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In October 2015, a New York district court ruled in favor of the academic publisher Elsevier, which had accused Sci-Hub, a website that offers pirated versions of academic papers, of copyright violation. That decision allowed authorities to take down the site’s domain name, sci-hub.org. Suspending a domain name does not delete a website forever, though, it just prevents visitors from knowing where exactly to find it. It’s trivial enough to relaunch the same site under another domain, as Sci-Hub did.

Cases of scientific malpractice in Brazil increased significantly between 2009 and 2012, according to a study looking at article retraction in scientific journals. The paper looked at retracted research articles in two major Latin American and Caribbean databases. Out of 2,000 articles from around the world published in the databases between 2009 and 2014, 31 were later pulled back, including 25 articles from Brazil. The study, published in Science and Engineering Ethics, says that this could threaten the country’s growing popularity as a research partner.

The document presents several cases of fraud within the education system in the province of Villa Clara, such as cheating during entrance exams, and the involvement of teachers and professors in assisting students during the exam. 

A former Iowa State University researcher who fabricated the results of an experimental HIV vaccine was sentenced to four years and nine months in prison recently. He was also ordered to pay US$7.2 million to the US National Institutes of Health that funded the research.

As tens of thousands of Chinese students prepare to study in the U.S., they might reflect on the experience of some of those who went before them. According to an estimate by a U.S. education company, some 8,000 Chinese students were expelled from American universities last year alone – and the main reasons were poor grades and cheating.

Student plagiarism help site? Academics and administration officials at Concordia and McGill universities are raising concerns over Course Hero, a note-sharing website for students which boasts more than just notes. Looking at only a few of its hundreds of pages, CBC Montreal Investigates found 35 chapters lifted from textbooks, and 56 professors' presentations.

Phony diploma mills that use “slick websites” and claim to be “nationally accredited” to lure honest students looking to improve themselves through education only offer certificates costing hundreds of dollars that “are not worth the paper they are printed on”, according to a report from ABC Action News WFTS in Florida.