Sunday, October 14, 2007

Academic Mini-Celebrity

I always find it interesting when academics simply pursuing their own research suddenly, and briefly, become mini-celebrities in the broader public for unexpected reasons. Sometimes the reasons can be rather unfortunate, as with the recent Madonna Constantine case, but sometimes they can be rather more amusing. Scott Aaronson, for instance, recently discovered that a passage from his quantum physics lectures was plagiarized by a Ricoh printer commercial.

What are some other cases in recent times?