Don't even try to tell us it's not plagiarized!

[D_Odds]

A question for the professors - to what extent do you ding a student for plagiarism? I ask because back when I was in college (pre-internet and when most students, self-included, still used typewriters for papers), I wrote a 8 - 10 page paper with copious endnotes and extensive bibliography. Turns out when transcribing and typing (last minute, of course - I was a college student) I missed endnotes on one or two quotes. I wasn’t trying to plagiarize or cheat - it was an honest error. I got the speech about how I was getting a favor by not being thrown out of college and that I would have to take the course (or a similar course that fit my requirements and schedule) again.

Today, if I missed a footnote, it is easy enough to adjust in any word processing program. Then, it would have meant edits on every page with a note, carefully trying to line up the paper, and fully re-typing the endnotes page. Not that I knew I had made the error; it was my error due to sloppy note taking on index cards and rushing to finish. But I do feel that the professor went overboard in this situation.

[Spoons]

@even_sven

For example, on a final exam where I asked my Chinese English students to define vocab words and use them in a sentence, I was surprised that they used the exact sentences from the book- they had apparently memorized the entire thing! Colleagues assured me that this is normal and expected. Even essay questions are usually about reproducing chunks of the textbook.

I also found this with Chinese students when I was a TA, years ago. They were mainly from Hong Kong, and had come to Canada to study. Anyway, it was a little odd, to say the least, when their exam papers were marked–they had indeed memorized and regurgitated entire chunks of the textbook. It was a proctored exam, with students allowed nothing at their desks except a pen while proctors walked up and down the aisles, so we knew that there had been no copying or cribbing from materials smuggled in. Besides, the textbook excerpts were much too long to be scrawled on an arm hidden in a sleeve, or on the back of a watch.

They got a passing grade for their “answers,” since they were technically correct. But they did not receive as high a grade as students who had demonstrated knowledge, and analysis, and non-textbook examples, and application of the course material in their answers to the questions. The questions were essay questions, and by the way they were written, required all of the above in order to get full marks.

What made things truly bizarre (at least from our point of view) was when these Chinese students complained about their grades. Hadn’t they answered the question? How could we not give them perfect grades when they were quoting the textbook? If you could memorize and quote back the course authority, what else could possibly be necessary? Their attitude basically indicated that they considered their classmates (who had done much better) somewhat subpar and deserving of lower grades, simply because they didn’t memorize textbook chunks.

[Angel_of_Doubt]

Well, in our case, the class gets a stern warning and horror stories about what happened last semester (former straight-A students getting caught). I believe there’s also a statement in the syllabus, but that makes about as much difference as writing it in smoke signals as far as the students are concerned. Officially they fail the class if they plagiarize, but the instructor, just as in this case, makes a judgment call.
The student’s now claiming that he meant to “cite but forgot the quotes”. It’ll be interesting when classes start again and we’re back face-to-face.

[mhendo]

@D_Odds

to what extent do you ding a student for plagiarism?

Every situation has to be decided on its own merits.

If it’s just one or two overlooked citations, i generally make a note to the student to be more careful with his/her referencing in the future. If it’s more, and suggests a pattern of laziness or sloppiness, i will make a note of it, and will also start dinging the grade of the paper. I will also, in most of these cases, return the paper and tell the student to get the citations right and resubmit.

Note that, in all above cases, i need to be reasonably sure that any neglected citations are inadvertent, the result of either rushing or simply overlooking a footnote or two. If i suspect any intention to deceive, it’s a different story. My aim in penalizing plagiarists is to penalize cheaters, not to ruin the academic careers of students who are trying to do it right. A sloppy mistake, one or two poorly-cited quotations, an accidental failure to place quotation marks around a quotation—these are things that should be corrected, but that don’t generally warrant any actual punishment beyond fixing the error and dinging the grade on the paper a bit.

