The president of the University of Maryland will face an internal probe after The Daily Wire exposed extensive plagiarism in his published writing.
On Wednesday evening, Darryll Pines sent an email to all university faculty under the subject “A forthcoming impartial review.”
&#8220;Just yesterday, a blogger contended that I co-authored papers in 2002 and 2006 on the topic of structural health monitoring that used language from an online tutorial without citation,&#8221; Pines wrote. &#8220;While I am steadfast that our results, data and findings are sound, I acknowledge recurrent language in the introductory sections.”
“While I do not believe there is merit to these claims, an impartial review is in the best interest of the university. Consistent with existing policies related to research conduct, I have asked the Office of Research Integrity (ORI) to begin an independent review. The findings of the ORI review will be shared with the University System of Maryland Chancellor Jay Perman through our Office of Faculty Affairs in the Provost’s Office,” the email continued.
The email is somewhat contradictory, as Pines acknowledges “recurrent language,&#8221; but denies that he plagiarized outright.
<div class="image"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-799291" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/09/pines-review.png" alt="" width="1322" height="1642" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/09/pines-review.png 1322w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/09/pines-review-242x300.png 242w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/09/pines-review-464x576.png 464w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/09/pines-review-768x954.png 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/09/pines-review-1237x1536.png 1237w" sizes="(max-width: 1322px) 100vw, 1322px" /></div>
On Tuesday, The Daily Wire identified <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/university-of-maryland-president-copied-rocket-science-paper-from-aussie-student" target="_blank" rel="noopener">a 1,500-word section of a 5,000-word paper</a> published in 2002 which Pines had lifted from a <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/19970216154235/http://www.monash.edu.au/cmcm/wavelet/whistory.htm" target="_blank" rel="noopener">tutorial website created by an Australian student in 1996.</a> Pines only changed the British-style spellings.
Pines and his co-author published another paper using the exact same stolen language in a 2006 paper.
Prior to the publication of The Daily Wire’s story, a spokeswoman for Pines seemed to defend the duplicated text, also calling it “recurrent language” and saying “the use of customary or common language in introductory material does not speak to the integrity of the data or the veracity of the findings.”
That drew shock and outrage from several academics, who said that no academic would consider 1,500 straight words pasted from an un-cited, little-unknown author to be “customary or common language,” or acceptable to use in a paper.
Online, some students speculated that if Pines was not punished, students punished for academic dishonesty would have grounds to contest their punishments.
Reporting on the fallout, The <a href="https://www.thebaltimorebanner.com/education/higher-education/university-of-maryland-darryll-j-pines-ZUVIHYS4Z5EFJIY7BUSVFGY6XA/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Baltimore Banner</a> quoted SPIE, an engineering society that published the 2002 paper, saying it “considers plagiarism by authors and contributors in any form, to any degree, to be unethical, unacceptable, and a serious breach of professional conduct.”
It also quoted Jonathan Bailey, a “plagiarism expert,” who seemed to both acknowledge that the plagiarism was real and major, but dismiss it because the media outlet flagging it was not liberal. 
The evidence against Pines “appears to be one of the stronger” cases, he said, saying “we have whole sections of a paper that are near verbatim or verbatim.”
Yet “the uptick in plagiarism accusations over the last year has targeted people of color, in particular,” the Banner claimed, paraphrasing Bailey.
(The Daily Wire did not look into Pines because he is black, but because of an incident this month in which he falsely <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/university-of-maryland-president-plagiarized-from-chatgpt-to-justify-anti-israel-oct-7-rally" target="_blank" rel="noopener">passed off ChatGPT output</a> as original Maryland &#8220;faculty scholarship.&#8221;)
“Bailey said as someone who ‘cares deeply about plagiarism,’ he finds the accusations frustrating for both himself and universities that have to investigate serious allegations even when they come from, as Bailey views it, a place of bad faith,” the Banner continued.
The paper did not say why reporting on academic misconduct was “bad faith,” except that “The Daily Wire is a conservative publication who often rail against diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives,” seemingly suggesting that standards should not apply to scholars like Pines, a rocket scientist who this year co-authored  papers titled &#8220;Stereotypes and implicit biases in engineering: Will students need to &#8216;Whistle Vivaldi&#8217;?&#8221; and &#8220;Understanding the ‘Us All’ in Engineering 4 Us All through the Experiences of High School Teachers.&#8221;
A side-by-side of the student&#8217;s 1996 website and Pines&#8217; paper is below. The Daily Wire&#8217;s original story is <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/university-of-maryland-president-copied-rocket-science-paper-from-aussie-student">here</a>.
<div class="image"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-797593" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/09/pines-altmann-1.png" alt="" width="1799" height="10212" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/09/pines-altmann-1.png 1799w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/09/pines-altmann-1-53x300.png 53w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/09/pines-altmann-1-768x4360.png 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/09/pines-altmann-1-361x2048.png 361w" sizes="(max-width: 1799px) 100vw, 1799px" /></div>

