Janet D. Stemwedel (whose nom de blog is Dr. Free-Ride) is an associate professor of philosophy at San Jose State University. Before becoming a philosopher, she earned a Ph.D. in physical chemistry. Email her at dr.freeride@gmail.com.
Disclaimer: Plagiarism is bad. A quick search for "plagiarism" on this blog will demonstrate that I've taken a clear stand against plagiarism.
That said, if one were, hypothetically, planning a little online-copy-and-paste plagiarism, and if one's instructor has earned a Ph.D., in Philosophy, from Stanford, one might reconsider using the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy as the source of several uncited sentences.
There is a better-than-average chance that the instructor is familiar with SEP -- indeed, even with the specific entry you (hypothetically) are tempted to plunder.
Even if she's not, she's at least as handy with a Google search as you are.
Comments
No volume of "d'oh" is enough for this one.
Posted by: JM | October 2, 2006 7:24 PM
Oh, good, a fresh anecdote just in time for the plagiarism workshop that I am holding this Wednesday's as part of my university's annual Honors and Ethics Week! As I tell my students, "Anything you can Google, I can Google faster."
Posted by: Elf Eye | October 2, 2006 8:27 PM
I'm with JM on this one, this is obviously NOT a student who has any intention of remaining in your class, right?
Posted by: Kim | October 2, 2006 8:28 PM
And if you are going to cut and paste from a paper commenting on the foundations of general relativity, make sure you don't repeatedly misspell "physics."
Posted by: SteveG | October 2, 2006 8:59 PM
At a conference once, another prof told a story: her student had written a paper, extensively plagiarizing a book. Alas, the student hadn't realized that her professor was also the author of said book. Needless to say, the professor realized this.
Posted by: Bardiac | October 2, 2006 9:42 PM
Here we go again, it is plagiarism season!
I do a lot of work educating teachers about how to use Google to chase plagiarists.
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If your German is any good, you can check out my free E-Learning unit about plagiarism, including 10 papers that you can see if you can find the sources for to hone your plagiarism search skills.
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We have to spend time in the FIRST semester educating students about how to write scientifically. Yes, Wikipedia is a great point to start research. No, it is not a source for quoting. Yes, you can quote books and even the Internet - just use "....". No, teachers are not stupid, really. Even if we seem to be at least a hundred years old.
We have to watch out for the smart-alecks in Germany who take a text in English, shove it through Babelfish and submit the mess (usually without reading it first) to us. Sigh.
But I guess this is what education is all about.
Happy hunting!
Posted by: WiseWoman | October 3, 2006 9:05 AM
Um, right, the URL: http://plagiat.fhtw-berlin.de/ff for the E-Learning unit. Sorry.
Posted by: WiseWoman | October 3, 2006 11:31 AM
My wife's cousin is a lecturer and department co-chair in electrical engineering at a prestigious university in the UK. I was fascinated to hear the electronic lengths to which his department has gone to dectect plagiarism in term papers and even in MS theses. They have a program that can even detect when a source was used by copying then subsituting nouns or verbs for which adequate synonyms could be found. This was not some 2-year associates program for desperate job seekers. Maybe the market in education has changed [I love your essay on "what is a college education for"] and even 6 years of expensive education is primarily thought of as "training" by a majority of students. Either way, a disappointing number approaching 25% of the students get marked down for some extent and fashion of using un-cited material.
So, you see your posts on plagiarism and on the purpose of a college education are not unrelated. Well, ok, at least now I see it too.
Posted by: greensmile | October 4, 2006 2:34 PM