Tuesday, December 16, 2008
Plagiarism
Judging by the plethora of new plagiarism-detecting tools available on the Internet, Plagiarism is apparently a growth industry in higher education. Recent reports also suggest that plagiarism and other forms of professional misconduct are serious problems in the worlds of science and publishing.
Are you aware of WMU's policies on academic dishonesty? Do you know how an instructor or Teaching Assistant should act when faced with an act of plagiarism or academic misconduct in a class at WMU? Check out WMU's policies at the web site of the Office of Student Conduct and be prepared to discuss them in class next week.
Do you know of any high profile plagiarism or other forms of research misconduct in the world of science, anthropology, or history? Do the names of David Baltimore, Steven Ambrose, Doris Kearns Goodwin, or Hwang Woo-Suk ring a bell? Check out the famous Korean cloning scandal at Slate.
Finally, what would you think are the chances that one could get away with publishing/plagiarising an entire article from the scientific literature? Read this brief news piece (Plagiarism) to find out how common this practice is in the recent scientific literature.
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Folks, use the YouTube window above to search for and watch a video about Web 2.o entitled "The Machine is Us/ing Us" before class on Thursday night.
ReplyDeleteWow. That was truly an eye-opening video.
ReplyDeleteI remember reading an article in Scientific American or some pop-sci zine like that about Woo-Suk's discovery and actually feeling some serious joy about it. I thought it was so exciting that we were on the forefront a new scientific/medical age. Then it was discovered that he was a dirty liar!!! And if the article Bob referred us to about it is completely true he is also a dirty misogynist! Pressuring his female research assistants to donate their eggs, and then to study them the same day!!! Needless to say I was crushed when he was exposed as a fraud.
ReplyDeleteWow that video is pretty slick. Kind of scary too.
ReplyDelete"I may not have seen all the ethical Issues" Is hardly an excuse for what Woo Suk did.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Tim and Patrick about Woo Suk, I think he probably was aware of the ethical issues but chose to ignore them. Plagarism in general is a major problem, websites like turnitin.com are supposed to be able to aid professors in catching plagarism, but the website might flag a paper you turn in, because it is too similar to another paper you may have written for another class, in this case you are guilty of copying yourself.
ReplyDeleteThe Woo-Suk article did not bring Plagiarism to mind for me. I do not wish to be misinterpreted, I believe that his actions were morally reprehensible from a scientific and personal perspective (namely students being pressured to donate eggs and later perform experiments on their own biological material). Though morally defunct, I did not see his work as plagiaristic. My feelings on the subject reminded me that plagiarism is indeed a moral issue.
ReplyDeleteI also read the Slate piece on the accusations of plagiarism faced by Steven Ambrose. It seems from the information presented that he was guilty of not only the theft of thought, but worse the direct duplication of prose. I do not understand why he felt the need to lift hole sentences and paragraphs from others writings. When writing such monumental works as he has in the past, why risk tarnishing ones own name for seemingly such minimal gain.
I agree with Andy B that the Woo-Suk article did not bring plagiarism to mind for me. It was more like making up data instead of stealing another's data/work. As an aside, what I did find interesting is that it is an ethical issue for women to donate eggs for science if she is not receiving any “benefits.” I think knowing that you are helping science and medicine is a benefit (well, not in Woo-Suk’s case.) What about people who donate blood, etc. Isn’t that the same?
ReplyDeleteI think when it comes to plagiarism in the college/academic sense (at least in undergrad) many students do not know how to properly cite sources which is a problem in itself. Not that some students do not plagiarize on purpose, but many do plagiarize accidentally. I think that is an issue that instructors should take into account when they find that a student may have plagiarized. As for the graduate level, student should know how to properly cite their sources.
I just read the Woo-Suk article and I didn't see any specific plagiarism. I agree with Lisa and Andy that he made up the data, but where did he steal another person's work? I agree with everyone about the disgust over his actions to basically force a researcher to provide eggs. She was put in a situation no researcher ever should. At the same time, living in the real world, you realize that rules are bent and broken everyday. Sometimes these infractions are overlooked if the goal is met. I am not saying the ends justify the means, but had he really produced the results that he claimed would we have looked so harshly upon him?
ReplyDeleteIan I completely agree that video was awesome. The part about it learning was scary and made me think about Will Smith's movie I, Robot. It's scary how technology can learn and evolve. Uh oh, it knows that I like hockey, anime and archaeology! The last part that struck home was the part about privacy. You see it all the time about how photos or comments on Myspace and Facebook cause people to lose, or sometimes not get, their jobs. Employers are checking these sites to see how you conduct yourself outside the workplace. If you place it there it is free game. In fact I think Andy and I were having a conversation about this in Toronto about how professors of schools you are applying to for your PhD can see your profile because one of your friends is linked to them. Therefore, even though you haven't accepted them to see your photos or comments, they can because they are friends with your friends and get the piggyback ride into your world. Not to plagiarize, but I heard a great quote on the radio the other day..."Our world is increasingly becoming smaller each day due to technology and therefore so is our privacy."
ReplyDeleteIt seems to me that the issue of plagiarism is representative of a much larger societal issue within America as a whole. As technology continues to make our lives more efficient, we as the recipients of this benefit become lazier and lazier. Ambrose's situation was obviously not related to his laziness but to his dishonesty. For most cases in academia, however, plagiarism appears to be a reaction to two factors: the constant pressure for us to produce new, groundbreaking results (Woo-Suk- plus a case of extreme moral deficiency) and the increasing level of laziness our society is accustomed to.
ReplyDeleteFirstly, nice comments everyone. I think part of the problem with plagiarism in academia is the fact that a lot of undergrads don't know how to cite journals, books, etc, properly. From being a TA in First American I read papers where people simply wrote down the title of a book in the Works Cited. I had no idea if any of the stuff in the paper was the person's words or the books. In fact 90% ( a rough estimate) of all papers did not have any in text citations at all. In a case like this I wonder if the student is plagiarizing or simply does'nt know the first things about citations? The bottom line for myself is that ignorance is not an excuse for a blatant disregard of citations, of lifting entire sections of a work from someone, or taking someones ideas as your own. I just wonder if undergrad classes should take a day or two maybe to explain plagiarism, rather than simply cite the academic handbook that I doubt most students ever read? Anyway shame on Woo-Suk and Ambrose.
ReplyDeleteWow, I'm very pleased at the level of discussion going on here: great job to all those who have commented, and encouragement to those who haven;t yet begun. The issues that I wanted to discuss here are broader than simply plagiarism, narrowly construed. All manner of dishonesty and breaches of research ethics are fair game for our discussions. Several of you mentioned the sad lack of understanding about how to properly cite papers among many undergraduates. This is a situation that many of us as professors or teaching assistants can actually try to improve, so let's do. One other point raised by one or two of you deals with the pressure of really big, high stakes science. This often seems to be involved in teh big plagiarism or scientific dishonesty cases like the Korean cloning story. When people or labs are competing in really fast-moving fields of science where the payoff to being first may be a Nobel Prize and there is NO payoff for being second, one's ethical standards can sometimes slip a bit. I'm reminded of the background to the discovery of the Double Helix, where Watson and Crick had access to the X-ray crystallography results of Rosalind Franklin and used them to build their model of the structure of DNA. They got Franklin's data from one of her colleagues, not from her and in fact unbeknownst to her. When the Nobel Prize was given out for this work in 1962, three men shared it: Watson, Crick and Franklin's colleague Maurice Wilkins. Franklin had died in 1958 and was thus ineligible to share in the award.
ReplyDelete