University of Maryland President Darryll Pines (Julia Nikhinson/For The Washington Post via Getty Images)

University of Maryland President Acknowledges ‘Recurrent Language,’ Submits To Plagiarism Review

College

Education

Maryland

Plagiarism

University of Maryland

University of Maryland President Darryll Pines appears to have committed significant plagiarism, lifting large portions of two academic journal articles from a tutorial website made years prior by an Australian student, a Daily Wire investigation found.
A 1,500-word stretch of a 5,000-word paper by Pines and a co-author published in 2002 — accounting for nearly a third of the paper — is virtually identical to a <a href="https://www.dmsa.unipd.it/andreap/wavelet/wavelet.htm" target="_blank" rel="noopener">tutorial website</a> called “Surfing the Wavelets” published in 1996 by Joshua Altmann, who at the time of publishing was a university student in Australia.
Pines does not cite or mention Altmann or the website, which says it was last updated in October 1996. Pines and his co-author, Liming Salvino, then recycled much of that paper, including almost all the uncredited Altmann language, for another peer-reviewed paper in 2006.
Pines, a rocket scientist and diversity activist, does not appear to have made any changes to Altmann’s work except removing some sentences and Americanizing the Australian’s British spelling (turning “analyse&#8221; to &#8220;analyze,&#8221; e.g.) — but Pines missed two such words, “endeavour” and “modelling,” which remain in his work with the spelling commonly used abroad.
Pines&#8217;s systematic editing of British words suggests he did copy the language, but deliberately manipulated Altmann’s text to look like his own. The finding of significant past plagiarism comes after Pines this month presented what he said was “faculty research” defending a pro-Palestine rally planned for October 7, but which actually came from ChatGPT.
<a href="https://www.amiracist.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.amiracist.com/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1726665846407000&amp;usg=AOvVaw0AO_BnWzjBHW-hvzLTw1hC">Am I Racist? Is In Theaters NOW — Get Your Tickets Here!</a>
When Altmann published the tutorial in 1996, he had recently been working in a restaurant and was a student at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia. At the time, Pines had a doctorate from MIT and was leading a University of Maryland program “to increase the number of underrepresented minority PhDs in four departments within the College of Engineering.&#8221;
Another scientist cited Altmann’s online tutorial in his Ph.D. dissertation in <a href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d2/Acoustic_noise_removal_by_combining_wiener_and_wavelet_filtering_techniques_%28IA_acousticnoiserem00forn%29.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">1998</a>.
The duplicated language is highlighted here:
<div class="image"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-797593" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/09/pines-altmann-1.png" alt="" width="1799" height="10212" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/09/pines-altmann-1.png 1799w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/09/pines-altmann-1-53x300.png 53w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/09/pines-altmann-1-768x4360.png 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/09/pines-altmann-1-361x2048.png 361w" sizes="(max-width: 1799px) 100vw, 1799px" /></div>
Pines’s <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/252446892_Health_monitoring_of_one_dimensional_structures_using_empirical_mode_decomposition_and_the_Hilbert-Huang_Transform" target="_blank" rel="noopener">2002 paper</a>, “Health monitoring of one dimensional structures using empirical mode decomposition and the Hilbert-Huang Transform,” was published in the journal Smart Structures and Materials, part of the SPIE engineering association.
In 2006, Pines and Salvino reused a large portion of that paper — including nearly the entire uncredited Altmann section — for a <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/223597065_Structural_health_monitoring_using_empirical_mode_decomposition_and_the_Hilbert_phase" target="_blank" rel="noopener">paper</a> published in the Journal of Sound and Vibration, “Structural health monitoring using empirical mode decomposition and the Hilbert phase.” The above chart looks almost the same whether comparing Altmann to Pines’s 2002 or 2006 papers.
Where Altmann writes the word “endeavor,” Pines’s 2002 article says “endevour,” as if someone tried to Americanize the Australian’s British-style language but removed the wrong letter. The 2006 article also mirrors Altmann’s language in using the British “modelling,” though the 2002 article does not, perhaps because an editor at that journal changed it to the American “modeling.”