Every act of plagiarism where i’ve actually punished the student by failing them on the paper and/or the course, and reporting them to the Dean, has been so egregious that there was no room for doubt about whether or not it was simply a mistake. I’m talking about whole paragraphs copied and pasted from websites or from books, with no attribution.

I had one case last semester where basically every sentence of a 4-page paper on Alexander Hamilton was lifted verbatim from three different websites. I downloaded the pages of the website and converted them to PDFs, and marked the relevant paragraphs using the highlighting feature. I then did the same on the student’s paper. I used a different color highlighting for each website, and used those same colors on the student paper, so you could see at a glance how much had been lifted from each website. Then, after confronting the student and letting him know he would receive an F on the course, i passed the documents, along with an Academic Dishonesty form, along to the Dean.

Where i was teaching last semester, i think that, in addition to failing my course, the first Academic Dishonesty violation gets the student a talking-to from the Dean. they are also placed on some sort of academic probation, and told that a second violation will result in expulsion from the university.

Working out whether a student has been sloppy, or has been trying to deceive you, is usually reasonably easy. Context is important. If the student has 25 other accurate footnotes, and has clearly read and understood the source material, then it’s pretty clear that one or two missing references were probably inadvertent, and deserve nothing more than a “Be more careful next time.”

The most difficult cases to adjudicate, and cases where it’s most difficult to explain to students what they’ve done wrong, are instances where the student essentially lifts their argument straight from the source, but puts it in their own words. No matter how much you explain plagiarism, there are some students who simply can’t get their head around the notion that it is possible to plagiarize even if you don’t copy the sentences verbatim. Taking other people’s ideas without attribution is still academic dishonesty, and it’s a difficult thing to explain sometimes. There are also genuine grey areas between using someone else’s argument to help make your own argument, on the one hand, and simply lifting someone else’s argument and presenting it as your own, on the other.

[D_Odds]

Thanks, mhendo. My case was back in 1986 or 1987, when I would have been a Jr. or a Sr., and my memory might be a little fuzzy. I remember talking to the Prof and admitting something like, “Oh I’m sorry, I forgot to put a note on that one” which was treated with a big “Gotcha!” I had at least a dozen endnotes (much quicker to do than footnotes); I’m pretty sure the sources were cited in other endnotes and were definitely in the bibliography. As I noted, it was sloppy work. There was never any accusation of plagiarism from any other class. I guess my failure to love Russian literature to the same extent as the teacher, and not seeing all the merits she did when discussing in class, came back to bite me in the ass. Didn’t get the talk with the Dean though, so I guess she was being nice to me.

[Sampiro]

@Really_Not_All_That_Bright

I’ve never heard of turnitin.com before. I think I’m going to submit my old papers when I get home and see if it thinks they’re plagiarized.

You can’t. It’s a subscription service.
A lot of plagiarism really is unintentional- unintentional possibly being synonymous with stupidity. Many students honestly don’t know that they have to cite these things if they’re quoting more than a few words from another source. My favorite response to this was when a friend who teaches psychology called a student out on this and the student- a not particularly bright freshman- said “But you said you wanted us to use other sources.” The professor told her “Yes, but you’re supposed to cite them, and the majority of the paper- the conclusion and most of the body- are supposed to be your own original thoughts and ideas on the topic.” Student: “But I don’t know anything and don’t have any ideas about the topic, that’s why I’m using other sources!”

There are also the students who will turn in one paper that reads to the effect of

George Washington was a president and before that he fought in the Revlutionarical War and he had a big house near Washington D.C. which was a city named for him but it wasn’t there yet. Juluis Casear lived in Rome and was a general and was like a president sort of but they called it consul. Neither man had any sons but if they had then maybe they would had taken it when people said they should think about being kings. Both had adopted kids and relatives they liked but neither one had a real son.

