populations on two of the Isles of Scilly by killing more than 3,000 brown rats, is under way.

The islands, which are located off Cornwall, are home to breeding populations of 14 seabird species and approximately 20,000 birds.

Eradication experts from New Zealand and the UK have been contracted to carry out the work.

“Among many challenges our seabirds face, the greatest threat on land is predation of eggs and chicks by brown rats,” said Jaclyn Pearson from the Isles of Scilly Seabird Recovery Project.

“The brown rats were accidently introduced to islands from shipwrecks in the 18th Century,” she added.

The project is part of a 25-year programme to protect “internationally important” seabird numbers, including those of Manx shearwaters and storm petrels, and is costing more than £755,000.

The rodents will be poisoned on St Agnes and Gugh by Wildlife Management International Limited (WMIL).

The company has helped eradicate rats from Ramsey Island off Wales, Lundy Island off Devon and the Isle of Canna in the Scottish Hebrides.

Elizabeth Bell, from WMIL said: “A period of intensive baiting will start from the 8 November and most of the rats will be dead by the end of November. We’ll then target the surviving rats.”

A long-term monitoring programme will start at the beginning of 2014 to check the rodents have been eradicated from the islands.

Ms Bell said all the bait stations were enclosed, tied down and were designed not to kill any other species, such as rabbits. ……

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University of Queenland completes misconduct investigation

November 8, 2013

I had posted earlier in September about the unusual, and laudable, actions of the University of Queensland in itself requesting retraction of a paper for misconduct after a preliminary investigation had found that primary data could not be located.

The University has now completed its investigation and issued a press release. The work reported may never even have been done.

The paper, titled Treatment of articulatory dysfunction in Parkinson’s disease using repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation, was published online in the European Journal of Neurology in October 2011. …..

The final report confirmed the interim finding that no primary data could be located, and there was no evidence that the study described in the article had been conducted. 

The paper’s authors have resigned from UQ, which means the University is not in a position to take disciplinary action in relation to the matter. 

A systematic review of other papers involving the authors of the retracted paper is nearing completion. 

The review of approximately 100 papers published since 2007 has so far found no further evidence of incorrect or non-existent data or of failure to obtain ethical approval. 

The review has raised questions about the authorship of a small number of papers, and this is being examined further. …. 

The paper in question seems to be this one:

B. E. Murdoch(1), M. L. Ng(2) and C. H. S. Barwood(1), Treatment of articulatory dysfunction in Parkinson’s disease using repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation,  European Journal of Neurology, 19: 340–347. doi: 10.1111/j.1468-1331.2011.03524.x

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“Liking” on Facebook is a cheap, easy alternative to donating

November 8, 2013

For charities and other organisations dependent upon public donations, Facebook and other social media represent a glittering silver cloud with a very dark lining! Having an enormous reach via social media may seem like success but it could be counter productive. Potential donors presented with the alternative of clicking on a “like” button to making a real donation take the cheaper route. The more public the “like” the less likely the donation. They assuage their consciences and keep their pocket-books untouched!

Not really so surprising I suppose but a useful confirmation of behavioural tendencies.

Kirk Kristofferson, Katherine White, and John Peloza, The Nature of Slacktivism: How the Social Observability of an Initial Act of Token Support Affects Subsequent Prosocial Action, Journal of Consumer Research, Published by: The University of Chicago Press, Article Stable URL:http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/674137.

EurekAlert: 

Would-be donors skip giving when offered the chance to show public support for charities in social media, a new study from the University of British Columbia’s Sauder School of Business finds.

“Charities incorrectly assume that connecting with people through social media always leads to more meaningful support,” says Sauder PhD student Kirk Kristofferson, who co-authored the forthcoming Journal of Consumer Research article.

“Our research shows that if people are able to declare support for a charity publicly in social media it can actually make them less likely to donate to the cause later on.”

The study results add fuel to recent assertions that social media platforms are turning people into “slacktivists” by making it easy for them to associate with a cause without committing resources to support it.