Pines&#8217; papers do not contain any footnotes to Altmann. Instead, his footnotes are the same as Altmann&#8217;s, down to the page numbers.
In virtually the only instance where Pines tried to paraphrase, he managed to add multiple errors. Altmann writes, “Several techniques can be used to enhance the characteristics that are otherwise not readily observable.” Pines’s 2002 paper says “This led to the emergence of several techniques that could be used to enhance the characteristics that would otherwise not readily observable.” That passage in his 2006 paper has an additional inserted typo (one apparently again caught by the more vigilant 2002 editor), saying “This lead to the emergence.”
Katie Lawson, a spokeswoman for the University of Maryland, did not deny that the language was copied, but suggested there would be no repercussions for the president.
“It is not uncommon for historical and technical reviews to use recurrent language to provide a framework for past work. Establishing this shared understanding in the scientific community is what allows for applications of new technology, which is what Dr. Pines and Dr. Salvino explored in testing a new application of the Hilbert phase. The use of customary or common language in introductory material does not speak to the integrity of the data or the veracity of the findings,” she said in an email.
Lawson declined to respond to questions about whether University of Maryland students and faculty are required to cite their sources when using extensive verbatim work of others, and what would happen if they did not.
IEEE, a professional engineering society, says “Plagiarism includes, but is not limited to, (a) uncredited copying of someone else’s work, (b) using someone else’s material without clear delineation or citation, and (c) uncited reuse of an author’s previously published work that also involves other authors.” It said it “is a type of copyright infringement, and as such may also subject the author(s) to legal liability.&#8221;
<a href="https://pspb.ieee.org/images/files/PSPB/opsmanual.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">IEEE’s policies</a> say that it considers “uncredited verbatim copying of a large portion (greater than 20% and up to 50%) within an article” as its second-most serious offense. It said the actions that “shall” be taken in such a case include the publication of a “Notice for Publishing Misconduct,” rejection of all articles currently being reviewed by the author, and possible prohibition of future publishing.
The society recommends that the offender be required to submit an apology to the victim and the journal editor, with more severe punishment if he refuses.
The Daily Wire reported this month that Pines <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/university-of-maryland-president-plagiarized-from-chatgpt-to-justify-anti-israel-oct-7-rally" target="_blank" rel="noopener">plagiarized from ChatGPT</a> and passed the writing off as original research he had gathered from faculty experts. “I have consulted with Middle East Scholars and Historians on our campus regarding the origin and history of the Palestinian Flag. The general consensus opinion from these faculty scholars is as follows,” he wrote, followed by output that in reality came from ChatGPT.
He used the veneer of &#8220;expert scholarship&#8221; to end a debate with a Jewish critic who objected to his decision to allow a pro-Palestinian group that advocates for “armed struggle” to <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/u-of-maryland-prez-said-anti-israel-protesters-could-rally-on-10-7-then-threatened-to-call-police-on-jew-for-complaining" target="_blank" rel="noopener">hold an event on October 7</a>, the anniversary of Hamas’ attack on Israel. When The Daily Wire asked him about the false attribution, he ignored the inquiry.
Pines is credited with many journal articles and academic accomplishments, but his scientific achievements often come with him as just one member of a larger group. In the plagiarized articles, he is the lead author.
His journal articles co-authored this year include “Stereotypes and Implicit Biases in Engineering: Will Students Need to ‘Whistle Vivaldi’?” and “Understanding the ‘Us All’ in Engineering 4 Us All through the Experiences of High School Teachers.”
Pines’s story is similar to that of former Harvard president Claudine Gay, who resigned following the exposure of her own plagiarism. Both Pines and Gay came under fire for their handling of anti-Semitism on campus, and were uncovered as plagiarists in the ensuing scrutiny.
Related: <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/u-of-maryland-prez-said-anti-israel-protesters-could-rally-on-10-7-then-threatened-to-call-police-on-jew-for-complaining" target="_blank" rel="noopener">U of Maryland Prez Said Anti-Israel Protesters Could Rally On 10/7—Then Threatened To Call Police On Jew For Complaining</a>

