Beowulf’s trollFAIL is the funniest thing I’ve read all week.

Thanks for that.

Beowulf, I don’t quite get it. You are telling us that the academy has rules that if violated create an unethical situation. Yet, you did these things:

1) You failed to carefully examine your source material before making a strong accusation against a colleague, even to the extent that you did not realize that your colleague was a colleague and not one of the snot nosed 22 year old whipersnappers, you students, for whom you seem to have very little respect.

2) You made, publicly and in writing, accusations of malfeasance based on your incorrect interpretation of the evidence without any prior inquiry or investigation. One could argue that you committed slander. Certainly, you ran roughshod over the ethics of the situatoi.

3) You revealed yourself to have what may be misogynist tenancies. I’m sure you don’t know what I’m talking about, so I’ll point it out: You make (poorly formed and idiotic yet sincere) arguments against the males with whom you verbally spar, but you tell the woman in the argument that her statements are invalid because she is merely some secondary attachment to another interlocutory. I know you are only a chemist, and chemists are famous for being troglodytes (though not all of them) but this is the 21st century.

4) When it is pointed out that you are busy dressing down a peer, you simply back down, as though my authority as a Harvard PhD who has taught at some of the great institutions in the country and written papers that are among the most widely cited in my field ever mattered to whether or not I properly cited a reference on my blog. If you still think I did it wrong why are you backing down simply because of my academic credentials? Have you not heard of the argument from authority?

Well, maybe not. You are, after all, only a chemist.