The Chronicle: Colloquy Live Transcript

Taming the Copycats on the Faculty

Thursday, December 16, at 2 p.m., U.S. Eastern time

Given the recent examples of Stephen E. Ambrose, Doris Kearns Goodwin, and Laurence H. Tribe, it might seem that the only academic plagiarists are famous scholars with sloppy research assistants.

But a Chronicle investigation proves otherwise. Among the cases we found were a political scientist who swiped five pages of his book from a journal article, a historian who cribbed from an unpublished dissertation, and a geographer whose verbatim copying appears to span his lengthy career. Indications are that the problem is widespread, even commonplace.

Very few of the plagiarists will ever be dragged into the sunlight. That's because academe often discourages victims from seeking justice and, when they do, tends to ignore their complaints -- a kind of scholarly "don't ask, don't tell" policy.

"It's like cockroaches," says Peter Charles Hoffer, a University of Georgia historian and author of a recent book about academic fraud. "For every one you see on the kitchen floor, there are a hundred behind the stove."

Why is this problem so common? Why are academe's institutions -- colleges, universities, journals, presses, associations -- so reluctant to take action? What should they do? What should academics do? Would you report a plagiarist? Would you hire one?

  » Take part in a parallel discussion in Colloquy

  » Four Academic Plagiarists You've Never Heard Of: How Many More Are Out There? (12/17/2004)

  » Judge or Judge Not? (12/17/2004)

Peter Charles Hoffer, a professor of history at the University of Georgia, is the author of Past Imperfect: Facts, Fictions, Fraud -- American History From Bancroft and Parkman to Ambrose, Bellesiles, Ellis, and Goodwin (Public Affairs, 2004). He also serves on the professional division of the American Historical Association, which until recently investigated individual allegations of plagiarism.

A transcript of the chat follows.

Thomas Bartlett (Moderator):
Welcome to Colloquy Live. Our guest is Peter Charles Hoffer, a University of Georgia historian and the author of "Past Imperfect," a recent book on plagiarism and other types of academic fraud. I'm Tom Bartlett, a reporter at the Chronicle, and I'll be hosting today's chat. We're looking forward to a lively discussion, so let's get right to it.

Question from Tracy, Idaho State University:
How should graduate faculty respond to a report of plagiarism? Is there a standard protocol for investigation? Are whistleblower laws applicable to protect the person who reports plagiarism?

Peter Charles Hoffer:
If you mean plagiarism by a graduate student, the answer is that the faculty should treat it as it would plagiarism by any student, although very often an informal and far less punitive punishment is applied. There is no protocol for investigation and different academic departments at different schools all have their own. Whether this variety conforms to our notions of due process I leave to you. There are no cases on point on plagiarism whistleblowers, but there have been suits for defamation against accusers.

Question from Marcy Tanter, Tarlteon State U:
It seems to me that if we allow plagiarism to go unpunished by the academy, we can hardly punish it in our students. If we don't punish our students, we must allow them to plagiarize. If we allow the students to plagiarize, they don't create original work, don't learn critical thinking and thus we perpetuate a generation of robots. What possible reason could we have for allowing such a thing? If we allow plagiarism, doesn't that signal the downfall of academia as a whole?

Peter Charles Hoffer:
All true, and the irony is that the non-student plagiarist usually knows what he or she is doing is unethical, but the student does not know what the boundaries of unacceptable conduct are. On the other hand, the defenses against the accusation for the senior scholar--absence of intent, mistake in fact (confusion between notes from a secondary sources and one's own writing), common use of primary sources with another author, carelessness by the publisher or the editors, and so on, don't work for the student suspected of cheating on a paper by plagiarizing.

Question from Constant D. Beugre, Ph.D., Delaware State University, School of Management:
How to deal with another form of plagiarism, "cross-language plagiarism" in which a foreign scholar copies the work--say of an American scholar in writing in his/her native language?

Peter Charles Hoffer:
A very good question about a very hard subject because, first, other countries (for example Japan) do not have our strong stance against academic plagiarism, and second, because even when we take some action, the foreign plagiarist of American scholars may not face any punishment. One notorious case that the AHA handled led to over two years of back and forth with the plagiarist, his publisher, and other parties until, at last, his book was withdrawn from circulation.

Question from Allan W. Wicker, Claremont Graduate University:
The Chronicle's excellent special report on plagiarism focuses on the United States. Could you provide a more international perspective on this issue? Is it primarily a North American or Western concern? To what extent does plagiarism occur, and is it viewed as a problem in, say, academic communities of Europe, Latin America, or the Former Soviet Union? What are the complications of international plagiarism, i.e., writers copying works by foreign authors, whose work may be in a different language?