Darryll J. Pines, PhD is appointed the 34th President of University of Maryland at College Park on February, 14, 2020. (Photo by Marvin Joseph/The Washington Post)

University of Maryland President Copied Rocket Science Paper From Aussie Student

Hecklers disrupted a prominent <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/house-democrats" target="_blank" rel="noopener">House Democrat</a>&#8216;s university lecture on democracy last week, after which the president of the school ended the event due to what he called a show of &#8220;free speech.&#8221;
Rep. <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/jamie-raskin" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Jamie Raskin</a> (D-MD), the ranking member of the Oversight Committee, spoke at the University of Maryland (UMD) on Thursday until a commotion about the Israel-Hamas war led him to get sidetracked and open the room to questions.
Although UMD President Darryll Pines reportedly cut short the lecture and wished the disruptors had been more civil, he <a href="https://www.marylandmatters.org/2024/03/29/raskin-speech-at-umd-disrupted-by-protesters/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">told Capitol News Service</a> that the result was a positive one.
&#8220;[Raskin] came here to speak about where our democracy is going in our country,” Pines reportedly said. “What you saw play out actually was democracy and free speech and academic freedom.&#8221;
He added, &#8220;From our perspective as a university, there are the difficult conversations that we should be having.&#8221;
Raskin told the news outlet the &#8220;sentiments&#8221; of the protesters were &#8220;perfectly consistent&#8221; with his planned lecture, which was titled &#8220;Democracy, Autocracy and the Threat to Reason in the 21st Century.&#8221;
The congressman said he is &#8220;not really opposed to heckling&#8221; but noted that &#8220;it seems like heckling today is all about drowning out the speaker, and that’s totally antithetical to the spirit of free expression.&#8221;
As word of what transpired at the event and what Pines had to say about it spread on social media, people chimed in about their views on protesters effectively shutting down speakers.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
Congressman Jamie Raskin tried to give a speech at <a href="https://twitter.com/UofMaryland?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@UofMaryland</a> on democracy and &quot;the threat to reason in the 21st Century.” 
It was relentlessly heckled and drowned out by people protesting Israel&#39;s invasion of Gaza. 
The speech was ultimately shut down by the university… <a href="https://t.co/DQVH2dkXoI">pic.twitter.com/DQVH2dkXoI</a>
&mdash; Nico Perrino (@NicoPerrino) <a href="https://twitter.com/NicoPerrino/status/1774482820678693194?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">March 31, 2024</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
&#8220;President Pines is wrong,&#8221; <a href="https://twitter.com/NicoPerrino/status/1774482820678693194" target="_blank" rel="noopener">said</a> Nico Perrino, executive vice president of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE).
&#8220;What you saw play out was mob censorship,&#8221; he continued. &#8220;It was a bastardization of free speech and the antithesis of democracy. These shout-downs happen far too often on college campuses — and with the approval of college administrators.&#8221;
NBC News reporter Jonathan Allen, a UMD alumnus, suggested that Pines&#8217; comments should be called the &#8220;loudest-voice doctrine,&#8221; according to a <a href="https://twitter.com/jonallendc/status/1774788172091642176">post</a> on X.
&#8220;It’s debatable the degree to which federally funded schools have a duty to ensure free speech,&#8221; he <a href="https://twitter.com/jonallendc/status/1774817009168978403" target="_blank" rel="noopener">added</a>. &#8220;What’s not debatable is that the [First Amendment] also protects the right of assembly — to allow political discourse. Nor is it debatable that intimidation can fall outside protected speech.&#8221;
<a href="https://onelink.to/dwapp" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" aria-describedby="sk-tooltip-9096" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://onelink.to/dwapp&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1700760801843000&amp;usg=AOvVaw2PQrVSrJfhxNb4LcARqniG">CLICK HERE TO GET THE DAILYWIRE+ APP</a>
UMD professor Howard Milchberg, who <a href="https://umdphysics.umd.edu/about-us/news/department-news/1934-milchberg-lect-24.html#:~:text=University%20of%20Maryland%20Professor%20of,parents%2C%20Renee%20and%20Irving%20Milchberg." target="_blank" rel="noopener">started the lecture</a> with his family in recognition of his late parents who survived the Holocaust, posited that the disruption of Raskin&#8217;s remarks was a good thing.
&#8220;It didn’t go as planned, but it maybe turned out better than normal,&#8221; Milchberg <a href="https://www.marylandmatters.org/2024/03/29/raskin-speech-at-umd-disrupted-by-protesters/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">told Capitol News Service</a>. &#8220;It was an actual exercise of democracy rather than a story about democracy.&#8221;

