Tuesday, October 15, 2013

"Doctor" Demento

How easy is it to get a PhD from James Cook University these days?

Read this CV-builder, otherwise known as a dissertation. from Grace Smallwood, blacktivist and raving nut job.

Has James Cook introduced new sub-categories -- Doctor of Rants, for instance -- or is it simply that a black woman with a big mouth and a larger chip on her shoulder is as immune to critique as she is distant from logic and originality?

No doubt serious minds are to be found on the James Cook campus, even allowing for a heavy infestation of climate "scientists" and enviro grant gobblers. If  the academic clean skins don't wish their own reputations besmirched by association with Smallwood's spillage of deranged piffle, then this is the moment to raise a stink.

A good good place to start might be here or here






21 comments:

  1. The 'dissertation' needs to be accompanied by:
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AdavA_2QA0c

    Cheers

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  2. PhillipGeorge(c)2013October 15, 2013 at 11:14 AM

    Cut to the chase with a plagiarism case that could prevent your house from being burnt down.
    Lost in translation connotations to "allah hu Akbar" are the academic coalface your Alumni reading should really be about:-

    http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-24516181

    Muhammad - plagiarist or prophet: It's your money. Time and tears to follow.

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  3. The ATAR cut-offs for entry to most undergraduate courses at James Cook in 2013 were in the high to mid sixties, a reasonable indicator of that institution's intellectual standards!

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  4. Check out the Acknowledgements page.

    Full of typos; dubious use of capitals, slang, and generally poor writing.

    A three minute glance through the thesis confirms the same dodgy writing.

    You'd think someone writing at this level would know the difference between a dash and a hyphen - or their supervisors would!

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  5. Prof check out some of the nursing PhDs from many universities in Australia. One I know of involved interviewing ten people. Yes, a whole ten. That was the main research conducted. They're a joke.

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  6. Surely an oral examination is called for here.

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  7. It reads to me as a plea for help.

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  8. I could not open up the thesis, but the so-called (because it is not) Abstract was enough. And I think I can answer your question: it is likely "that a black woman with a big mouth and a larger chip on her shoulder is as immune to critique as she is distant from logic and originality". I speak here from my experience as an academic at the ANU. Staff were quite open about following a policy that overlooked inadequacy, and I tried (unsuccessfully) to have the University's procedures for dealing with cheating applied (to an Aboriginal identifier) to the worst case I came across in close to 40 years teaching in universities. The student has gone on to an inglorious career that has disadvantaged other identifiers.

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  9. What a completely unreadable collection of quotes interspersed with raving loonie twaddle. How this got to be called a thesis beats me. The most interesting things were the photos which seemed to be fillers rather than related to content.
    She should have been disqualified as soon as she indentified as activist which she did ad nauseum. Immediately it was obviois that it would not be balanced but simply confrontational. .like that artist chap from a couple of weeks ago..about as relevant as a fart in a lift.

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  10. Elizabeth (Lizzie) B.October 15, 2013 at 6:45 PM

    It's just the usual twaddle, Prof, dumbed down somewhat, with family pics and a few other photographs as the 'original' part of the deal. How little one has to do for the PhD these days, and I say this as someone who has read and given an opinion on quite a few of them.

    A few week's work here maybe? I could knock it together in less. Plagiarised? I can't be bothered checking. Perhaps its even too simplistic for that. Clearly a run-around job of gathering stuff and stitching it up with post-modern 'theory' that is highly sophisticated (even if epistemologically wrong, as I see it) and way beyond the ken of the project as it is developed; the project done I suspect with the gently assisting hand of the supervisor 'guiding' and the kind heart of the 'proof-reader' making it readable, if primary-school readers are your style guide of choice.

    I've seen lots of Honours and Masters Thesis rather like this, graded as low as they deserve to be by conscientious academics, nevertheless allowing the student some reward for their struggling efforts, but never a PhD like it before. But then, I haven't been in this game lately, through the golden years of Labor .

    October 15, 2013 at 6:32 PM

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  11. Post graduate degrees from a Dawkins institute have debauched the whole system. A Doctorate in Wimmin's Studies for example, is really taking the piss.

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  12. The Old and Unimproved DaveOctober 15, 2013 at 6:56 PM

    Well, even the original James Cook wasn't infallible, judgement-wise.

    The historical wisdom as to the naming of Port Jackson is as follows...

    As the Endeavour, fresh out of the newly-named Botany Bay, was passing Sydney Heads, northwards-bound, the lookout, one Jackson, called out that he saw the entry to a large inlet.

    Captain Cook, interrupted at his luncheon, came upon deck several minutes too late to see the size of the Harbour's entrance. From his then viewing angle, it appears to be but a small inlet.

    Cranky at the interruption to his meal, Cook is reputed to have sarcastically called up to the lookout that he given this contemptuous creek's outlet the grand name of 'Port Jackson'.

    Thus the lowest of the low on the Endeavour had its greatest discovery named after him,

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  13. I maintain that the alleged 60,000 year occupancy of this continent by the aboriginal people is a modern myth akin to the "stolen generation", and that their arrival was in more recent times, circa 4 to 5 thousand years ago. The Phoenician (Hebrew - Canaanite - Egyptian) explorers and miners brought with them African and Indian slaves to work their mines.
    These sailors and early explorers sailing from Eilat would take slaves from Sudan, Somalia & the Indus Valley, hence the African / Indian DNA found in the aboriginal people. Freed or escaped slaves were the forefathers to the aboriginal people when the Phoenician mining ventures came to an end around the time of the separation of the House of Israel from the House of Judah.
    “Welcome to Country” pantomimes should be performed in Islamabad, Khartoum and Mogadishu, with payment in khat leaves.
    P.G. – the followers of the Plagiariser in Chief were left with a problem. They have to argue that he was a perfect man, and in doing so, they have to defend his claim that Miriam, sister of Moses & Aaron, was the same Miriam, mother of Yahoshua.

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  14. Thanks for that Prof, I'm currently completing my thesis and I never thought to include some family photos.

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  15. Expect some articles by her on climate change at The Conversation in the near future. Every other social "scientist" in Australia has.

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  16. As Gerard would say... "for a Doctor she is" and that entitles her to talk bollocks. 284 pages of bollocks on this occasion.

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  17. Have to take the good with a bad. While the mouth-foaming activist is gnawing on this bone at least she has been distracted from nursing the elderly. Many lives have probably been saved and people allowed to convalesce with dignity.

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  18. Thank you for bringing to my attention the re-availability of this poor 'work' to the www. Minimal changes to the original have done it no real favours. I am embarrassed at the first 'expecially' in the acknowledgements. Most unbecoming. Then there's the 2 'schizophrenic' writing styles within which scream 'lifted' and were ridiculously easy to locate, also on the www, word for word, Ad nauseam. Have a PhD??? have your intelligence nicely insulted reading this one.

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  19. Do many PhDs open with a selection from the family photo album?

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  20. The usual rant from Smallwood and people of her victim club. Rants are fine, but don't call it a PhD.

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