Peter Charles Hoffer:
We need a much more detailed study of these questions but my sense is that each scholarly community has its own standards for deciding what is and is not acceptable. Latin American standards are, in general, far looser and more permissive, as are those in Asia. In Japan, plagiarism is often accepted, particularly when a senior scholar takes a junior scholar's work as his own. There is, as well, a good deal of copyright violation of western works.

Question from An anononymous professor, large public research university:
I was recently the victim of plagiarism by another professor in the U.S. When I pointed out the problem to him, he agreed to request his publisher to change future editions of the work. But he neither showed remorse nor apologized for his appropriation of my words and ideas. Should I pursue this further, and if so, any suggestions of how?

Peter Charles Hoffer:
Whether for fear of legal action or because in our present climate of cultural opinion no one says they are sorry, your situation is entirely too common. Even when plagiarism is demonstrated in public and persuasive fashion few culprits express remorse. If you wanted the individual to be punished by his or her institution (assuming the person is not a free lance), you might consider approaching the employer directly or publicizing the incident.

Question from Robin Elliott, University of Toronto:
Plagiarism is a two-part process; the first step is writing the plagiarized work, the second is getting it published. These four academics all had their work published in reputable refereed academic publications. Surely a large part of the onus in these cases rests with sloppy editorial and peer review processes. I think it was positively bloody-minded to persecute the academics and leave the other guilty parties in the plagiarism process - those responsible for publishing their plagiarized work - unscathed.

Peter Charles Hoffer:
Does "bloody-minded" mean what I think it means? Some special pleading: I co-edit a university series that does not have reference notes. We read every ms carefully, as do two or three outside referees for the press. There is no way that we could catch plagiarism, however, except in cases where we know the source work well enough to suspect skullduggery. Like the very most reputable trade press editors (who do not send out mss for peer review), we tend to trust the honesty of our authors. Scholarship depends upon this trust, and that is why plagiarism rents the fabric of academe. So, although there may be some responsibility on the editors' and publishers' shoulders, most of it rests upon the author who steals.

Question from Eugene, MidWestU:
In your work, do you find academics/scholars more or less honest than men in the street?

Peter Charles Hoffer:
Overall, based on my experience, I have found academics and scholars a very ethical and moral breed. But increasingly, evidence indicates that standards are falling everywhere. Whether this is because the academics are no longer a self-selecting elite, because there is more at stake financially, or because of some more global shift in cultural values (which, as every historian knows, are always either in crisis or decline), I cannot say.

Thomas Bartlett (Moderator):
Dear Anonymous Professor at a Large Research University: The Chronicle would love to hear about your experience. You can e-mail me at thomas.bartlett@chronicle.com

Question from Ramona, Fairfield U.:
Do you think if universities awarded good teaching as much as they demanded a huge quantity of research for tenure, that this would be less of a problem?

Peter Charles Hoffer:
Some universities have been thinking about this for the past decade, and are starting to award teaching chairs and prizes. Research universities may seem to neglect teaching (certainly they do not stress it as much as liberal arts colleges), but teaching ability and successful teaching outcomes are still a part of every research university professor's assessment. Now, would a shift away from publication reduce the problem of plagiarism--I think yes, but only among the elite of university faculty publishing. And they, I'd like to think, are rarely plagiarists.

Question from Thomas Bartlett:
In your new book, you write that "we all have a little word larceny in us." Can you expand a bit on that? Are all of us would-be plagiarists?

Peter Charles Hoffer:
Not would-be plagiarists, in the sense that we would welcome the opportunity to steal another's words, but after all, the temptation to take a phrase from another without full attribution is often too great to resist. I courted my wife thirty-six years ago with quotations lifted from T.S. Eliot, and I did not tell her they were his. Seriously, we lecture to our classes and to private groups all the time borrowing from the greats with both hands, but if the lecture is going to work, it cannot stop to give credit to everyone. That is the cumulative nature of teaching. We pass on wisdom of the ages. But the difference, and an important difference, is that when we engage in this kind of word larceny, we do not claim originality for ourselves. That is the saving grace, in my opinion.

Question from John Duffy, Gettysburg College:
I suggest, for sake of argument, that plagiarism is a one-step process: re-writing and taking credit for another's work. The sorry stuff that emerges later: administrators failing to hold employees to the same standards they would expect faculty to hold students; the power game when it comes to an advisee's work used without attribution; the tired argument of pressure to publish -- how can these be addressed?

Peter Charles Hoffer:
Unfortunately, in the real world plagiarism begins long before the one step of "re-writing and taking credit for another's work." It starts with sloppy note taking, carelessness in keeping separate one's notes and one's own drafts, writing up a draft and leaving the citations for later (and still later losing or confusing them). Then the inadvertant plagiarist has to face the question of whether to submit the damaged work or go back and do it again. Most unintentional plagiarism is sloppy and lazy rather than evil-minded. But the cases you cite are of a different order, including the intentional misuse of employees' or students' work by supervisors. There is really no excuse, certainly not the pressure to publish, to excuse this, for all the plagiarist need do is co-author. It's that simple.