Rep. Jamie Raskin

House Dem’s Lecture Derailed By Hecklers; University President Claims ‘Free Speech’ Prevailed

House Dem's Lecture Derailed By Hecklers; University President Claims 'Free Speech' Prevailed

Congress

House Democrats

Jamie Raskin

Politics

Protesters

U.S. House of Representatives

In a blatant example of a school failing to protect a male student from false accusations of sexual assault, the University of Maryland-College Park (UMD) allowed an accuser and a powerful campus group to brand him a rapist even after the school determined he was not responsible, according to a lawsuit.
The male student, referred to in <a href="https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.mdd.510573/gov.uscourts.mdd.510573.1.0.pdf">court documents</a> as &#8216;John Doe,&#8217; was a junior at UMD when he was accused of sexual assault by a female student, referred to only as &#8216;Jane Roe.&#8217; Jane claimed in a formal complaint filed with the university on October 27, 2020, that she was sexually assaulted by John Doe and another student, referred to as &#8216;Jacob Poe.&#8217;
John contended that his sexual encounter with Jane was consensual, and her contemporaneous text messages supported that contention. Shortly after performing oral sex on John, Jane texted a friend to say what she had just done and added, “I have this thing where I like to make guys feel good.” 
After her encounter with John, she became interested in Jacob, according to John’s subsequent lawsuit. Her text messages regarding her feelings for Jacob were also positive, telling that same friend, “As soon as I walked in, I was like ‘oh shit,’” and “I feel like we… Vibed.” Jane engaged in sexual activity with Jacob, after which she fell asleep with him on the couch in John’s apartment, “hugging [him] like a koala,” one witness later testified. The next day, she stayed at the apartment, conversing with John and watching football before going home later that afternoon.
But sometime later, Jane started calling both encounters sexual assault.
Even during the investigation, the university ignored student complaints of harassment and intimidation. Jane’s mother, according to John’s lawsuit, harassed at least two witnesses, threatening one’s family in an effort to prevent him from testifying and saying that if he did testify, “he would have a problem next.” The university “took no meaningful steps to remedy the harassment or witness tampering,” John’s lawsuit says. 
Jane’s mother also personally threatened John and Jacob with physical violence on her social media account, according to court documents.
During the investigation process, Jane repeatedly changed her story about what happened with John and Jacob, the lawsuit says. At one point she said John used force, yet another time she said he didn’t use force. She claimed to be drunk and later claimed she was sober. She once said she had said no “eight to ten times” but later said she didn’t say no. 
She also at one point said John “forcibly removed her clothing” but subsequently said she removed her own clothing.
Jane also claimed that she didn’t leave after allegedly being sexually assaulted by two different men because she didn’t know how to exit the apartment building. Multiple witnesses at the hearing, however, insisted they offered to walk Jane home but that she declined. And far from being distressed, the witnesses testified that Jane “seemed like she was enjoying every moment,” that she danced, joked, and stayed up with everyone until five or six o’clock in the morning.
Jane had also told a UMD police officer that she “had a consensual sexual encounter” with John, but the school never sought these statements on its own as part of the investigation. They were only included after John obtained them through a Public Information Act request.
Even though the school had a mountain of evidence that Jane’s allegations were false, it went through with its process under Title IX, costing John more than $100,000 in legal fees, court documents say.
Prior to the hearing, Jane submitted photographs of clothes she claimed to have worn the night of the alleged sexual assaults, saying it was stained with semen. The hearing officer – in a rare move not usually seen during campus hearings – had the clothing sent to a DNA lab, which ultimately found no semen on the clothes.
On September 1, 2021, the Title IX hearing officer found John and Jacob not responsible for sexual assault. Jane did not appeal the determination, even though accusers are able to under campus Title IX policies.
