The Fora: A Higher Education Community

The latest on Claudine Gay--

QuoteHarvard Finds More Instances of 'Duplicative Language' in President's Work (https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/20/us/harvard-claudine-gay-plagiarism.html)
Claudine Gay has faced growing criticism of not only her response to antisemitism on campus but also her scholarship.

QuoteExcerpts From Dr. Claudine Gay's Work (https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/21/us/claudine-gay-harvard-president-excerpts.html)
Here are five examples of work by President Claudine Gay of Harvard that have been spotlighted by critics who have accused her of plagiarism.

I think the charges of so-called 'mosaic plagiarism' are overblown--that's just bad intuitions about where to place a footnote. And I certainly don't trust that the accusations are being made in good faith.

That said, the paragraph comparisons I saw definitely scream 'plagiarism' to me (and would do so even if cited, since they aren't quotes). It seems clearly unacceptable as far as I'm concerned.

But it's definitely not appropriate for Congress to be looking into it. What the fuck?

I agree that the politicians should stay out of this. Gay does have a rather unimpressive list of publications; in addition, the instances of improper citations are exactly those that are covered in Freshman Comp classes, so there is absolutely no excuse for such errors in half or more than half of her very small list of publications.

Op-ed by John McWhorter on why she should resign:

QuoteWhy Claudine Gay Should Go (https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/21/opinion/harvard-claudine-gay.html)

There's a process for examining these claims. So, let that happen, and if she should decide to resign or someone wants to ...ehem..."resign" her, at some point before that happens, which is likely, then so be it.

Quote from: Langue_doc on December 22, 2023, 06:10:04 AMI agree that the politicians should stay out of this. Gay does have a rather unimpressive list of publications; in addition, the instances of improper citations are exactly those that are covered in Freshman Comp classes, so there is absolutely no excuse for such errors in half or more than half of her very small list of publications.

Op-ed by John McWhorter on why she should resign:

QuoteWhy Claudine Gay Should Go (https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/21/opinion/harvard-claudine-gay.html)

Her record is thin on if we're counting the number of articles, but three APSRs, an AJPS, and a JOP - all solo - is impressive in political science from a quality standpoint. 

It looks like she was sloppy more than anything - which does not excuse the plagiarism. If she had done something more serious, like faking results, then I'd be all for firing her, but imo this does not rise to the level of serious research misconduct. (But it does give cover for axing her.)

McWhorter claims that Harvard's own posted plagiarism policies suggest that a freshman doing what she did could perhaps even be expelled.   Why should the university president survive such conduct, esp seeing as it appears to have been her repeated policy?

Quote from: Sun_Worshiper on December 22, 2023, 08:06:07 AMHer record is thin on if we're counting the number of articles, but three APSRs, an AJPS, and a JOP - all solo - is impressive in political science from a quality standpoint. 

I wouldn't say 'only', since her PhD is from 1997. So yeah, top-tier solo pubs, but not many to show for an 18-year academic career at fancy institutions with plenty of resources and little teaching (before she became an administrator).

But she's from a different academic generation. The publication pressure on young academics twenty-six years ago just doesn't compare to the arms race today. This is true in my adjacent field, too; if I look at the CVs of people hired in my field at Stanford and the Ivies thirty years ago, I've already outstripped most of them despite having graduated only six years ago. Hell, I've outstripped most of the faculty at my PhD-granting institution! But they came up at a time when it was normal and expected for you to take your time publishing and focus on just a few high-quality pieces, and it was normal for you to slow down even more/stop after tenure. That's not how things are today, but it is how it was until maybe fifteen years ago. (Indeed, I know for a fact that Stanford still discourages its PhD students from publishing!) So, yeah, I wouldn't put too much stress on the number.


I do think that the 'sloppiness' should disqualify her from a leadership position such as President, Provost, or Dean, however. I'd hesitate to say it should lead to loss of a faculty position, but it seems incompatible with leading an institution whose members all know better and teach their students better. Like, it's a pretty important norm that she violated, over and over.

Having done some editing for some privileged people in political science, however, I have to say that I'm not at all surprised. This kind of sloppiness seems fairly common at a certain level. I remember one paper that came to me, as copy editor for an edited collection, chock full of quotes and allusions to the work of others, but without either a single reference or even a list of works cited. I sent it back to the editor despite the tight deadline, because it's sure as hell not my job to play research assistant to some asshole who can't be bothered. It was by a very well-known figure in the discipline, too. (Also, shame on the editors, who should not have passed it along.)

Quote from: Parasaurolophus on December 21, 2023, 08:23:06 AMBut it's definitely not appropriate for Congress to be looking into it. What the fuck?

