Plagiarism is an ugly word, and it is an ugly fact of academic life. Each of us who has taught for a period of years has encountered student plagiarism of various kinds, and I assume we have all been upset by the ethical betrayal represented by a plagiarized essay. My university has an honor code and a special student system of justice to deal with the offense, which seems to have become more common in this age of Web-based information. Ironically, of course, such plagiarism is now much easier to detect, since Google (and numerous software programs) are so good at remembering and comparing. But the sense of violation arising from the discovery of plagiarism remains an affront to the sensibilities of any dedicated teacher.

I suppose that fewer of us have encountered plagiarism by our professional peers, but of course that is also more common than most of us would like to admit. I first became aware of the problem when one of my graduate school friends discovered that a more senior scholar had reproduced large sections of his dissertation. Later I learned of the allegations of plagiarism in the field of history that were well publicized in the press. Still later I had the deeply troubling experience of discovering that a trusted graduate-student colleague had copied whole chapters of her dissertation from a published work. It is hard for me, and I expect for most of us, to imagine what sort of desperation drives a person to betray professional trust in such a manner. But whatever the cause, the result is an egregious violation of professional ethics.

Of course, I am also aware that there are difficult borderline cases, in which scholars of good will cannot agree as to whether an ethics violation has occurred. And here both universities and professional associations struggle to promulgate definitions that will define a “bright line” between the permissible and illegitimate use of other’s words and ideas. The historians, in a field more commonly involved with public accusations of plagiarism than most, have certainly struggled with the issue — most recently in an AHA panel on plagiarism in historical journals at the January meeting of the Association (The Chronicle of Higher Education, 18 January). Richard Byrne covered the story nicely in “Hot Type,” and I will not rehearse the general arguments here.

But I do want to note that my friend Tony Grafton, currently the AHA vice-president for the Professional Division (which has jurisdiction over professional ethical matters), is quoted as saying that the AHA had given up the adjudication of plagiarism charges several years ago because “The process of adjudication was unable to yield a usable result,” but holding out hope that a more effective process might be found. I think I was in a very small minority of AHA members who publicly regretted the abandonment of jurisdiction over plagiarism, and I hope that Tony’s Division will revisit the question. For me, the willingness to identify ethical violations and penalize transgressors is at the very core of the definition of a professional organization. The fear of the law of defamation should be enough to intimidate professionals into doing what is right. If we are so quick to punish our students for their transgressions, why not out our wayward peers? Shame has a distinguished history in criminal law, after all, and it is probably the appropriate response to most professional ethical violations.

Image detail from a photo by Flickr user tinou bao

Comments

1. Stan, as you probably know, the AHA decision was at least in part because of financial concerns: the expense of ramping up a hearing. In a world of scarce resources, should the professional organization expend them here, when (so the argument might go) it is better to police this kind of violation either via the employer (university or college, normally) or via the AAUP, the professional organization that seems to take these stands most naturally? Re resources, what if legal expenses were to mount? My own professional organization (the American Musicological Society) could not survive very many six-figure legal suits—at least that’s what we think, for we have no provision for policing our own guidelines for ethical conduct (http://www.ams-net.org/ethics.html). For better or for worse, we work in a realm that relies heavily on the good faith of all participants. When good faith is absent, the system breaks down.
   Bob Judd, Exec Dir, American Musicological Society

   — Bob Judd · Jan 22, 09:03 AM · #

2. zzzzzzzzzzzzzmmmmmmmzzzzzzzzzzzzmmmmm

   O, sorry.

   Um, that’s really bad and everything —

   But exactly what was I supposed to learn from this that everyone in academia doesn’t already know?

   From the writer’s oath: First, waste no time.

   This was the Chronicle equivalent of “India Bus Plunge Kills 13.” The news part might make sense in a news section. In an opinion section it’s a pointless timewaster. It’s like writing a column about the evils of child porn, at this late date.

   — G D · Jan 22, 09:25 AM · #

3. I wish it were so, G.D., but regrettably it isn’t. Even among academics, plagiarism is often considered at most a venial sin—take, for example, the current president of Southern Illinois University of Edwardsville, whose career has not been impeded in the slightest by the revelation that large quantities of both his master’s and doctoral theses consist of plagiarised material. It is far more common for the discoverers of plagiarism rather than its perpetrators to suffer serious professional consequences.