This should have ended John’s ordeal, but as he alleges in his lawsuit, after he was thoroughly exonerated in an atmosphere typically hostile toward the accused, Jane and a campus organization allegedly spread the claim on campus that he was a rapist, going so far as to contact campus organizations to get John removed from them.
Jane went to UMD’s officially recognized student organization, Preventing Sexual Assault (PSA), and claimed to be a victim of sexual assault. As John noted in his lawsuit, PSA co-presidents Rachel Salem and Hailey Chaikin stated in a public forum that PSA had a special influence over UMD’s Office for Civil Rights and Sexual Misconduct (OCRSM), which helps coordinate the school’s Title IX policies. Salem and Chaikin, according to the lawsuit, also stated that it was “their job” to inform students of “who the predators are on campus.” As part of this self-described “job,” Salem and Chaikin told student organizations at UMD that John was a “rapist” and “under investigation” for sexual misconduct. These claims occurred after the Title IX proceedings had concluded, which Chaikin and Salem would likely have known. 
The two women allegedly continued to make these claims for months to students and student organizations, resulting in John being ousted from those groups and continually branded a rapist despite all evidence to the contrary.
Neither Chaikin nor Salem responded to repeated requests for comment from The Daily Wire. After questioning the given deadline, a UMD spokeswoman stopped responding and didn’t provide a comment for this story.
John says in his lawsuit that he repeatedly made OCRSM aware of what Jane, Chaikin, and Salem were doing, even filing formal complaints against them and alleging retaliation and harassment. OCRSM, according to John, ignored or dismissed his complaints without investigating any of them. The closest John said he came to a resolution was when his Title IX advisor spoke on the phone with UMD’s Title IX Coordinator, who said she would tell PSA to stop harassing John, but later said she would not do so unless she could use John’s full real name, something John didn’t want. He insisted in his lawsuit that his name wasn’t needed because a general statement to PSA was all that was needed. He also alleged that using his name would only increase the harassment against him.
John responded the only way he could: With a lawsuit.
&#8220;John Doe&#8217;s complaint against the University of Maryland, in which he extensively details the harassment and discrimination he suffered as well as the complete lack of credibility by the complainant, speaks for itself,” John’s attorney, Lindsay McKasson, told The Daily Wire in an email. 
“He was fully exonerated by the University of horrendous and malicious false allegations. Nevertheless, the University repeatedly refused to protect John Doe’s rights as a student, including failing to protect him from the retaliation and harassment levied against him. The University&#8217;s egregious conduct must be rectified so this does not happen to any other students. We look forward to protecting John Doe&#8217;s rights in court.&#8221;
While the lawsuit didn’t get much attention when it was filed in April, a curious thing has happened in a more recent filing. Typically, plaintiffs are able to use pseudonyms to protect their identity, but defendants aren’t usually granted the same anonymity. But in this case, Chaikin and Salem filed motions to continue the lawsuit under pseudonyms, and a judge granted their request.
Eugene Volokh, a law professor at the University of California-Los Angeles who specializes in the First Amendment, <a href="https://reason.com/volokh/2022/09/16/pseudonymity-for-libel-defendants-former-co-presidents-of-campus-activist-group-in-theylied-claim/?comments=true#comments">noted</a> that the judge seemed to accept a “promising young man/woman” exception to allow Chaikin and Salem to proceed under pseudonyms, after they argued the lawsuit could hamper their ability to find jobs and start their careers. Volokh suggested the judge’s decision in this case may be a compromise, as earlier filings still contain Chaikin and Salem’s full names.
Defense attorney Scott Greenfield <a href="https://blog.simplejustice.us/2022/09/17/do-defamers-deserve-pseudonymity/">questioned</a> whether the women deserved the pseudonymity, asking “Is there any reason they shouldn’t suffer what they tried to do, and did, to John Doe by ruining his life? Is there any reason why, going forward, people should not know that if they hire, associate or engage with these two women, they should expect the worst of them?”
John’s case is still pending.