Conservatives have been losing the hearts and minds of the populace, their Trumpy figureheads are being savaged in the courts and the press, and the younger generation is considerably more liberal than they are.

They need something to get the useful idiots riled up.

So we have political theater.

Quote from: Parasaurolophus on December 22, 2023, 11:48:00 AM

Quote from: Sun_Worshiper on December 22, 2023, 08:06:07 AMHer record is thin on if we're counting the number of articles, but three APSRs, an AJPS, and a JOP - all solo - is impressive in political science from a quality standpoint. 

I wouldn't say 'only', since her PhD is from 1997. So yeah, top-tier solo pubs, but not many to show for an 18-year academic career at fancy institutions with plenty of resources and little teaching (before she became an administrator).

But she's from a different academic generation. The publication pressure on young academics twenty-six years ago just doesn't compare to the arms race today. This is true in my adjacent field, too; if I look at the CVs of people hired in my field at Stanford and the Ivies thirty years ago, I've already outstripped most of them despite having graduated only six years ago. Hell, I've outstripped most of the faculty at my PhD-granting institution! But they came up at a time when it was normal and expected for you to take your time publishing and focus on just a few high-quality pieces, and it was normal for you to slow down even more/stop after tenure. That's not how things are today, but it is how it was until maybe fifteen years ago. (Indeed, I know for a fact that Stanford still discourages its PhD students from publishing!) So, yeah, I wouldn't put too much stress on the number.


I do think that the 'sloppiness' should disqualify her from a leadership position such as President, Provost, or Dean, however. I'd hesitate to say it should lead to loss of a faculty position, but it seems incompatible with leading an institution whose members all know better and teach their students better. Like, it's a pretty important norm that she violated, over and over.

Having done some editing for some privileged people in political science, however, I have to say that I'm not at all surprised. This kind of sloppiness seems fairly common at a certain level. I remember one paper that came to me, as copy editor for an edited collection, chock full of quotes and allusions to the work of others, but without either a single reference or even a list of works cited. I sent it back to the editor despite the tight deadline, because it's sure as hell not my job to play research assistant to some asshole who can't be bothered. It was by a very well-known figure in the discipline, too. (Also, shame on the editors, who should not have passed it along.)

I agree that her record is light on quantity and perhaps would not be sufficient for her level of success in today's marketplace. But her number of publications should not really matter at this point, except perhaps as a denominator to assess how frequently she engaged in plagiarism.

As to whether she should be fired from her current post, I would draw the line at serious research misconduct and imo her crimes do not rise to that level. But, you make a good point that she violated an important norm too often. In any case, given the surrounding circumstances I think her days are likely numbered. 

With regards to sloppiness by top scholars, I've seen my share as well. But even as a middling-scholar I would be nervous if people scrutinized every word I've ever written.

My opinion is that Harvard can do whatever the hell it pleases. Here, too I am pro-choice.

Part of the scrutiny will be from politicians one might not like. But each chamber of Congress can investigate whatever the hell it pleases [though I believe each committee's subpoena powers are restricted by the corresponding chamber as a whole].

Every institution makes its own success criteria and their publics will decide whether the institutions are right or wrong in the light of any information that becomes available.

If what is reported here is accurate, Gay's plagiarism isn't just a case of "sloppiness"; she has a long history of copying and pasting entire paragraphs, with only minor word changes, without attribution:

https://freebeacon.com/campus/this-is-definitely-plagiarism-harvard-university-president-claudine-gay-copied-entire-paragraphs-from-others-academic-work-and-claimed-them-as-her-own/ (https://freebeacon.com/campus/this-is-definitely-plagiarism-harvard-university-president-claudine-gay-copied-entire-paragraphs-from-others-academic-work-and-claimed-them-as-her-own/).

Also the Harvard Corporation did not follow the university's established policy and channels for investigating academic misconduct:

https://freebeacon.com/columns/the-harvard-scandal-is-bigger-than-claudine-gay/ (https://freebeacon.com/columns/the-harvard-scandal-is-bigger-than-claudine-gay/).

To me this looks like sloppiness and laziness on the part of dissertation committee members, journal reviewers & editors, and hiring committees because of Gay's imprimatur as a member of academia's uber-elite (Philips Exeter Academy, enrollment at Princeton, completion of bachelor's at Stanford, PhD at Harvard, back to Stanford  as professor, tenured there, then back to Harvard as dean).

 

If you had submitted a plagiarised diss to your committee (assuming said committee was not negligent in vetting it and thereby missing said plagiarism), would it have:
     
       a) done nothing
       b) told you to get rid of the plagiarism and come back, say in 6 months
    or c) defenestrated you from the PhD program?