Question from Mike Garcia, Librarian, St. Elizabeth College of Nursing. Utica, NY:
How hard would it be to agree on a plagiarism policy, and a method for dealing with it, that would be acceptable to academic institutions? After all, college sports have rules that are understood, umpirees and referees to make sure they are followed, and penalties for infractions.

Peter Charles Hoffer:
Almost all academic institutions have on-line or in print policies defining plagiarism and stating the punishments for it. But almost all of these apply exclusively (or by implication) only to students. The problems that we have arise when we attempt to apply the strict liability standard inherent in most codes for student work to faculty. Perhaps this is because the faculty are the judges of the former (Dr. Bonham's case taught us that we should not be judges in our own cause). As a long time soccer referee (when I was younger), I can tell you that our professional clinics sometimes spent hours on the meaning and application of particular rules--and then I watched as my colleagues got them wrong on the field.

Question from Patrick B. Inman, Freelance Academic Editor, Chapel Hill, NC:
Don't the top-level journals in each field (e.g., the American Historical Review) ask their book reviewers and article referees to search for evidence of plagiarism? The person competent to review a new book or evaluate a submitted article should be familiar with published scholarship it might plagiarise. This does not deal with the problem of plagiarism of unpublished work, or address directly the case where the reviewer is a plagiarist, but it still constitutes a basic service to a journal's readers: an effort to make certain that the book under review or article being published constitutes original scholarship.

Just as Sarbanes-Oxley now requires that CEO's attest to their companies' financial records, reviewers and referees could agree in writing to make good-faith efforts to detect plagiarism. I suppose the federal laws granting tax-exempt status to scholarly institutions could be modified to protect good-faith efforts to detect plagiarism from lawsuits, similar to the protection afforded good samaritans who help highway accident victims. Then journals could publish lists of articles and books rejected because of detected plagiarism at the back of each issue or once a year. Public shaming like this in daily newspapers discourages scofflaws from evading payment of taxes and child support. It would also be an appropriate way of dealing with scholarly theft.

Sure, it's hard to get people to review books and evaluate journal articles already, and burdening reviewers with the responsibility of searching for and reporting plagiarism may make it harder. But this is not really extra work. The most basic task of reviewers and referees is to evaluate work for originality.

Peter Charles Hoffer:
Actually, we are not asked by scholarly journal book review editors to search for plagiarism. Quite the contrary--when we do suspect it, we need to be careful to include parallel passages or to imply that the author of the book under review too closely paraphrased or depended too much upon particular secondary sources. The American Historical Review has a very good policy in cases where a book reviewer reports his or her suspicions of plagiarism, a policy that soon may be industry wide. When an article ms is submitted for publication and a referee suspects plagiarism, the case is different. The article will not be published. There is no standard policy on whether the editor will alert anyone else to this discovery, and it is entirely possible for a plagiarist to find a journal to publish what another journal has rejected for cause. But this is a subject very much under discussion just now.

Question from Ramona Islam:
Related to my question about universities' emphasis on research over teaching:

Has this emphasis increased or stayed the same over time? Has this problem with faculty plagiarizing increased, or is it simply more evident in the electronic age? In other words, what's causing this problem? Is there a correlation between pressure to publish and faculty plagiarism, or is there some other new cause, or has this always been a problem?

Peter Charles Hoffer:
I think that there has always been plagiarism in scholarship, and in fact that the scholarly community is now more aware of the problem and less tolerant of it.

Question from Kim, UC Berkeley:
As an undergraduate instructor of a large competitive course, I always have to be on the lookout for plagiarism/other forms of cheating. Unfortunately I'm sure that much more cheating is taking place than what I am able to catch...in general the only people I've caught plagiarizing are very sloppy about it (don't bother to change handwriting or eliminate prior teacher comments; accidentally turn in the work they've copied from). Even then they are reluctant to admit what they did was wrong and accept the consequences. As noted in a previous question, it must be even harder to catch "superstar scholars" at plagiarism both because they are more apt to disguise it well and because peer review is meant to measure significance and completeness, not originality. Are there any mechanisms in place to watch for plagiarism (other than vigilance by the primary author) and if not, is anybody working on developing some?

Peter Charles Hoffer:
The short answer is no--the person whose work is purloined is the first and very often the best detective (though not so often the best prosecutor, especially when the culprit is a star and the victim is a graduate student who needs the star's recommendation). When more books are on line and can be searched for particular language, then a better way to discover similarities may be available, but again a star plagiarist can avoid detection by varying enough of his or her own borrowing to blur the evidence of dependence.

Thomas Bartlett (Moderator):
That concludes our chat with Peter Charles Hoffer. Thanks to him and to all of you for your questions. And, if you haven't already, make sure to read the Chronicle's special report on plagiarism. Happy holidays.