   — Gustave · Jan 22, 10:31 AM · #

4. Good for you, Stan Katz. Plagiarism is a wonderful way to break two commandments at once, for those who are concerned with such things: the eighth and the ninth. There’s also the motivation provided by the tenth, and from the viewpoint of the person whose work has been ripped off, the seventh. But I suppose “adultery” is really too mild a word for that kind of assault. Stealing is stealing, and lying is lying, and neither is excused by thieves’ desire to have that which is their neighbors’. But having been screwed once by the thief’s action of stealing the material, which involves falsely claiming it and by implication falsely claiming that it is not the property of the person who did the work, the victim may be screwed again when priority becomes clouded. Fair use is just a smokescreen here; a legitimate quotation, properly credited, is not plagiarism. It’s like Dr. Johnson’s definition of patriotism as “the last refuge of a scoundrel.” The thief and liar who rips off the work of others under the cover of “fair use” has merely added hypocrisy and disingenuousness to the list of crimes. And carelessness is as valid an excuse for lifting the property of others as Steve Martin’s “I forgot” defense, just a hell of a lot less funny.

   — Dan Kirklin · Jan 22, 11:23 AM · #

5. It’s amazing how misinformation gets repeated, like a meme. The President of Southern Illinois University (not just Edwardsville) was essentially exonerated—it turned out that the literature review section of his dissertation was not adequately marked with respect to where quoted material began and ended (even though the sources were named). This isn’t exactly ‘large quantities’, but the level of internecine politics at SIU are such that it gave great delight to some of the administration’s enemies to entertain such exaggerations.
   http://news.siu.edu/PoshardDissertationReviewfinal.pdf

   — Geoffrey Nathan · Jan 22, 02:13 PM · #

6. Sorry—I can’t agree that Poshard was “essentially exonerated”; quite the contrary. In the first place, there was not even the pretence of an independent inquiry: the single person responsible for the “exoneration” was an associate professor in the SIU English Department. The conflict of interest is too obvious to require further discussion. In the second, that individual, as he admits, applied a wholly subjective standard: “most scholars [none of whom he troubles to name] defining plagiarism emphasize the importance of a conscious intention to cheat, and I see nothing in the forms of the infractions in this dissertation that make me think that its author was intending to cheat.” To the contrary, intent—like drunk driving, running red lights, or claiming income tax exemptions to which one is not entitled—is not a consideration when defining plagiarism; the only applicable criterion is whether one has included purloined material or not. In the third, the unintentionally comical associate professor apparently believes that plagiarism doesn’t really matter as long as it appears in a Ph.D. dissertation rather than a published book. As he says, “It is important…that anyone reading the Poshard dissertation remember that this is the writing of graduate student Glen Poshard, not University President Glen Poshard. Human beings learn from their errors, and dissertation writing is meant to be a final safe environment for such learning.” Purely as a matter of tactics, then, Poshard’s cause could hardly have been worse served by the bucket of whitewash to which Geoffrey Nathan helpfully provides the link above, and which I encourage everyone interested in this matter to read in full. It contains so many fatuities that quotation of just two or three is hardly sufficient to give the flavour of the whole.

   Thank you for the correction that Poshard is head of the entire SIU system. That is even more appalling, and spreads the damage he has done still wider.

   — Gustave · Jan 22, 03:32 PM · #

7. I must respectfully disagree with Mr. Nathan’s comments. Newspapers made Poshard’s infractions available for all to see. There were pages of uncited text and even the summary of the lit review was plagiarized. See http://ipbiz.blogspot.com/2007/10/page-54-of-poshard-phd-thesis-real.html for a full discussion of the issue. If all of the verbatim text had been correctly cited, no self-respecting advisor would have approved the dissertation. In fact, Poshard took a WHOLE PAGE from a textbook, broke out the paragraphs, and used them on different pages of the dissertation without quotes or footnotes. To me, this shows clear intent. Also, the Ohio University plagiarism issue is interesting because many of the theses date back to the 80’s, yet OU is not using Poshard’s excuses that 1) the citation rules were different back then or 2) the dissertation committee didn’t find the plagiarism so it can’t be plagiarism.

   — Joel · Jan 22, 04:31 PM · #

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