#Receptiogate
plagiarism, stock photos, and maybe a whole fake research institute
Modern Medieval
by David M. Perry and Matthew Gabriele
Over the last few days, first medieval twitter, then both medieval studies more broadly and Twitter more broadly, have been following one of the most bizarre stories of academic dishonesty that any of us have ever encountered. A lot of the details remain unclear, and much remains allegations rather than proven facts (we’ll use “alleged” a lot to avoid being sued). As such, until some journalists and/or government officials follow the money trail (it’s starting to happen…), the real story will remain clouded. But we hoped it might be useful to summarize and collect some information here.
Here’s the very basic gist. Peter Kidd is a well-known expert in medieval manuscripts, with professional experience at the Bodleian and British Libraries, who now works as a freelance codicologist (identifying and appraising texts for collectors, institutions, auction houses, etc.). He alleged that a Professor Carla Rossi has, via a European press called Receptio, published a book on the The Courtanvaux-Elmhirst Hours based on his blog posts, plagiarizing his findings, using his images without permission, and never citing his work.
That’s pretty serious, so he emailed the press and received, as he details in this blog post from Christmas Eve, emails from a secretary threatening legal action and denying knowledge of his blog that “no one cares about” anyway.
But here’s where it starts to get weird: Quickly, online medievalists - especially those who are experts in philology and codicology — people who have a very particular set of skills when it comes to research — found that the people and places on Receptio’s website seem to have been populated by poorly manipulated stock photos! Their mailing address was false. Their staff was false. The only people who be verified were Carla Rossi, her husband, and daughter, all of whom ran Receptio.
And as all this was coming out, Kidd very quickly became the target of email and twitter harassment from accounts seemingly associated with Rossi’s husband. The Receptio website went through rapid and ongoing edits to try and remove incriminating or fake details that were being identified on social media.
Dr. Paula Curtis has put together an extremely thorough twitter summary, pulling threads together. There’s a lot going on and the story is far from over.
One detail we are watching: Receptio seems to have been funded substantially (it seems in Swiss francs) by at least one university in Europe, and perhaps others. That would make the financial motive clear and raise the stakes from academic dishonesty to alleged criminal fraud. That’s where both state agencies and non-academic journalists may get involved in figuring out what really happened. As Prof. Fafinski noted:
The ongoing effort to assess humanistic scholarship according to strict quantifiable metrics creates an incentive for institutions to fund work that is fast rather than good, to cut corners, and to create the conditions under which this alleged fraud and allegedly serial plagiarizer is more possible.
And surely there’s more to come. Stay tuned…
UPDATE 12/30/22: It’s now been reported that the University of Zürich has opened an investigation into Dr. Rossi.
UPDATE 12/31/22: A kind reader informed us that the grant funding for Receptio may have come from the Swiss system, and was likely not from the EU (hence not in Euros). We have corrected that information in paragraph 7 above.
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