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.
More like this
This time around, we're talking to Janet D. Stemwedel of Adventures in Ethics and Science.
What's your name?
Janet D. Stemwedel. But you can call me Dr. Free-Ride, since that's the pseudonym I used when I launched my blog. (It came from a discussion with my ethics in science class about whether…
Over at Sciencewomen, a reader, who is considering a Ph.D. program, asks:
I have a Masters in Biology (from a 5 year BS/MS program) and for the past 4 years I've been working as a lab manager/technician. I have my own research project(s) in addition to keeping track of ordering/equipment…
[May 26th: Pulled to the top to update with the Nature editorial which, as well as noting the paper being pulled, also notes the mysteriously dilatory George Mason University investigation.
June 3rd: And pulled again, since Science have a piece on the actual retraction, and again note the GMU lack…
Mark Trodden gave a nice outline of the tenure process over at Cosmic Variance, laying out the general criteria used by most colleges and universities:
The typical criteria in physics are:
Excellence in research, as demonstrated through peer-reviewed publications and (by far the most important…
No volume of "d'oh" is enough for this one.
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."
I'm with JM on this one, this is obviously NOT a student who has any intention of remaining in your class, right?
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."
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.
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!
Um, right, the URL: http://plagiat.fhtw-berlin.de/ff for the E-Learning unit. Sorry.
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.