Electronic Plagiarism Seminar

IN THE NEWS

The US District Court in Virginia has ruled that iParadigms is not violating copyright law by storing digital copies of student papers in Turnitin.com. The case will be appealed. (Chronicle of Higher Education, 45.30 (4 April 2008) and elsewhere)

Graduate business students cheat more than their non-business peers. This is the finding of the most recent research done by Donald McCabe, and published in the Academy of Management Learning & Education 5.3 (2006): 294-305.

Southern Illinois University president Glenn Poshard has been accused of including portions of other works in his 1984 dissertation, without credit. Article, complete with the comparison, can be found at the Daily Egyptian, 30 August 2007.

Four high school students in VA and AZ have sued iParadigms (Turnitin.com's parent company) for copyright infringement, since Turnitin keeps the student papers in a database. (Education Week 26.36 (09 May 2007) and others) {see above for update}

Ohio University's engineering program has been reviewing theses written for its masters program since 2005, and revoked one degree, so far. Widely reported in the media, including the Chronicle of Higher Education.

Plagiarism in Wikipedia? Recently Stephen Francoeur discovered that large sections of his text on his Digital Reference web site had been lifted and contributed anonymously to Wikipedia, without attribution. For his view on the subject, please go to http://www.teachinglibrarian.org/weblog/2005/04/plagiarism-is-sincerest-form-of.html . The Wikipedia article can be seen at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_reference_services and by clicking on the Discussion tab at the top, you will be directed to Stephen's page. (Stephen has kindly granted me permission to add this topic to this web site.)

Newsweek published an article by Nicole Kristal on her role as "tutor." In reality she was writing papers for her clients. The article ("Tutoring" rich kids cost me my dreams.) can be found in Newsweek 145(15) 4/11/2005: 19. Letters to the editor about the article can be found in the 4/25/2005 issue.

The Chronicle of Higher Education, 17 December 2004, has an extensive special report on professors who plagiarize. "More widespread than you might think." Professional associations, academic institutions, and book and journal publishers don't want to hear about it.

Michael Gunn, an undergraduate student at the University of Kent at Canterbury, will not graduate shortly because much of his work as an undergraduate has been found to have been plagiarized. He has now sued the University for negligence. For the BBC story, please go to http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/education/3753065.stm (still available 6/8/2004). He freely admits to plagiarising, but is suing because he feels they should have stopped him sooner.

The Durham, NC Herald Sun reported in May 2004 that a local school board chairman plagiarized his speech at a graduation ceremony from Donna Shalala. He got the speech off the Internet, and thought it was a "generic speech" so didn't attribute it (let's review the meaning of plagiarism, okay?). Several versions and articles can be found in Lexis Nexis Academic Universe.

Two seventh-grade students in Syracuse, NY, plagiarized poems that they wrote during a poetry reading celebration in June. One student added two stanzas to the poem to make it hers. The story was reported in the 8 June 2004 issue of the Syracuse Post-Standard, p. B-3.

Why plagiarize when you can purchase the whole degree, or at least credit for a course? Diploma mills have been around longer than I have, but seem to have proliferated extensively in the last few years, and are simply bolder. Most have Web sites, and many at least have an appearance of legitimacy. For recent articles on diploma mills, search Lexis Nexis, using "diploma mills" or "fake degrees." The Senate Governmental Affairs Committee, chaired by Sen. Susan M. Collins, is holding hearings on fraudulent degrees and courses. A number of government employees were found to have degrees from diploma mills (AP, NBC Nightly News 5/10/2004). More appalling, small firms known as "credential evaluators," used by schools to verify the credentials of foreign schools, may in some cases be fraudulent as well. (Trotter, Andrew. "Educators' degrees earned on Internet raise fraud issues." Education Week 5 May 2004. See also the accompanying story.

Primetime Thursday (29 April 2004) featured a report on cheating in colleges and universities in the US. The hour-long program interviewed a large number of students, as well as John Barrie, Michael Josephson, and a professional paper writer and test taker. An abbreviated transcript is available at http://abcnews.go.com/Primetime/story?id=132376&page=1 (30 April 2004).

In October 2003, a McGill University student filed a suit at the institution after failing a course because he refused to submit his paper to Turnitin.com as required by his professor. He claimed that he had to prove he was innocent of plagiarism before his professor would even look at his paper. On Thursday, Jan. 15, 2004, the University Senate Committee agreed with him, even though his professor relented and read the papers without submitting them to Turnitin.com. Initially reported in the Vancouver Sun and other papers, the latest report came from CNN.com (viewed 21 Jan. 2004)

"Times reporter who resigned leaves long trail of deception." NY Times reporter, Jayson Blair, resigns after the newspaper found that he had fabricated and plagiarized a large number of articles over his four-year career at the Times. An extensive article appeared in the Sunday, May 11, 2003, issue of the Times. In print it can be found in the National edition, section 1, page 1.

The British report on Iraq was admittedly plagiarized from journals and magazines, not written by intelligence sources ( Iraq - its infrastructure of concealment, deception and intimidation.). Reported in the New York Times, Saturday, 8 Feb. 2003. (Apparently 10 Downing St. did not know that Great Britain recently contracted with iParadigms?) As of March 2003, the site was not available, but was still available in a Google cache.)

Great Britain has contracted with iParadigms to provided detection services for the nation. The Joint Information Systems Committee developed this process, which combines prevention with detection, in 2002. For extensive information on this project, please go to the Plagiarism Advisory Service. (See article above--weren't they paying attention??)

Richmond Times-Dispatch reported on Nov. 26, 2002, that the last of the trials dealing with cheaters at the University of Virginia has ended. "A total of 48 students were dismissed..." out of the 158 cases initiated. The University dismisses an average of 15 to 20 students a year for honor code violations.

Louisiana State University is being investigated by the NCAA (again) for academic misconduct, including plagiarism, by athletes. This news seems to be limited to Louisiana newspapers. (Note: if searching for this topic, it helps to use "academic misconduct" and "LSU.")

A number of popular authors and reporters have been accused of, or came forward admitting to, plagiarism recently (e.g. Stephen Ambrose, who died 10/14/2002, and Doris Kearns Goodwin). Articles about these people can easily be found in any popular periodical database. Michael Bellesiles has been accused of fabricating data for his book on historical gun ownership and the Second Amendment.

Christine Pelton, a high school teacher in Piper, KS, has resigned her position after being told by the school board (led by the superintendent) to change the grades given to students who plagiarized in her biology class. Information on this topic can be found in transcripts in Lexis Nexis, local newspapers in Kansas, and national newspapers. On 2 April 2002, the Piper School Board voted (in an open meeting this time) to require Pelton to change the grades of the 28 students. The vote was unanimous, with one abstention. According to a brief article in the Topeka Capital-Journal on Nov. 10, 2002, the chair of the school board was recalled in a narrow vote and others were facing a recall as well. The superintendent and at least one school board member have resigned. (This news seems to be reported only in Kansas newspapers, available in Lexis Nexis if you don't live in Kansas). In May 2002, the Kansas State Legislature gave her a citation and standing ovation. Ms. Pelton was also interviewed by Oprah Winfrey (in a program about people who stand up for what they believe). The transcript of this interview is available in Lexis Nexis, and aired on June 17, 2002.