# Writing teachers-- para-plagiarism question **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [December 5, 2005, 4:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/writing-teachers-para-plagiarism-question/334192 "2005-12-05T16:38:33Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Helen\_s\_Eidolon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/8edcca/32.png) [@Helen\_s\_Eidolon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Helen_s_Eidolon)\ **Post date:** [December 7, 2005, 3:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/writing-teachers-para-plagiarism-question/334192/21 "2005-12-07T03:18:42Z")
My lord. I referenced at least 40 books in my last paper, many of which I had to get by interlibrary loan. Why in the world would my teacher need to check up on them? I can’t even imagine a reason to do so. It’s not sloppy teaching, it’s just not necessary. ---
**Author:** ![Quartz](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/quartz/32/267_2.png) [@Quartz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Quartz)\ **Post date:** [December 7, 2005, 10:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/writing-teachers-para-plagiarism-question/334192/22 "2005-12-07T10:10:53Z")
> [@Podkayne](#): > > **Quartz** , checking every single reference in every single paper is not remotely feasible. You don’t seem to have the slightest grasp of how difficult and time-consuming that would be. Given that I’ve just suggested an easy way, I’d suggest that it’s you who hasn’t the slightest grasp of how easy it can be. But the bottom line is that **capybara** is being paid to do a job and is not doing it. > [@](#): > > I challenge you to find a single post-secondary education professional who supports your position. Ask any teacher of mathematics, especially one examining a proof. ---
**Author:** ![elfbabe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/b782af/32.png) [@elfbabe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elfbabe)\ **Post date:** [December 7, 2005, 11:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/writing-teachers-para-plagiarism-question/334192/23 "2005-12-07T11:31:54Z")
> [@Quartz](#): > > **capybara** is being paid to do a job and is not doing it. Wow, then no one I’ve ever written a term paper for has been doing their job. Shame, given what **Qadgop** ’s spent on my education… :o Now, granted, I have gotten notes written in my bibliographies asking why I didn’t use such-and-such major source on the topic in cases where the grader was extremely familiar with the issue I was writing about. Or comments about an interesting or obscure source s/he hadn’t known about before. But I don’t think most of their backs would have held up to the weight of all my sources, much less everyone else’s. And I’m not sure if photocopying entire chapters discussing concepts I mentioned would have been fair use. > [@Quartz](#): > > Ask any teacher of mathematics, especially one examining a proof. I expect a math professor to make sure that my proofs are airtight, that one minor misstep hasn’t invalidated the whole thing, and that I haven’t misapplied something that so-and-so’s lemma only proves for certain conditions. And given that a non-negligible amount of mathematics involves very carefully proving things that are completely obvious (mmm, Peano axioms…) , I would be horrified if a math professor looked at my proof and said, “Yes, it looks like the evidence supports this pretty well, your conclusion’s probably right. Full credit!” I have yet to be asked to prove anything in history. Given that ∀ x ∈ US Presidents ∃ y ∈ US Vice Presidents, prove ∃ y such that y is Spiro Agnew… ---
**Author:** ![Quartz](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/quartz/32/267_2.png) [@Quartz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Quartz)\ **Post date:** [December 7, 2005, 11:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/writing-teachers-para-plagiarism-question/334192/24 "2005-12-07T11:38:49Z")
> [@elfbabe](#): > > Wow, then no one I’ve ever written a term paper for has been doing their job. Shame, given what **Qadgop** ’s spent on my education… :o > Now, granted, I have gotten notes written in my bibliographies asking why I didn’t use such-and-such major source on the topic in cases where the grader was extremely familiar with the issue I was writing about. Or comments about an interesting or obscure source s/he hadn’t known about before. That sounds to me like they **have** been checking your cites. > [@](#): > > And I’m not sure if photocopying entire chapters discussing concepts I mentioned would have been fair use. Hmm… I’m sure I used the word ‘page’. ---
**Author:** ![Lsura](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/7993a0/32.png) [@Lsura](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lsura)\ **Post date:** [December 7, 2005, 12:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/writing-teachers-para-plagiarism-question/334192/25 "2005-12-07T12:35:23Z")
> [@capybara](#): > > Student B, on the other hand, is harder to evaluate, as the sources and pages she cited have nothing to do with the written sentence she links the citations to. In fact, one footnote refers to page 215 in a given book and that edition only has 210 pages. So I’m starting to suspect that she did copy from somewhere and then added sham footnotes. It’s also possible that this student wrote the paper herself - but wrote it without sources, and then went to find sources that seemed to fit the topic of her paper. We do have students who come into the library and say “I have to have five sources for this paper I already wrote. Can you help me?”. Luckily, it’s a very small portion of the students, but it does happen. We try to explain that that’s not the point of a research paper, but we also sit them down and explain how to find different types of sources. ---