Then they’ll turn in a paper later that reads

Latter day genealogists have established conclusively that George Washington, through his father Augustine, descended from King Edward III of England and consequently from all of his own royal forebears. Today this fact may seem so much inconsequential genealogical trivia but would quite probably have been quite influential to Washington himself, just as Julius Caesar often mentioned in speeches and writings and even casual conversation his family’s supposed descent from Aeneas and through Aneas from the goddess Venus. Though like his fellow general and statesman Julius Caesar, who when thrice offered the crown imperial thrice declined in the name of the Republic, Washington himself renounced the notions that he should be a king at the Constitutional conferences. It is interesting to speculate with both leaders whether their Cincinattus-like devotion to Republican ideals and their antipathy towards the tyranny of Tarquin or George III respectively may have derived less from their lack of ambition than their lack of sons.
Caesar’s latter day favoritism for his grandnephew Octavian reflects a definite desire for familial furtherance but the fact Octavian was a minor while Caesarion, his alleged son with Cleopatra, while of impeccable bloodline, was of little use as heir due to being both younger than Octavius and of dubious paternity and legitimacy. For Washington his heirs presumptive included his wife’s orphaned grandson George Washington Parke Custis and his nephew Bushrod Washington, both of whom seem to have been dear to him but in neither case was their’s the bonding one would associate with a biological son and with neither was there much notion of them ruling a nascent nation due to their youth.

and they have no idea how the professor got wise to the fact it was plagiarism.

The worst cases- and believe it or not I’ve known of several- are when the students not only cut and paste chunks from Wiki or some other website but don’t even remove the hyperlinks or superscripts!

[Kelby]

How about when the plagiarism is encouraged by the author?

Mr BIL, who is a teacher, took a distance learning course from a college in order to earn credit that would lead to advancement on the salary matrix. He took the class and passed it.

Later, several other teachers took the same course. He found out about it, and offered to give them all of his work to submit to the college.

They did take it and all were given failing grades for cheating. I expect there was no return of course fees either. D’oh!

BTW, I took the same course. He gave me his materials and I looked over his writing. I thought it was shit.

[pravnik]

@Bricker

A now five-year-old thread on an interesting case.

Unfortunately, this isn’t true. I made a doody. They do this because they get away with it more often than not.

[Cat_Fight]

Future New Yorker Cartoon, featuring an angry teacher and sassy young student: ‘I wasn’t plagiarizing, I was reblogging their work into my essay.’

[Pleonast]

@even_sven

If they are Chinese, culture may indeed play a part of it. China has an academic tradition going back thousands of years that is based on imitating the masters. The old imperial exams were basically about memorizing and reproducing huge chunks of text. To some degree this model lives on, and students are rarely asked to produce the kind of research and analysis that we consider to be the main point of a university education. Furthermore, it is considered better to turn in something perfect that might not be entirely original than to turn in something that may be flawed.

Sometimes I wonder why plagiarism is so taboo in our culture.

Collectively, we have decided that being original is more important than being correct. (I’m assuming there is a “correct” answer. In the arts, there may not be, so original would be more important.) In the sciences, there often is a single correct answer. That means only one person gets to be original for any particular fact or theory. Why does it really matter who that person is? I would think that the correct fact or theory is itself the important thing.

The taboo against plagiarism seems to put stroking egos above finding the truth. Maybe that’s the most efficient way for humans to do science, but it is not clear to me that it must be so. It’s be nice to see studies comparing attributed science communities to non-attributed ones.

Note that I’m not saying those who plagiarize shouldn’t be punished. That’s our system now and there’s no excuse for doing it.

[Gary_Robson]

@Pleonast

Sometimes I wonder why plagiarism is so taboo in our culture.

In writing, I think it’s because you’re taking credit for someone else’s work. When I was teaching computer science, I came down especially hard on plagiarism, because it that context it means turning in someone else’s code, which does not demonstrate the student’s ability to do the work themselves.

@Sampiro

The worst cases- and believe it or not I’ve known of several- are when the students not only cut and paste chunks from Wiki or some other website but don’t even remove the hyperlinks or superscripts!

