I’m sure the way such things are handled has changed (even more hopefully) for the better, but I have no idea what the current situation is. The event described in the post of 7/15/08 occurred over 40 years ago, those in the post of 8/7/08 were much more recent (the crooked neurologist only lost his license a few years ago). I’ll respond when I get back.

#1 A drug addicted urologist who passed his urine tests (for a while) after he was initially caught by catheterizing his patients, obtaining their urine, then catheterizing himself and instilling their (presumably) drugfree urine into his bladder.

#2 — The Plaintiff’s friend — a neurologist who didn’t have an examining table in his office and who examined people in their attorney’s office.

#3 The crooked neurologist, who, to make money, diagnosed hapless neurotics as having multiple sclerosis, plunked them in the hospital and gave them unnecessary treatment with high dose corticosteroids. One of them developed bilateral aseptic necrosis of the hips as a result. Multiple (billable) expensive tests (EEGs, Evoked responses, EMGs, NCVs) were performed on them — it’s called acute remunerative neurology. Fortunately he has now lost his medical license — for incompetence, but it most likely wasn’t incompetence, it was fraud (as we all suspected but could not prove).

Where do you come in? If you find such an individual throw them out of the course. Would you want them taking care of your mother in a few years? Also if someone says “If I don’t pass organic, I won’t get into medical school” — think to yourself — “If you can’t pass organic, you don’t BELONG in medical school” and act accordingly. It may not be easy, and I have no idea what the academic/legal environment is these days, but you’ll be doing society a favor.

Being an undergrad still, I can honestly say I haven’t done any of that. I get good grades in lab and lecture, but to be honest, I see very little linking the two.

My fellow classmates complain that it’s the most frequent source of frustration and mistakes. More often than not I’m helping the person next to me and telling them, “Forget the lecture, this is lab.”

I don’t know, maybe it’s just my university, or maybe I’m failing to conceptualize the link.

My professor found out and was furious. We ended up handwriting our reports for the rest of the semester. Graphs, tables, everything. I was so upset that I actually spent a whole night and figured out her identity. Luckily, it’s not someone that I know of.

Let me just explain that, the lab this student was trying to cheat on was titled “solubility investigation.” Sigh.

Most profs are afraid of approaching students because they don’t want a lawsuit for slander or libel.

One loathsome twerp had actually been accepted and was to matriculate in the fall (like me) but only if he passed the course. You know the type, every point taken off was fought over, etc. etc. I was pretty sure he was also cheating in the lab. The denouement came with the benzoin condensation. We were shooting for a 70% yield, and sure enough starting with 5 grams of benzaldehyde he got 7.5 grams of benzoin.

I wanted him thrown out of the course. He was not. God only knows what damage he caused as an M. D. As an older and wiser Doc once said to me — medicine is a licence to steal — the only protection the public has is a doctor who is a little too busy, so that all he does is what he should do, not what he can do.

I can see it now:
S: “My hand is red and burning.”
TA: “That’s God telling you to drop the course.”

“And this is why I love being a TA. Endless opportunities to hone my sarcasm to a razors edge… :)”

After a lengthy lecture about safety using conc. sulfuric acid, I had a girl walk across the room with a Pasteur pipette full of it, stop, talk to her friend, spill a few drops on her sneaker, than asked me, “is it bad if I dropped acid on my shoe.”

Oh, and chemical engineers are notorious for putting hot sand in the trash with their acetone-soaked paper towels. A friend of mine had a fire start in his teaching lab that way.
S: “What should I do?”
TA: “Answer this question: what’s your major?”
S: “Chem E.”
TA: “Okay, carry on.”