**Author:** ![elfbabe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/b782af/32.png) [@elfbabe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elfbabe)\ **Post date:** [December 7, 2005, 1:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/writing-teachers-para-plagiarism-question/334192/26 "2005-12-07T13:39:53Z")
> [@Quartz](#): > > That sounds to me like they **have** been checking your cites. If by “checking” you mean “looking at the bibliography for”, yes. If you mean “looking up each reference in”, no. > [@Quartz](#): > > Hmm… I’m sure I used the word ‘page’. You’ve never had the chance to cite a work in a broader context than a little snippet? Oh, you poor dear. I’m so sorry to have brought it up, I had no idea. I do hope you get to someday. ---
**Author:** ![Podkayne](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/edb3f5/32.png) [@Podkayne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Podkayne)\ **Post date:** [December 7, 2005, 3:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/writing-teachers-para-plagiarism-question/334192/27 "2005-12-07T15:45:51Z")
> [@Quartz](#): > > Ask any teacher of mathematics, especially one examining a proof. I have no idea what you mean by this. We’re talking about checking _every citation_ in a _term paper’s_ bibliography, not about checking every line of a proof. To regard the two as equivalent is ridiculous. I repeat the challenge: find me any postsecondary education professional, _an actual person_ not “Oh, just ask anyone . . .”, who says that they check every single reference in their students’ term papers. If this is the way that professors are supposed to do their jobs and those who fail to do so are lazy and doing a half-assed job, then it should be very easy for you to find _one_ of the following: 1. A syllabus for a course or assignment for a paper wherein the professor tells the student that every citation will be checked. 2. A college faculty handbook that explains that professors are expected to check all citations in submitted work. 3. A discussion among educational professionals about checking all the references, or a professor’s personal webpage where they discuss or advocate this practice, or an article in a publication (_The Chronicle of Higher Education_, say) that mentions that this is commonplace practice. 4. A case where an instructor was censured for failing to do this. ---
**Author:** ![capybara](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/capybara/32/202_2.png) [@capybara](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/capybara)\ **Post date:** [December 7, 2005, 4:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/writing-teachers-para-plagiarism-question/334192/28 "2005-12-07T16:19:38Z")
Quote: Originally Posted by elfbabe Now, granted, I have gotten notes written in my bibliographies asking why I didn’t use such-and-such major source on the topic in cases where the grader was extremely familiar with the issue I was writing about. Or comments about an interesting or obscure source s/he hadn’t known about before. Then quote Quartz: That sounds to me like they have been checking your cites. Quartz, there is an enormous difference between this (which of course we all freaking do-- did I say that I don’t even look at the notes or the bibliography? Reading comprehension trouble or bad faith?) and looking up every page cited and finding a snippet of information on that page. Or are you in too defensive of a mode now to even recognize and acknowledge that point? Back down. Also, looking through the 10 lines of a proof, where everything is there and really just needs thoughtful evaluation without external sources, isn’t even close to analogous. And in my . . . many years of college work in the humanities I NEVER had a professor ask us to turn in photocopies and would have been offended if they did. ---
**Author:** ![capybara](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/capybara/32/202_2.png) [@capybara](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/capybara)\ **Post date:** [December 7, 2005, 4:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/writing-teachers-para-plagiarism-question/334192/29 "2005-12-07T16:42:09Z")
Also, so we have some hard numbers here, I’ve pulled the top 5 papers off my stack-- 10 page papers. Let’s say we use this photocopy method to save time. Paper 1: 46 notes Paper 2: 74 notes Paper 3: 43 notes Paper 4: 33 notes Paper 5: 50 notes. That makes… oh, an average of 50 notes per paper. I have 65 papers. That’s 3250 notes among them. Now, judging by yesterday morning, if I have the cited page with me (that’s, by the yay, 650 pages of text, with 3250 pages of xeroxes, so I’ve taken a forklift to the final day of classes, apparently it takes about 2 minutes (if they haven’t plagiarised so finding the info is easier and they aren’t using Clifford the Big Red Dog as a source) to locate a snippet of information on a tightly printed page of the sort that we adults read. So 2 minutes. . . that looks like 108 hours of checking footnotes, without the actual reading of the papers (I do hope you’re checking my work here). Now, we are expected to have these papers marked within 2 weeks tops, but my students would like them at the final exam, which is, in this case, 8 days after the final class meeting. As we see, quite feasible with this useful time-saving method. ---
