The California Air Resources Board has yet to honor my request to see the 38 exhibits in the Hien T. Tran academic fraud case. Tran was the lead researcher on a scientific study that was used to justify sweeping, costly new diesel emission rules proposed by the CARB staff. He admitted Dec. 10 to CARB that he lied about having a Ph.D. in statistics from UC Davis. Instead, Tran said, his Ph.D. was from "Thornhill University." Nevertheless, the air board still voted unanimously to adopt the rules based on his research Dec. 12 -- without acknowledging Tran's deception.
Anyways, I obtained the exhibit showing Tran's fake Ph.D. from another source. How impressive -- the $1,000 got him a "magna cum laude" plaudit from Thornhill University, not just a diploma.
Check out the web site of the diploma mill here. Those running it can't even be bothered to put up a good fake site. Click on the "Prospective Student" link and you go to what appears to be the home page of an Israeli domain registration site.
Is this significant? Maybe. A Google hunt turned up this amazing twist -- a January 2008 story in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz about Avrohom Mondrowitz, an alleged serial ***** ******** who posed as a rabbi and "community psychologist" and who escaped prosecution in New York by fleeing to Israel:
As far as the Israel Police know, Mondrowitz is currently devoting most of his energy, in the many leisure hours at his disposal, to the Internet. There he gratifies his deviant inclinations by watching clips of sadistic activity and pedophilic material. In his remaining time he makes a living by issuing bogus academic degrees to all comers, particularly to students from the Third World. He has emblems and logos from various universities, as well as seals, examples of signatures and registration forms. He refers most of the students to Thornhill University, in London, which grants degrees by correspondence and has a branch in Brooklyn.
So Tran's degree comes from an Internet diploma mill associated with someone Haaretz calls a notorious, depraved *********!! Too bizarre.