In a series of studies, researchers invited participants to engage in an initial act of free support for a cause – joining a Facebook group, accepting a poppy, pin or magnet or signing a petition. Participants were then asked to donate money or volunteer.

They found that the more public the token show of endorsement, the less likely participants are to provide meaningful support later. If participants were provided with the chance to express token support more privately, such as confidentially signing a petition, they were more likely to give later.

The researchers suggest this occurs because giving public endorsement satisfies the desire to look good to others, reducing the urgency to give later. Providing token support in private leads people to perceive their values are aligned with the cause without the payoff of having people witness it.

With the holiday season being the biggest fundraising period of the year, the researchers say it is vital that charities take another look at their strategies and plan appropriately.

The ease and painlessness of  “liking” actually degrades the quality of the connection – be it for donations or for representing support for people or causes. When a “supporter” has little else to do than to click a “like” button, that support is not worth very much.

In relationship selling, I used to advise our salesmen that the way to judge a relationship was to consider the kind of “favour” the relationship could allow and support without jeopardising the relationship. The strength or quality of a “social connection” is still – I think – to be judged by the width and breadth and weight of the service that can be initiated and carried by the connection without breaking it. A “like” is pretty light-weight as social connections go.

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Posted in Behaviour, Social media | 1 Comment »

Viking slaves were probably sacrificed and buried headless with their masters

November 7, 2013

Viking slaves were apparently decapitated and buried with their owners as grave gifts, new research shows. The slaves were buried headless. Moreover their diets differed. High status individuals who were accompanied by their – presumed – beheaded and sacrificed slaves, had much more meat in their diets. Their slaves along with other less exalted commoners had a predominantly marine diet.

Meat for the Viking Lords and fish for all the others but slaves had the dubious privilege of accompanying their masters, headless, into the after life!

Elise Naumann, Maja Krzewińska, Anders Götherström, Gunilla Eriksson Slaves as burial gifts in Viking Age Norway? Evidence from stable isotope and ancient DNA analyses  Journal of Archaeological Science, Volume 41, January 2014, Pages 533–540 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jas.2013.08.022

Full-size image (68 K)

The burial site of Flakstad is situated on Flakstad Island

PastHorizons reports:

Six Late Iron Age (AD 550–1030) graves were discovered in the northern Norwegian island of Flakstad and partially excavated in the period 1980–1983. There were ten individuals making up three single burials, two double and one triple and unusually for this region the bones were in a good state of preservation.

Although much of the contextual information had been lost due to farming activity, the double and triple burials contained one intact individual in each, along with the post-cranial bones of the other occupants. This situation has been interpreted as decapitated slaves buried with his/her master and the theory is supported by a number of double burials found within Norse societies indicating this practice.

Elise Naumann from the University of Oslo led a study to investigate stable isotope and ancient mitochondrial DNA fragments in order to better understand the social status, geographical and/or familial links within the Flakstad group

Graves with two or more individuals occur relatively frequently all over the Viking World. The choice to bury people together is not coincidental, but rather a deliberate action based on specific relationships between these individuals, which could either be:

  1. Family members or people with other close connections.
  2. Sacrifice, where one or more individuals are intended to accompany the “main” burial.

The research has revealed some intriguing results and indicates that the intact person in each grave had distinct isotope values from the other individuals with missing crania; the former having a predominately meat based diet, while the latter – in common with the single grave occupants – had consumed a much higher percentage of marine foodstuffs.

The research study noted that ” in a society where most of the daily activities were dedicated to the acquirement and preparation of food, where food shortage and harsh winters are assumed to have been a constant threat, it would seem likely that a different diet should be detectable in people of low social standing compared to the common population. However, isotopic data in this study show quite the contrary. Despite indications that the headless people in multiple graves might represent low-status members of the population, their diet was equivalent to those  in the single burials who are interpreted as representatives of the free population. ”

he ancient DNA results suggest that maternal relations between the individuals buried together are unlikely and backs up the isotope evidence. Therefore, the complete individuals from the multiple burials stand out as a distinct group and may be perceived as having a special social status. This is emphasised by a diet distinctly different from the slaves and the rest of the population and along with the lack of high status artefacts in the multiple burials could indicate that they were not necessarily wealthy, but special in another sense, who were  treated differently than others in death as well as in life.

