Vainker came across "strange" citations in a paper by John Hattie, director of an education research institute at the University of Melbourne, while studying for his doctorate in education management seven years ago. At first, he found 12 sentences lifted word-for-word, he said, from the original source about workplace management without proper citation. Among them were seven instances in which words such as "people" or "individuals" were changed to education-related words, such as "students". Then Vainker looked through Hattie’s most popular and influential text, Visible Learning, and its sequel, as well as his doctoral thesis, finding what he claimed were hundreds of data errors and examples of plagiarism.

Vainker compiled his findings into two non-peer reviewed articles, and sent them last summer to the University of Melbourne. Since reporting his findings, Vainker has heard from Hattie’s lawyers demanding he apologize, retract his comments and withdraw his complaint to the university.

Source https://retractionwatch.com/2025/08/21/john-hattie-education-visible-learning-stephen-vainker-melbourne-plagiarism-allegations/

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