I guess the #Rossi affair will be an unpleasant surprise for some institutions here in Switzerland after the holidays… As @martinsteiger put it, “What began as ordinary case of plagiarism, has now become an actual scientific thriller.”
@true_mxp @martinsteiger
Is this the business prof at St. Gallen? "Scientific thriller"?!?
@shriramk @martinsteiger No, this time it’s a romance philology “titularprofessor” at #UZH (at least formerly). The starting point was this blog post by Peter Kidd: https://mssprovenance.blogspot.com/2022/12/nobody-cares-about-your-blog.html…
@shriramk @martinsteiger This is already bad enough, but it then turned out that Rossi had set up a foundation in Ticino and a variety of dubious foundations and companies (with an accommodation address in London). The “employees” seem to be either family or fake (with stock photo portraits), plus some real academics, who are probably unaware of what's going on.
@shriramk @martinsteiger While the discussion was ongoing on Twitter and Mastodon, pictures and affiliations disappeared from the Website, names changed, facsimiles in the book changed.
@true_mxp @martinsteiger
Wow. Oh, I see, the official- and independent-looking RECEPTIO is actually her foundation.
Well, nothing like a little controversy to shake up cozy little Switzerland. (-:
But seriously, sounds pretty bad, and like one of those "the more you dig the worse it looks" situations.
The comments about the value of blogs are particularly infuriating. ↵
@true_mxp @martinsteiger
The RECEPTIO Web site says, "In a small country like Switzerland, a country with a philological tradition of the highest value, but where many professorships of philology have been suppressed in recent years". (Is that a language issue? Do they really mean *suppressed*, or merely that there aren't as many spots as they'd like?)
Either way, looks like one more may be about to be suppressed, this time with no confusion about the word…
@true_mxp @martinsteiger
Funny how the Meet Us part of the RECEPTIO Web site prominently lists their *lawyer*, ahem, "Legal Advisor". Very normal for an academic foundation. (-: Looks like the legal advisor is earning their keep reviewing emails…
@shriramk @martinsteiger A nice change from dealing with drug cases (which appears to be the specialty of the lawyer whose photo has been used).
@shriramk Yeah, “suppress” looks like a language issue to me, from French “supprimer,” i.e., that positions have been cut.
@true_mxp @martinsteiger
Given that they're big believers in WayBack methods, you would think they'd know better than to delete things from their site!
@shriramk @martinsteiger The book projects of Prof. Rossi (with her own “publisher”) have been funded by the SNSF with grants for OA book publications.