Why the slaves were deprived of their heads is a little unclear. Perhaps it was to make sure that they stayed in the service of their owners in the after-life and didn’t just go wandering about on their own.

The authors conclude:

Results from stable isotope analyses show that individuals in multiple burials most likely were intentionally placed in the same burial, given the pattern in which the only person buried intact in each burial, had distinct isotope values. Thus, persons sharing a grave had distinctly different diets during their lifetime and were unlikely to share maternal kinship. A reasonable explanation for these observations could be that persons buried headless may have been slaves accompanying their masters in the grave. This interpretation corresponds well with other double burials from the Norse World with similar features, where decapitated and sometimes headless people were deposited as grave gifts. The resemblance in diet between headless persons and individuals buried in single burials was unexpected and calls for further investigation in the future. The present study indicates that also other double burials should be investigated using a bioarchaeological approach.

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Democracy threatened as Swedish politician is attacked by cake!

November 7, 2013

The list of assassinated Swedish politicians is not very long and contains just 4 names : Engelbrekt Engelbrektsson (1436), Axel von Fersen the Younger (1810), Olof Palme (1986) and Anna Lindh (2003). But each has come as something of a shock for the traditional openness of politics and the easy access to politicians. The Olof Palme murder (still unsolved) was a particularly traumatic event. 

Engelbrektsson was a rebel leader and was murdered by a member of the nobility who got off scot-free. Axel von Fersen (the reputed lover of Marie Antoinette and even thought to be the father of her first child) was stamped to death by an angry mob in the presence of many troops and (probably) with the acquiescence of the then government. Olof Palme was shot to death by an unknown assassin on a Stockholm street while walking home from the cinema. At the time of his death he was the serving Prime Minister walking the streets without any bodyguards! Anna Lindh was stabbed in a department store while shopping (also without bodyguards) and died of her wounds in hospital. Five days later a mentally disturbed man of Serbian descent was arrested. He apparently confessed 3 months later and was sentenced to life.

The leader of the far-right Swedish Democratic Party was attacked on Tuesday by cake at a book signing. He escaped shocked and “sullied” and his party earned some extra money by not wasting much time in selling the video of the cake-attack to a national newspaper. There is a little question mark as to how they came to be filming the incident just then and the speed with which they negotiated and sold the video. There is no report about what the cake tasted like and what recipe was used. Chocolate and cream?

Sweden Democrat leader ambushed in cake attack

Sweden Democrat party leader Jimmie Åkesson ended up with cake on his face after a woman attacked him with a baked good at a book signing in Stockholm on Tuesday evening.
The attack occurred around 5pm as Åkesson was signing copies of his new book, Satis Polito, under a tent set up in Nytorget on Södermalm in Stockholm.
Agents from security service Säpo quickly whisked a sullied and shocked Åkesson away from the scene.  “Åkesson ended up with a cake in his face. Then he was rushed into a Säpo car. He sat there for a while, and then they left,” a witness to the cake attack told TT. ….. 
The suspected cake-thrower was a 60-year-old  woman, one of an estimated 200 or so counter-demonstrators on hand for the book signing by the Sweden Democrat leader. She was quickly apprehended by police but was later released.

Politicians of all parties have condemned the cake-attack as being an attack on the very foundations of democracy. The Swedish Democrats are – not surprisingly – trying to portray Jimmy Åkesson as a victim. And so he is. But rather cake than knives and guns and angry mobs. And the Swedish Democrats – even if it is at its roots a neo-Nazi party  and has fantasies of a Swedish Kristallnacht – is not quite as horrible as the Muslim Brotherhood or Golden Dawn.

