Yvonne D. Cafik, PhD

Elbows up for Canada at the Boston Marathon! Love and smiles exchanged by all in this amazing event and running community. Thank you, @bostonmarathon

@des_linden Love the grit, the person, the accomplishments, and what you have done for running. Simply unmatched in your field. Congratulations on a great run today. It was nice being on the course with you, albeit at a much slower pace :) #Boston25

Let’s have ourselves a day. #BostonMarathon

@ellenjl have you thought of testing your mindfulness hypothesis in the context of marathon running? Coaches who employed it and those who did not, i.e were regimented or mindless in approach to marathon training. Just a thought as I read The Mindful Body before running Boston25

It’s that time of year again. Does it matter that its been brutally cold and I haven’t run outside in shorts yet? Ready to don the Canada jersey and run with pride for my home and the great job @WascanaCentre does keeping the running path clear. ! #Boston2025

@cafreeland I think Trudeau was protecting you from Trump. You won’t have that protection now.

I thank Justin Trudeau for his years of service to Canada and Canadians. I wish him and his family the very best.

Participated in Abbott World Marathon AG Championships at the Sydney Marathon; then Berlin Marathon, which broke a record for number of finishers at over 54,000. So happy to be so healthy and to have met the standard to qualify and participate in these non-peer reviewed events!

In acknowledgement of #TruthAndReconciliation, my daughter and I visited @NWMuseumArchive to see #DownstreamWhereTheWatersMix and attended the event at Queens Park, thanks to #SpiritoftheChildren. Learning the truth is so essential to moving forward.

Board Performance Assessment: Issues and Change in Planning youtu.be/21z7JbkY4JY?si… via @YouTube

It was a hot one but enjoyable all the same. Thanks @bostonmarathon for a great event!

Big thumbs up week on the marathon front. Boston training is going well, I’m feeling fit and healthy, and this happened!

@BillAckman @MIT While MIT may not have mentioned Wikipedia as a source in their policy, they certainly had access to software at that time to identify plagiarism. Use of these tools are often in academic integrity policies at the university, department and course level.

A fun fact: Our lawyers used the Wayback Machine to check @MIT's plagiarism policy back when Neri wrote her thesis in 2009. It turns out that MIT's academic integrity handbook did not require citation or even mention Wikipedia until 2013, four years after Neri wrote her dissertation and used Wikipedia for the definitions of 15 words and/or terms. Bear in mind that 2009 was still pretty early days for Wikipedia. Interestingly, Business Insider also used the Wayback Machine to research MIT's plagiarism policy, but only when they cited it to manufacture plagiarism claims against Neri: "MIT’s academic integrity handbook notes that authors must either “use quotation marks around the words and cite the source,” or “paraphrase or summarize acceptably and cite the source.” Identical language appeared in MIT’s handbook at least as far back as 2007." [From Business Insider's initial email to Pershing Square of Jan. 3, 2014, 1030pm] What are the chances that Business Insider examined the MIT handbook "as far back as 2007" and didn't notice that there was no requirement to cite Wikipedia nor was it even mentioned until April 4, 2013 when the following language was added: "Wikipedia is Not a Reliable Academic Source Many of us use Wikipedia as a source of information when we want a quick explanation of something.  However, Wikipedia or other wikis, collaborative information sites contributed to by a variety of people, are not considered reliable sources for academic citation, and you should not use them as sources in an academic paper. The bibliography published at the end of the Wikipedia entry may point you to potential sources. However do not assume that these sources are reliable – use the same criteria to judge them as you would any other source. Do not consider the Wikipedia bibliography as a replacement for your own research." To be clear, Neri did not use Wikipedia as a source, but only for the definitions of 15 words and/or terms for her dissertation. While there was no way for us to do this research in the 91 minutes we were given before Business Insider published its story, our lawyers found it in about 24 hours. This finding wipes away 15, or more than half of the plagiarism claims made by Business Insider at 5:19pm last Friday night. According to the Cornell Law Legal Information Institute: In order to prove "prima facie defamation," "a plaintiff must show four things: 1) a false statement purporting to be fact; 2) publication or communication of that statement to a third person; 3) fault amounting to at least negligence; and 4) damages, or some harm caused to the reputation of the person or entity who is the subject of the statement." This leads me to a few question for the @X legal community. If you look at all of the evidence that has emerged over the last few days, do you think Neri has been defamed under the four factor test above? What exposure does Axel Springer have to claims at Business Insider in light of the fact that it has been on personal notice from me at a board and CEO level about Business Insider's wrongdoing for more than 54 hours and it has yet to issue a corrected statement about its investigation nor de-published the articles. Axel Springer has not updated its statement that: “While the facts of the reports have not been disputed, over the past few days questions have been raised about the motivation and the process leading up to the reporting — questions that we take very seriously" Do you think the facts have been sufficiently disputed? I have two questions for the private equity and finance communities: What is the net worth of Business Insider? What is the net worth of Axel Springer?

