Today, The New York Times has an article about students and plagiarism that I could have sworn I’ve read at least a dozen times before, at least in its general gist. As an exercise, before you click through to read the article, grab some paper and a pencil and jot down two or three reasons […]
If you’re not trustworthy, why assume that your study-buddy is?
Especially in student papers, plagiarism is an issue that it seems just won’t go away. However, instructors cannot just give up and permit plagiarism without giving up most of their pedagogical goals and ideals. As tempting a behavior as this may be (at least to some students, if not to all), it is our duty […]
The Colorado Springs Gazette discovered that a summer intern in their newsroom published articles with plagiarized passages. The editor of the paper, Jeff Thomas, deemed this plagiarism a breach of the paper’s trust with the public: [R]eporter Hailey Mac Arthur, a college student doing a summer internship in our newsroom, has been dismissed from The […]
In a post months and months ago, I wrote the following*: I’ve heard vague claims that there are some cultures in which “plagiarism” as defined by U.S. standards is not viewed as an ethical breach at all, and that this may explain some instances of plagiarism among scientists and science students working in the U.S. […]
From time to time I get emails asking for advice dealing with situations that just don’t feel right. Recently, I’ve been asked about the following sort of situation: You’re an undergraduate who has landed an internship in a lab that does research in the field you’re hoping to pursue in graduate school. As so often […]
Not quite a year ago, I wrote a pair of posts about allegations of widespread plagiarism in the engineering college at Ohio University. The allegations were brought by Thomas Matrka, who, while a student in the masters program in mechanical engineering at OU, was appalled to find obvious instances of plagiarism in a number of […]
Do you ever feel like hearing me rattle on instead of just reading it? Here’s your chance! You can listen to the first episode of the ScienceBlogs podcast, in which I speak with Katherine Sharpe about the evils of plagiarism (among other misdeeds) in the world of science.
Even though it’s outside the realm of science, given its relevance to recent discussions here, I just can’t leave this story alone: Via Nanopolitan, the latest on the sad case of Harvard sophomore and author(?) Kaavya Viswanathan, whose situation keeps unravelling. Viswanathan got herself a book contract while still a high school student, and then […]
My students know that plagiarism is bad. You’d think a major wire service would know it, too. But it would seem that maybe the Associated Press doesn’t know that failing to properly cite sources is plagiarism. Or perhaps the AP does know, but doesn’t care. When your business is built on the premise that you […]