Talk:Dănuţ Marcu

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[edit] Importance

Being a well known and serial plagiarist is of importance to general public. It is also reflected in the numerous literature as cited. Please read the references before further removal. Mhym 03:11, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

I did read them. I see no evidence for the subject being best known for plagiarism. The citations are also not "numerous". Unsourced claims will be removed; it's that simple. Additionally, having plagiarized does not automatically make someone of such importance they should have a Wikipedia bio, so his importance (as far as Wikipedia is concerned) rests on your claim of "well known". If you can demonstrate this, without engaging in original research, I will be satisfied. So far all I see is some hearsay in an email (mentioned in one of the references). Given WP:RS, the sourcing should really be better than that before levying that kind of accusation. --C S (Talk) 04:18, 26 November 2006 (UTC)
Fair enough. I added more reference to support my claim. Please read these MathSciNet reviews (including MR2031645 which explicitly mentioning that Marcu is "infamous"). That enough to convince you? Mhym 04:38, 26 November 2006 (UTC)
Your references are only available to subscribers, at least according to the article all of them link to. That's not enough to support a claim such as yours. Henning Makholm 04:41, 26 November 2006 (UTC)
This is not a web site but a journal published by the AMS. The WP source policy allows books, journals and other print media to be references. See Wikipedia:Citing sources and Wikipedia:Reliable sources. Books, journals are ok. MathSciNet is accepted by WP as reliable source. Naturally. Mhym 04:44, 26 November 2006 (UTC)
I think the links are fine. Anybody with university library access will be able to see them. --C S (Talk) 04:51, 26 November 2006 (UTC)
Almost, but not quite. Most of the forthright reviews you cite are by Jerrold Grossman. All claims like this, to be properly sourced, should say something like "Jerrold Grossman calls Marcu an infamous plagiarist in Math Reviews..." I really doubt Marcu is that famous, period, for plagiarism or otherwise. Grossman considers him to be an infamous plagiarist, but Grossman also apparently spends a lot of time reviewing Marcu's articles, so his perspective may be skewed. Other reviewers in general do not comment on this or at least seem unaware that Marcu could possibly have plagiarized the work. So I am skeptical about how well known Marcu is.
I don't think there's enough here to make a blanket assertion that Marcu is well known for this. A claim like Albert Einstein is an iconic physicist would not require extensive documentation, as this can be backed up by hundreds if not thousands of sources by different scholars, publications, etc. But here the scarcity of sources is obvious. One cannot simply make a claim that someone is famous for such-and-such reason without giving some sources that show that person is indeed famous. I don't see enough here. I see, at most, someone that may be the subject of occasional gossip at some math department tea. Hardly Wikipedia fame. There is no media coverage here, no newspapers, magazines, etc.
I would just stick with reporting the clear facts. You can say such and such journals have banned him, or that a dozen of his papers have been found to be "word for word" duplicates according to whomever. --C S (Talk) 05:17, 26 November 2006 (UTC)
Well, I kind of agree with Marcu being less famous than Einstein.... As for WP-famous, I say he passes the bar. There are at least 3 articles banning him by the editorial board, and one article dedicated solely to his case, how he got caught but published "his" article eslewhere anyway (see the 4OR paper). Compare him agains others in the Scientific misconduct category like Steven A. Leadon or Elias Alsabti. The google test gives roughly similar results.
As to whether we should say in the article that he is "famous..." - I am ok with dropping the word. This does not affect Marcu's notability if I understand you correctly. Mhym 06:51, 26 November 2006 (UTC)


I completely agree with Mhym:

"Being a well known and serial plagiarist is of importance to general public. It is also reflected in the numerous literature as cited."

This is a very important service to heneral public, mathematicians, and particularly for editors and publishers. I thank Wiki for this page, which should be kept, and expanded to other documented cases. [User: stganger] Dec 6, 2006 —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Asoifer (talk • contribs) 02:04, 7 December 2006 (UTC).

[edit] Rewrite

As several people indicated that this article should adhere strictly to our policy for biographies of living persons, I rewrote the article. As an added benefit, I verified everything. However, I cannot access the following two references. Since their contents were not clear in the original article (though we can have a guess), I moved them here:

  • "Editorial statement" on a paper by D. Marcu, a note in Saitama Math. J. 20 (2002), p. i.
  • Editorial statement, a note by editors of Geometriae Dedicata 32 (1989), p. 253.

I hope that everybody can agree with my rewrite; otherwise, I'm sure I'll hear it. -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 07:42, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

I can access the geom. ded. link. It is a 1 page pdf; I hesitate to quote much of it due to copyright, but it is about the same instance as the Zbl review you link. The editors K. Strambach and F. D. Veldkamp observe that the Marcu and Lindström papers are "more-or-less word for word the same", note that they suspect plagiarism on Marcu's part, and state that they contacted Marcu but that he denied ever having seen Lindström's paper. They did not find his denials convincing, they say, but they "leave it to the scientific community to form their own opinion". And finally they apologize to their readers. It does not say anything about banning him from the journal. —David Eppstein 08:14, 8 December 2006 (UTC)
Thanks, I incorporated that. -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 05:43, 10 December 2006 (UTC)
It looks good, but I wonder why you removed the importance tag. Do you believe that Marcu is important enough to require a Wikipedia bio? --C S (Talk) 08:34, 8 December 2006 (UTC)
I do think that somebody who has plagiarized dozens of papers over 10 years and managed to publish them in peer-reviewed (I assume) journals is notable enough for Wikipedia, though it's close to the notability border. However, that's not the main reason why I removed the tag. The notability tag, like all clean-up tags, is supposed to be temporary. I don't see how the article can be changed to make the notability claim clearer, so I removed it (though I shouldn't have done it so surreptitiously).
I think the tag should not be used just to flag articles as perhaps not notable enough, in some editor's opinion. If you think it doesn't reach the necessary level of notability, you can start a discussion on the talk page (already done), in some other forum, or start an AfD. However, if you do think this is a proper use of the tag then feel free to put it back in. -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 05:43, 10 December 2006 (UTC)
I agree with your reasoning. I was curious if you saw some other reason to claim notability. I don't think the plagiarism thing by itself is significant. --C S (Talk) 08:29, 10 December 2006 (UTC)
When I wrote the first draft of the article, I had this Saitama Math. J. reference for a reason. I bet it says that Marcu plagiarised the paper they published. I am just too lazy to go to the library to check... But I do have this link: MR1972494. Mhym 06:03, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Inline comment moved from article

Evidence from MathSciNet is overwhelming, and allows the editors of Wikipedia to draw more definitive conclusions. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Asoifer (talk • contribs) 2006-12-11T19:15:27

Moved from main page by Henning Makholm 21:55, 11 December 2006 (UTC)