@BillAckman She could easily have cited Wikipedia if no published definition of new terms was available. She may have been frowned upon at the time but that’s far less than being accused of plagiarism. I can see why she did it though.

Imagine that you were formerly a professor at a university, and you are an entrepreneur now. One day, a company that you have no affiliation with (other than its CEO is your husband) gets an email from a reporter from Business Insider which says that they have found five examples of plagiarism in your 2010 dissertation. The communication person brings this to your attention and lets you know that you are being given to 12 pm to respond. You are concerned about these allegations because even being accused of plagiarism can destroy your career and life which depend entirely on intellectual property and your reputation. In the university context, plagiarism allegations are adjudicated by administrative boards in a process that takes months. Here, a business publication has determined that you are a plagiarist, and has given you only a few hours to respond before they tell the entire world that you are plagiarist. So you have no choice to respond as quickly as you can with whatever documents you can get your hands on. After a few hours of review, you determine that it appears that in four paragraphs of your 330-page dissertation, you cited the author and the source correctly, but you omitted eight quotation marks. In the other instance, it appears that you paraphrased the author correctly, but you failed to cite him. You featured the author in multiple other places in your dissertation and you cited him the eight other times, but somehow you missed this one. Business Insider then runs the story with the headline: John Doe's Celebrity Academic Wife Jane Doe's Dissertation is Marred by Plagiarism You immediately respond to the story with a post on X in which you acknowledge the missing quotation marks for the four paragraphs, and the missing attribution for the sentence, and you apologize for your mistake. Business Insider immediately runs another story entitled: Jane Doe Admits to Plagiarizing in her Doctoral Dissertation after Business Insider Report This immediately becomes global news because your husband is a high-profile person and you are one of the most acclaimed designers in the world with recent retrospectives at MoMA, and SFMoMA. The next day, at 5:19pm on Friday night, the same reporter sends an email to your husband's communication person, which says that Business Insider has identified 28 additional plagiarism allegations identified from "a thorough review of [your] published work." The email is 12 pages long and has 6,961 words. The first 15 examples identified as plagiarism are all from Wikipedia entries for definitions of words and terms that you used in your dissertation, which include weaving, computer graphics, optimization, heat flux, sustainable design, computer-aided design, and other similar terms. You are not even sure whether or not this is plagiarism. You honestly don't know as you have never seen Wikipedia cited as a source. The other examples that are deemed plagiarism and included in the remaining 13 examples by Business Insider include multiple excerpts of text from software manuals for Rhino 3-D modeling software, from hardware manufacture websites including Stratasys in the description of their 3-D printer used in their website,, which prints some of your designs, from patent applications where the linked reference is unrelated to your dissertation, and may in fact be a reference to your own patent, but you have no time to check. There is no time to run down these references, let alone read the 6,961 word email. Many of the manuals are no longer available and a substantial number of the references the reporter has given you do not appear to be correct. In fact, until this moment when you are writing this post, you never had a chance to read the email in its entirety. At 6:51pm, one hour and 32 minutes from the time stamp on the reporter's email, Business Insider publishes a story entitled: Academic Celebrity Jane Doe plagiarized from WikiPedia, Scholars, a Textbook, and Other Sources Without any Attribution This becomes the number one story in the world with global headlines effectively all of which say: Bill Ackman's Wife Jane Doe Admits to Plagiarism No one reads any further than the headline. Who reads articles these days anyway? It is now the number one trending item on X with 35,600 posts versus number two which is the Princess of Wales with 3,174 posts. Does this seem like fair journalism to you? Does this seem like a fair way to determine whether a professor plagiarized in her dissertation 15 years ago? Does this seem like a fair way to destroy the reputation of one of the most talented and famous designer/scientists in the world, even if she is married to billionaire?

@AlasdairRoberts @PAReview I don’t understand why you wouldn’t join the board given you would be in a leadership position to give voice to the issues raised. Isn’t giving voice what leadership at the governance level is all about? Are there other reasons not mentioned?

@higdonmarathon You just need to run to be a runner. How about, To be a faster runner, you need to increase running efficiency. These five factors have been associated with running efficiency.

To be a runner, you must: 1) eat right, 2) lower your body fat, 3) avoid smoking, 4) sleep well, and 5) exercise regularly. Be a runner!

@Puglaas Why? It’s a colonial staple

So I think I mastered the art of yorkshire pudding … 😋 😋

Contested Nasdaq Board Diversity Rules Take Effect: Explained - Bloomberg Law stocks.apple.com/AEhks6mOhROSdr…

I think this is a very interesting idea! runnersworld.com/news/a46180306…

Super pleased to learn I’ll be running in the 50th Anniversary of the Berlin Marathon in addition to Boston in 2024. Happy trails and holidays and all the best from me in 2024!

This Member Monday panel of Women in Triathlon was one of the most enjoyable experiences for me as a facilitator. If you’ve ever wondered how to get started, what success looks like, listen to these amazing stories youtu.be/y5JrQLRyqT8?si… via @YouTube @SaskTriathlon