Shades of Axel von Fersen! For it was his lover, Marie Antoinette, who is reputed to have replied to a report that the peasants could not afford bread “Then let them eat cake”!

 

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Posted in Behaviour, Politics, Sweden | 1 Comment »

Recounts, missing ballots and secret software enliven the Western Australia Senate election

November 7, 2013

The Australian preferential voting system is not the easiest thing in the world to understand. The elector must show a preference for all candidates listed on the ballot paper.You have “formal votes” and “informal votes”. An informal vote is a ballot paper which has been incorrectly completed or not filled in at all. Informal votes are not counted towards any candidate but are set aside. But it seems that on recounts formerly informal votes can formally be declared to be formal after all. Between one count and another votes can apparently get lost which suggests that there are physical votes which are counted. But it also seems that “software” –  which is held secret – is used to count the votes.That itself makes me wonder as to what discretion and what margin of error such “software” can have? And who does the programming? Especially when margins of victory are swinging between 14 and 12 for opposing candidates and where 1375 ballot papers have suddenly gone missing.

Australia went to the polls on September 7th. In Western Australia, however, senate seats were decided by a mere 14 votes, a result that saw a recount. During the recount, two important events took place: first, a number of votes originally treated as “informal” (that is, incorrectly cast) were re-classified as formal and included in the count; secondly, and most importantly, however, the AEC stated that more than 1,300 ballots had been mislaid between the original count and the recount.

Lots of folks therefore intend to appeal the result and it looks likely Western Australian will need to stage another poll for the state’s six senate seats.

Following the shambolic Western Australian Senate election, the Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) has turned down a citizen’s FOI request to look at the software it uses to count Senate votes.

The decision, published yesterday at RightToKnow.org, was in response to a request made by Michael Cordova. …… The software, called EasyCode, is not used for voting, but for ballot counting only. The AEC believes EasyCode would be easy to decompile if it fell into the wrong hands (that is, members of the public).

This reminds me of a science fiction short story I read many, many years ago where software has developed to such an extent and where social behaviour is so well understood that voting is reduced to the use of one single elector and his/her preferences. If my memory serves, this single voter casts her vote and the software does all the rest.

The Western Australia election where the number of votes “lost” is about 100 times greater than the winning margin immediately gives rise to conspiracy theories which are being played down:

The Federal Government says it is unlikely “skulduggery” is behind the disappearanceof more than 1,300 ballot papers from the Western Australian Senate recount. Special Minister of State Michael Ronaldson says he has personally expressed his view to the Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) that the loss of the 1,375 votes is completely unsatisfactory.

“People have got to have trust in the AEC, that’s one of our pivotal democratic institutions. These sort of incidents I think effectively can, if you like, negate that trust that people have in the commission,” he said. …..

One of the potential options being canvassed to resolve the impasse is for Western Australian voters to return to the polls.

But Senator Ronaldson has cautioned against jumping to conclusions before the poll is declared. “We are in completely uncharted waters,” he said. “I think people have got to be cautious about jumping to a decision which is way at the end of the process.” Senator Ronaldson says he is worried about the impact of the incident on the reputation of the AEC. “These sort of incidents effectively can, if you like, negate the trust that people have in the commission.”

Dr Stewart Jackson, a politics lecturer at the University of Sydney, says he has never seen anything like it. “This may have happened before but we’ve just never noticed it because we’ve never had a recount in the same way,” he said.

I am still a little perplexed as to why software is necessary for counting physical votes. It’s not as if the numbers involved are all that large. Is a “software” count more accurate than or does it rank higher than a physical count? Or is a “software” count less susceptible to cheating?

Once upon a time humans had very limited number skills and were limited to “One, two, three, many”. Software would clearly have been superior to a human count in those times (except that it would have had to be programmed by the same humans)!