**Author:** ![Helen\_s\_Eidolon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/8edcca/32.png) [@Helen\_s\_Eidolon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Helen_s_Eidolon)\ **Post date:** [December 7, 2005, 4:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/writing-teachers-para-plagiarism-question/334192/30 "2005-12-07T16:57:31Z")
Not to mention that often it isn’t a specific fact that’s cited but an entire argument, should we be attaching books to our papers as well? ---
**Author:** ![threemae](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/5f9b8f/32.png) [@threemae](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/threemae)\ **Post date:** [December 7, 2005, 5:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/writing-teachers-para-plagiarism-question/334192/31 "2005-12-07T17:27:29Z")
Just to clarify my point here, I’m not suggesting that educators should check all cites, only in situations where the authorship is uncertain. **capybara** has done this and it has proved useful, exonerating at least one student and providing further insight for the other student. I just didn’t understand why **capybara** had put out the OP without checking the citations first, it seems like the first place to go to establish authorship. A bunch of strangers on the SDMB with no idea of the content of the papers, familiarity with the topic, or knowledge of the citations should not be the first line of judgement. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Weird\_One](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/7bcc69/32.png) [@The\_Weird\_One](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Weird_One)\ **Post date:** [December 7, 2005, 6:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/writing-teachers-para-plagiarism-question/334192/32 "2005-12-07T18:18:28Z")
I’d be pissed if my professors had looked up every cite I used; it’s my ideas and arguments and how well I’ve communicated them that they were evaluating, not each individual note and citation. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Weird\_One](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/7bcc69/32.png) [@The\_Weird\_One](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Weird_One)\ **Post date:** [December 7, 2005, 6:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/writing-teachers-para-plagiarism-question/334192/33 "2005-12-07T18:23:32Z")
Speaking of “how well I’ve communicated[sup][1](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=6874243&postcount=32)[/sup],” that should read “I would have been,” not “I’d be.” ---
**Author:** ![nivlac](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/3bc359/32.png) [@nivlac](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nivlac)\ **Post date:** [December 7, 2005, 6:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/writing-teachers-para-plagiarism-question/334192/34 "2005-12-07T18:42:17Z")
> [@Quartz](#): > > Ask any teacher of mathematics, especially one examining a proof. “Any” teacher of mathematics? Then I qualify. I really don’t think you can compare checking a mathematical proof with checking every citation in a research paper. I read a lot of proofs and other math stuff, and it’s not necessary to check every step to get a feel if a proof is correct. This applies to math instruction. Now if a proof is to be published, then you do have to check all the details for holes. But that’s also true for any manuscript, mathematical or not. ---
**Author:** ![Quartz](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/quartz/32/267_2.png) [@Quartz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Quartz)\ **Post date:** [December 7, 2005, 6:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/writing-teachers-para-plagiarism-question/334192/35 "2005-12-07T18:54:46Z")
> [@capybara](#): > > Quartz, there is an enormous difference between this (which of course we all freaking do-- did I say that I don’t even look at the notes or the bibliography? Reading comprehension trouble or bad faith?) and looking up every page cited and finding a snippet of information on that page. Or are you in too defensive of a mode now to even recognize and acknowledge that point? Back down. Also, looking through the 10 lines of a proof, where everything is there and really just needs thoughtful evaluation without external sources, isn’t even close to analogous. I’m sorry, but if you’re not checking citations, then a student might be pulling a fast one and writing baloney and you’d give it good marks. And then there’s selective quotation, as used so often by politicians and publicists: you’re not checking against that. When you wrote your doctoral thesis, every single citation was checked by every referee, wasn’t it? IMO you’re just not doing a proper job. ---
