Oxford professor ‘failed to properly acknowledge’ Chinese colleagues

Plagiarism by failure to acknowledge your very own major influencers, even to completely steal the breakthroughs of others and then to lie and claim them as your own, is fully tolerated by the scientific establishment and has been for a very long time. So don't be surprised. Google the terms "Darwin science fraud" "Knowledge contamination" to read my expert peer reviewed academic articles that provide all the newly unearthed and independently verifiable painful truths. Until we condemn proven glory thieving plagiarists of the past how can we expect to tackle those who continue to commit such obvious academic fraud today?

I agree, this incident is just a tiny scratch in the thin veneer of respectability showing the toxic and ugly underbody of academia. In my field it is common tacit knowledge, for example, that you do not ever present any new ideas, at a conference or seminar for example, before having it published first in a journal or other official publication (it does not have an accepted pre-print structure/practice in place). This is the first “unwritten rule” you learn from good supervisors (who probably were burnt badly and had to learn this the hard way). Learn from what “star academics” do, they only ever go on a road show to promote their publications really. You can observe certain people (usually senior academics) at every conference, pretending to be helpful and interested, but actually circling the naïve and young ones like predators their prey. Also be wary of the senior academic taking a lot of notes and not saying much, soon to be seen to publish something strikingly similar, not empirically but conceptually obviously, before you have even submitted you first manuscript. Of course, this does not mean that your ideas are not being stolen or appropriated without acknowledgement even after having them published. Ignoring published work is particularly widespread in business and management research, for instance, where work not published in the “top” journals, i.e. American journals, or the specific journals of a subject area simply gets ignored (on purpose). This is particularly true for niche and nascent areas with competing groups of scholars. This is partially fuelled by the “publish or perish” culture and a widespread competitive mindset that suffocates real scholarly debate and collaboration. Finally, junior academics (especially those in precarious employment) and those from a non-Western (and Anglophone) background find themselves often at the mercy of established colleagues or those at more prestigious institutions for access to jobs, research projects and other opportunities. No wonder they get exploited and overlooked. The establishment always take care of their own.

The establishment always take care of their own.