The most egregious case I encountered–which I’ve posted about here before–was a mediocre student who turned in an absolutely awesome programming assignment. I pulled out a few key lines and Googled them. Lo and behold, he had lifted the program intact, leaving in all of the original comments. The only line he removed was a copyright notice. Removing that line was adequate evidence that he knew he was breaking the rules.

[Sampiro]

@Pleonast

Sometimes The taboo against plagiarism seems to put stroking egos above finding the truth.

I think it puts proving you can defend an opinion by finding and formulating pieces of quality information to support it over proving you can cut and paste.

[YogSothoth]

@Kyla

If this were America, I would have given her a 0, but that shit doesn’t fly in Bulgaria (I tried this once and got overruled), so I gave her the 4. The next time I saw her, she asked me why she’d gotten the 4. She’d made the poster, hadn’t she?

Can you explain? Does the Bulgarian government not care if the students are cheating and expect everyone to have at least a passing grade?

[bengangmo]

@Pleonast

Sometimes I wonder why plagiarism is so taboo in our culture.

Collectively, we have decided that being original is more important than being correct. (I’m assuming there is a “correct” answer. In the arts, there may not be, so original would be more important.) In the sciences, there often is a single correct answer. That means only one person gets to be original for any particular fact or theory. Why does it really matter who that person is? I would think that the correct fact or theory is itself the important thing.

The taboo against plagiarism seems to put stroking egos above finding the truth. Maybe that’s the most efficient way for humans to do science, but it is not clear to me that it must be so. It’s be nice to see studies comparing attributed science communities to non-attributed ones.

Note that I’m not saying those who plagiarize shouldn’t be punished. That’s our system now and there’s no excuse for doing it.

I could be going out on a limb here, but when I went to college (Uni), I always understood that the process was more important than the result. The basic assumption being that once you learned the process “properly” you would end up with the correct response.

Once in “the workplace” quite naturally it is the correct answer that matters though.

By plagiarising all the student is learning is where to get an answer from, not how to go about generating the answer…and I don’t believe I have to even suggest such a post as this on The Straight Dope - what is supposed to be one of the most intelligent message boards on the web.

[YogSothoth]

@even_sven

If they are Chinese, culture may indeed play a part of it. China has an academic tradition going back thousands of years that is based on imitating the masters. The old imperial exams were basically about memorizing and reproducing huge chunks of text. To some degree this model lives on, and students are rarely asked to produce the kind of research and analysis that we consider to be the main point of a university education. Furthermore, it is considered better to turn in something perfect that might not be entirely original than to turn in something that may be flawed. Finally, the idea of an honor code doesn’t really grok- most people would consider it stupid not to do something that would get you ahead.

For example, on a final exam where I asked my Chinese English students to define vocab words and use them in a sentence, I was surprised that they used the exact sentences from the book- they had apparently memorized the entire thing! Colleagues assured me that this is normal and expected. Even essay questions are usually about reproducing chunks of the textbook.

So they don’t really get why we get so worked up about plagiarism- in China, it’s kind of considered a useful technique. Indeed, I’ve heard my students report that university professors actively teach them how to plagiarize more effectively. It’s considered just another tool in the academic tool chest.

Makes you crazy, huh? I had an essay writing assignment here where I told my students outright “If you plagiarize, you will fail. If you write you own thing- anything no matter what it is, you will get full points” and fully half of them still plagiarized!

In their defense, Chinese is really hard. Even university students sometimes forget simple words.

From the cite:

I was once at a luncheon with three Ph.D. students in the Chinese Department at Peking University, all native Chinese (one from Hong Kong). I happened to have a cold that day, and was trying to write a brief note to a friend canceling an appointment that day. I found that I couldn’t remember how to write the character 嚔, as in da penti 打喷嚔 “to sneeze”. I asked my three friends how to write the character, and to my surprise, all three of them simply shrugged in sheepish embarrassment. Not one of them could correctly produce the character. Now, Peking University is usually considered the “Harvard of China”. Can you imagine three Ph.D. students in English at Harvard forgetting how to write the English word “sneeze”?? Yet this state of affairs is by no means uncommon in China.