**Author:** ![ENugent](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/4af34b/32.png) [@ENugent](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ENugent)\ **Post date:** [December 7, 2005, 7:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/writing-teachers-para-plagiarism-question/334192/36 "2005-12-07T19:26:00Z")
> [@Quartz](#): > > When you wrote your doctoral thesis, every single citation was checked by every referee, wasn’t it? No. We discovered an erroneous citation three years after I graduated, when my advisor and I finally got around to publishing the work, but even that one was caught by my advisor, not by the editor. My dissertation had 79 references, so it wouldn’t even have been that onerous compared to many. And in case you’re going to poke fun at the institution that granted my degree for being a cut-rate operation, I graduated from MIT. ---
**Author:** ![Podkayne](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/edb3f5/32.png) [@Podkayne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Podkayne)\ **Post date:** [December 7, 2005, 7:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/writing-teachers-para-plagiarism-question/334192/37 "2005-12-07T19:54:02Z")
> [@Quarz](#): > > I’m sorry, but if you’re not checking citations, then a student might be pulling a fast one and writing baloney and you’d give it good marks. It’s usually not hard to tell when a student is doing this. If things look fishy, then you check up carefully on the references, as **capybara** did. Instructors also spot-check references. But checking every single reference 1) could not be done in a timely manner and 2) would be a colassal waste of time, as the vast majority of students _are_ honest, and those who are not are typically not hard to detect. > [@Quartz](#): > > IMO you’re just not doing a proper job. Well, you’re entitled to your opinion, I suppose, but I hope that you recognize that it is not an _informed_ opinion, and it is shared by few, if any, professors, administrators and students. (Still waiting for you to produce _any_ educators who agree with you, BTW.) ---
**Author:** ![Helen\_s\_Eidolon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/8edcca/32.png) [@Helen\_s\_Eidolon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Helen_s_Eidolon)\ **Post date:** [December 7, 2005, 7:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/writing-teachers-para-plagiarism-question/334192/38 "2005-12-07T19:57:05Z")
> [@Quartz](#): > > I’m sorry, but if you’re not checking citations, then a student might be pulling a fast one and writing baloney and you’d give it good marks. And then there’s selective quotation, as used so often by politicians and publicists: you’re not checking against that… If a paper is baloney, it’s baloney, even if they insert cites. If a person has not read and incorporated research, it’s going to be obvious. The reason for citation is not to enforce honesty. ---
**Author:** ![capybara](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/capybara/32/202_2.png) [@capybara](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/capybara)\ **Post date:** [December 7, 2005, 9:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/writing-teachers-para-plagiarism-question/334192/39 "2005-12-07T21:05:48Z")
Threemae, I was asking for thoughts from those with informed opinions before looking up the works in question because I was miles away from the library but right next to my computer and it was what I thought was an interesting question and I wanted to consider the issue in full. To quote myself, “So “paraphrasing” in the very most generous use of the word, and citing the sources, but still not really their own writing or entirely intellectually honest. What do we call this? \*\*I’ll need to go to the library to verify that this is what is happening. \*\* What would you do?” I apologize deeply for my whateveritwas. I have papers to read. ---
**Author:** ![Harriet\_the\_Spry](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/e56c9b/32.png) [@Harriet\_the\_Spry](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Harriet_the_Spry)\ **Post date:** [December 8, 2005, 3:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/writing-teachers-para-plagiarism-question/334192/40 "2005-12-08T03:02:51Z")
I have had professors require the copies from cited works, but IIRC that was when I was first learning to write research papers and was done for instructional purposes. These were cases where the process of writing research papers was the focus, not the actual research itself. It was a useful exercise, but never established as any kind of general expectation of how all research papers would be reviewed. When you’re writing within a discipline, the professor generally has a sense of the major sources within that that discipline and can judge the appropriateness of your cites without looking at specific pages/ articles. I would expect a good professor to review citations, determine the vast majority to be credible based on knowledge of the field, and check any specific ones that are “out there.” Neither my time nor the professors time would be well-spent looking at the source material behind every single citation. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/writing-teachers-para-plagiarism-question/334192.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/writing-teachers-para-plagiarism-question/334192.md?page=3)