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Posted in Australia, Politics | 2 Comments »

A platypusian tale of a raunchy rat and a promiscuous duck

November 6, 2013

A science story is doing the rounds today based on a new paper:

No living mammal is more peculiar than the platypus. It has a broad, duck-like bill, thick, otter-like fur, and webbed, beaver-like feet. The platypus lays eggs rather than gives birth to live young, its snout is covered with electroreceptors that detect underwater prey, and male platypuses have a venomous spur on their hind foot. Until recently, the fossil record indicated that the platypus lineage was unique, with only one species inhabiting the Earth at any one time. This picture has changed with the publication of a new study in the latest issue of the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology that describes a new, giant species of extinct platypus that was a side-branch of the platypus family tree.

The new platypus species, named Obdurodon tharalkooschild, is based on a single tooth from the famous Riversleigh World Heritage Area of northwest Queensland. While many of Riversleigh’s fossil deposits are now being radiometrically dated, the precise age of the particular deposit that produced this giant platypus is in doubt but is likely to be between 15 and 5 million years old.

File:Platypus BrokenRiver QLD Australia2.png

Platypus BrokenRiver QLD Australia Wikimedia

But what I found far more interesting was the story from the Aborigine Dreamtime which is so much more attractive than any evolutionary history of this strange animal. The Dreamtime sounds fascinating – a kind of Brigadoon.

In the Dreamtime, Tharalkoo was a headstrong female duck who disobeyed her parents’ warnings not to swim downriver where Bigoon the water-rat could catch her and have his wicked way with her. Like anyone who disobeys their parents in a fairy story, things turn out exactly as they said they would and Tharalkoo is ravished by Bigoon. When she returns home, the other female ducks are all laying eggs, so she does the same. But instead of a baby duckling, Tharalkoo’s child is a chimera with the bill and webbed hind feet of a duck and the fur and front feet of a rodent – a platypus.

It is not hard to read between the lines that Tharalkoo had promiscuous tendencies and that Bigoon was the swaggering young tough who was the local heartthrob. Unlike Juliet, Tharalkoo got to having her offspring – which has since prospered. Presumably Bigoon fathered others for Tharalkoo’s child to mate with. What else Bigoon got up to and how he came to meet a nasty end (and there can be no doubt that he must have come to a nasty end) is unknown.

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Frugal engineering for India’s Mars mission

November 6, 2013

India has been struggling to bridge the gap to more developed nations without necessarily having to follow exactly the same path as that followed by other nations. Especially to achieve the development objectives in less time than it has taken those who did it first. Doing more with less is the name of the game and “Frugal engineering” (or “frugal innovation”) is defining a new paradigm for development.

There may perhaps not be any better example of the dictum that necessity is the mother of invention than can be found in India. Whether it is a refrigerator, ECG device or an automobile, Indian engineers have brought innovative products to market by designing them outside-in. …….

It may seem a contradiction, but some infrastructure gaps in India have positively affected Indian innovation: they have forced entrepreneurs and companies to adopt technologies that make relying on existing infrastructure (creaking and unreliable as it is in many ways) simply irrelevant. Indian engineers have invented a battery-powered, ultra-low-cost refrigerator resistant to power cuts; an automatic teller machine for rural areas; and even a flour mill powered by a scooter. People in the West, with its constant access to electricity, have little motivation to pursue such innovations. The Indian mobile phone industry is the poster child for leapfrogging over infrastructural constraints. A limited fixed-line infrastructure created an opportunity for mobile phones to reach many more people. Mobile telephony is also relatively cheap, sharable, and easily repaired. And thus, a new frontier of global innovation opened in India. …… 

The Indian mission to Mars which launched yesterday is another example of frugal engineering at work.

Hindustan Times:

India’s successful Mangalyaan launch is as much a financial accomplishment as a technical milestone. The entire Mars mission has cost the Indian Space Research Organisation a mere around Rs. 450 crore ($75 million) and took 15 months to put together. Much of the Martian price tag is for ground stations and relay upgrades that will be used for other Isro projects. The actual satellite costs a mere $25 million ( Rs. 153 crore), says Pallav Bagla of Science magazine. Comparison: Nasa’s similar MAVEN Mars project will cost 10 times more and will take three times longer.