[Frylock]

@D_Odds

Then, it would have meant edits on every page with a note, carefully trying to line up the paper, and fully re-typing the endnotes page.

Jesus Christ. How did people live back then?

[phouka]

Many students made a decent living typing up papers for others. It’s a gift.

[Blake]

@D_Odds

Today, if I missed a footnote, it is easy enough to adjust in any word processing program. Then, it would have meant edits on every page with a note, carefully trying to line up the paper, and fully re-typing the endnotes page…

At every institution I know of and in all workplaces, drafts could be simply amended by adding a printer’s mark indicating that that missing footnote could be found in the addendum. Takes all of 20 minutes to do.

I can’t believe that a college would have such ludicrously strict standards for a paper that was never going to be bound. For the final draft bound theses, sure it all needed to be perfect, but for a basic paper? Did you actually ask if you needed to go to that much trouble, or did you just assume?

@Pleonast

Sometimes I wonder why plagiarism is so taboo in our culture.

It’s taboo because:

A) You are making money off someone else’s intellectual property, which is rightly a crime, and
B) Because plagiarising does not demonstrate any knowledge, skill or understanding. If plagiarism were acceptable, why couldn’t any 10 year old pass any course at an ivy league school? And if they could, then what is the value of the course?

Collectively, we have decided that being original is more important than being correct.

No, we’ve decided that the purpose of asssement items like papers and exams is to demonstrate that the student has understood the material, and that they have the ability to communicate at the same standard they will be expected to achieve in the outside world, where there will be no sources for plagiarism

If work is plagiarised then the student fails to demonstrate either of those, and thus they do not meet the assessment criteria.

In the sciences, there often is a single correct answer. That means only one person gets to be original for any particular fact or theory. Why does it really matter who that person is? I would think that the correct fact or theory is itself the important thing.

What you don;t seem to understand is that if you are doing science then you are, by definition, uncovering facts that nobody else has ever uncovered. The only person who can be right is you. So how can plagiarism possibly be useful?

The taboo against plagiarism seems to put stroking egos above finding the truth. Maybe that’s the most efficient way for humans to do science, but it is not clear to me that it must be so.

What alternative do you suggest?

Allowing people to graduate with degrees in biochemistry when they have no understanding of biochemistry, but a photographic memory and a large library?

Allowing people to work in biochemistry when they have no ability at all to communicate novel concepts?

Does that really seem workable to you?

[pseudotriton_ruber_ruber]

First day of my freshman writing classes, I give them a mandatory (credit-bearing, open-book) syllabus quiz, focusing specifically on the large section on plagiarism in my syllabus. If they don’t answer any question correctly, I make them write a short essay containing the correct answer according to my syllabus. Thus, before the course even begins, I have in writing from each student clear evidence that they have read the sections of the syllabus explaining what plagiarism is, in detail, the penalties, the need to document sources, and have understood it perfectly, making it kinda difficult to later trot out the old “But I didn’t know…” defense.

[zut]

@Pleonast

Sometimes I wonder why plagiarism is so taboo in our culture.

Collectively, we have decided that being original is more important than being correct. (I’m assuming there is a “correct” answer. In the arts, there may not be, so original would be more important.) In the sciences, there often is a single correct answer. That means only one person gets to be original for any particular fact or theory. Why does it really matter who that person is? I would think that the correct fact or theory is itself the important thing.

Are you talking about plagiarism in the same way everyone else is? No one’s claiming that using fundamental scientific facts without attribution is plagiarism. If I say, “the relationship between the sides and hypotenuse of a right triangle is a[sup]2[/sup] + b[sup]2[/sup] = c[sup]2[/sup]” without crediting Pythagorus, that’s not plagiarism.

What is plagiarism is when the geometry teacher assigns a homework set of twenty problems on the Pythagorean Theorem, and I copy your work and hand it in as my own. Do you honestly wonder why copying someone else’s homework is so taboo in our culture? Is it really that unclear?