McKeldin Library and fountain, University of Maryland

She Accused Him Of Sexual Assault. Lawsuit Shows Her Allegations Were False, Yet She Continues To Defame Him On Campus

Lawsuit

Readers Pass

Sexual Assault

Researchers working on an experiment with carbon atoms found evidence that could suggest an alternate reality actually exists.
Victor Galitski and Alireza Parhizkar at the University of Maryland prompted speculation when they stacked two graphene layers together.
“They realized that experiments on the electrical properties of stacked sheets of graphene produced results that looked like little universes and that the underlying phenomenon might generalize to other areas of physics,” a <a href="https://jqi.umd.edu/news/bilayer-graphene-inspires-two-universe-cosmological-model">press release</a> from the university stated.
“The scientists think that because the electrons can interact between two graphene layers, each just an atom-thick, they could exhibit other interactions from across space time,” <a href="https://www.thesun.co.uk/tech/18600665/suspicious-clue-that-alternate-reality-exists/">The Sun</a> reported.
“Stacked graphene’s exceptional electrical properties and possible connection to our reality having a twin comes from the special physics produced by patterns called moiré patterns,” the press release explained. “Moiré patterns form when two repeating patterns—anything from the hexagons of atoms in graphene sheets to the grids of window screens—overlap and one of the layers is twisted, offset, or stretched.”
The two scientists “realized that the physics in two sheets of graphene could be reinterpreted as the physics of two two-dimensional universes where electrons occasionally hop between universes,” the press release stated.
The scientists then extrapolated from the math involved in the experiment and used that math to apply to universes such as ours.
“We don&#8217;t claim—ever—that this solves cosmological constant problem,” Parhizkar cautioned. “That&#8217;s a very arrogant claim, to be honest. This is just a nice insight that if you have two universes with huge cosmological constants—like 120 orders of magnitude larger than what we observe—and if you combine them, there is still a chance that you can get a very small effective cosmological constant out of them.”
“We haven&#8217;t explored all the effects—that&#8217;s a hard thing to do, but the theory is falsifiable experimentally, which is a good thing,” Parhizkar added. “If it&#8217;s not falsified, then it&#8217;s very interesting because it solves the cosmological constant problem while describing many other important parts of physics. I personally don&#8217;t have my hopes up for that— I think it is actually too big to be true.”
Films featuring alternate realities have become popular in recent years; some of those films include “Inception,” “The Matrix,” and “Parallel,” but an alternate timeline has been featured as far back as the classic 1946 film “It’s A Wonderful Life.”
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HereÕs a variation on creating a time-sequence composite of the August 21

Alternate Universe Might Be Real After All, Scientists Speculate After Experiment