Isro is widely cited as an example of “frugal engineering” …..  A US state department scientific adviser once said that Isro had reduced satellite assembly costs to a tenth of Nasa’s.

Isro’s accomplishments are remarkable given its tiny budget: $700 million ( Rs. 4,270 crore) in 2012-13. Despite a space programme whose financial base is the ninth largest, India is generally rated the world’s number six space power.

Of this, only 7% is allotted for planetary exploration. Isro’s prime directive has and continues to be the finding of technical means to support socio-economic goals such as education, medicine, water and disaster management.

Isro also defrays government support through a commercial arm, Antrix. Through the sale of satellite imagery, satellite launches and so on, Antrix earned a pre-tax Rs. 2 billion in 2010 alone. …..

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Posted in Development, Engineering, India, Science, Space | 3 Comments »

Swedish University reprimanded for poor quality but refuses to return foreign student’s fees

November 6, 2013

In some respects the attitudes taken by Swedish Institutions today is reminiscent of the high-handed attitudes taken by old-fashioned, communist, East Block countries. Very high levels of individual freedom are coupled to a very high level of protection for institutions (and their employees) which can lead to peculiar situations at the interface.

Standards are – usually – very high but public institutions in Sweden – hospitals, schools, colleges, universities, local or national government organisations – rarely take responsibility for poor quality or negligence. The extent of accountability is normally restricted to correcting a problem once it has been identified. An individual who has suffered from the negligence – and even gross negligence  – has little recourse in law and generally gets little compensation. Damages for institutional wrongdoing are either at ridiculously low levels or completely absent. Institutional employees are highly protected and very rarely held accountable or sanctioned for their negligence or lack of quality. Blame – if wrong-doing can be proven –  is allocated to the institution as a whole which of course leads to no-one being accountable.

It is almost impossible for a lone individual to sue an institution or claim damages or get any equitable compensation for any damage suffered.

In this case it was Mälardalen University College which did not provide the promised education to a foreign student from the US. She paid a great deal of money for a 2-year course in Mathematics and Mathematical Statistics but received education which even the Swedish Higher Education Authority agreed was lacking in quality. But of course, the institution does not believe that it had any kind of contract with the student to provide any particular level of quality and feels no obligation to repay her tuition fees.

Sourced and freely translated from Sveriges Radio and Svenska Dagbladet:

Not enough chairs, not enough computers and a lecturer who could not speak Swedish or English properly. That’s what the US student paid nearly 200,000 kronor for (about $26,000). But Mälardalen University does not intend to return her money.

“I thought it would be interesting to study abroad. The program looked promising”, said Connie Dickinson .

A suitable program and being cheaper than in the United States convinced Connie Dickinson to chose to study mathematics and mathematical statistics at Mälardalen University in Sweden , where she has relatives . But it was nothing like she had imagined. “The lecturer did not spend  much time with us in the classroom. We had to share computers. There weren’t enough chairs and some students had to sit on the floor. The teacher handed out papers  and walked away and she couldn’t speak either English or Swedish. I was really surprised at the low standard”

Connie complained to the college about the problems, and even informed the Swedish Higher Education Authority UKÄ, about the shortfall in the education. UKÄ agreed that the the education lacked quality and has given the University one year to fix the problems or to discontinue the course.

But that is insufficient for  Mälardalen University to repay Connie her 183 000 SEK.

But whether it is discontinued or not, Connie attended a training course for two years that does not measure up  either for her or the Swedish Higher Education Authority.

Bjorn Magnusson , CFO at the college , claimed that it is not possible to give money back just because of a complaint about the lack of quality . “You can’t get back the tuition fee because of a complaint about the lack of quality. You pay the fee to participate in regular training. it’s not like a contract between us and an individual”. Besides dissatisfaction is subjective he says.

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