When someone responsible for enforcing the rules goes out and breaks them, you have the makings of a PR problem. When this happens at a university and the issue is plagiarism, there is bound to be a vociferous public outcry.

Let's hope the University of Alberta has good PR help. Last weekend, Dr. Philip Baker, head of the university’s medical school, got into some trouble.

The Edmonton Journal reports:

"Students publicly complained on the weekend about Dr. Philip Baker’s after-dinner speech to graduates Friday night. They said the speech lifted passages word-for-word from one given by Dr. Atul Gawande at Stanford University in 2010 and later published in The New Yorker."

Worse yet, technology enabled students to follow the lifted language in real time. According to the Edmonton Journal, “Some students said they searched the speech on smartphones and were able to follow along as Baker spoke.”

Baker, who as medical school dean deals with issues related to academic plagiarism, apologized on Sunday, and admitted “the theme and much of the content was the same as Gawande’s speech.”

Stay tuned, this PR flop is not over.

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