It would of course perhaps be one thing if Gay had only plagiarised her diss back in the day, but she has however demonstrated that she is a serial plagiarist.   Let's dispense with the nonsense regarding 'types of plagiarism'-- what she has done, repeatedly, is steal the work of other scholars.   Really, that is what she did.  I taught 7th graders in bibliographic instruction, let alone older k12 students and undergrads in a 'Reading for College' class, and when I do this, I am always at great pains to demonstrate that plagiarism is the 'academic death penalty', which it appears to be for lowly 18yo first-semester froshburgers at Hahvahd, according to Camp Veritas' own published plagiarism rules, free for anyone to see online.  Why is this a hard case?

Further, with additional regard to McWhorter (who is a self-promoter and a studied, deliberate provocateur, of course) he seems to feel the facts clearly suggest that the reason the Harvard trustees have not yet defenestrated Gay, but rather have held firm in her corner, is that they are afraid that showing her the door would open them up to charges of racism.   One does not need, ahem, a Harvard PhD to understand why McWhorter, a black scholar, feels this unacceptable, and feels that it continues to exacerbate or otherwise cheapen the 's/he's an affirmative action hire who cannot be held to the same standards of white dudes' vibe any tolerance for egregious academic misconduct such as Gay's would indicate.   Indeed, Harvard is perhaps especially guilty of double-standardsism here, seeing that less than 20 years ago it did infact cashier a very white, very establishment president, Summers, for merely making some intemperate remarks.

If I had submitted a dissertation containing plagiarism, they would have failed my PhD and thrown me out of the program. And justifiably so.

My PhD program started using Turnitin during the time I was dissertating. To see what the software could do, the provost ran some plagiarism reports. I don't know if there were suspicions of plagiarism beforehand, but the reports showed that a recent PhD graduate from our place had plagiarized portions of his dissertation. The student had already graduated and the provost fumed that he didn't know what the best course was. He wanted to mandate that theses were to be checked for plagiarism going forward, but the grad school pushed back on it. I don't know if it's required now, but it wasn't when I graduated.

https://www.nytimes.com/live/2024/01/02/us/claudine-gay-harvard#harvard-claudine-gay-resigns

Update: Harvard President Resigns (https://www.nytimes.com/live/2024/01/02/us/claudine-gay-harvard)

Here's the link to the gift version:
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2024/01/02/us/claudine-gay-harvard?mwgrp=c-dbar&unlocked_article_code=1.Kk0.kM5L.One99tWkOJVq&smid=url-share

ETA: Lightning, I hit the post button before seeing your post. From the article:

QuoteHere's what to know about Claudine Gay's resignation.
Faced with a new round of accusations over plagiarism in her scholarly work, Harvard's president Claudine Gay announced her resignation on Tuesday, becoming the second Ivy League leader to lose her job in recent weeks amid a firestorm intensified by their widely derided congressional testimony regarding antisemitism on campus.

The resignation of Dr. Gay marked an abrupt end to a turbulent tenure that began in July. Her stint was the shortest of any president in the history of Harvard since its founding in 1636. She was the institution's first Black president, and the second woman to lead the university.

"It is with a heavy heart but a deep love for Harvard that I write to share that I will be stepping down as president," Dr. Gay wrote in a letter to the Harvard community.

Over the last month, plagiarism accusations had surfaced against Dr. Gay, the president of Harvard, signaling that the attacks on her qualifications to lead the Ivy League university are continuing, and miring the university deeper in debate over whether Harvard holds its president and its students to the same standard.

The latest accusations were circulated through an unsigned complaint published Monday in The Washington Free Beacon, a conservative online journal that has led a campaign against Dr. Gay over the past few weeks. The new complaint added additional accusations of plagiarism to about 40 that had already been circulated in the same way, apparently by the same accuser.

Support for Dr. Gay's nascent presidency began eroding after what some saw as the university's initial failure to forcefully condemn the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel and some pro-Palestinian student responses. The caution outraged some Harvard supporters — outrage that grew in early December, after Dr. Gay gave what critics saw as lawyerly, evasive answers before Congress when asked whether calls for the genocide of Jewish people were violations of school policies.

Dr. Gay appeared at a hearing along with two other university presidents, Elizabeth Magill of the University of Pennsylvania and Sally Kornbluth of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. At the hearing, Representative Elise Stefanik, Republican of New York, pelted the presidents with hypothetical questions.

"At Harvard," Ms. Stefanik asked Dr. Gay, "does calling for the genocide of Jews violate Harvard's rules of bullying and harassment? Yes or no?" Dr. Gay replied, "It can be, depending on the context."

That exchange, and a similar back and forth between Ms. Stefanik and Ms. Magill, rocketed across social media and infuriated many people with close ties to the universities. Ms. Magill, whose support had already been shaken in recent months over her refusal to cancel a Palestinian writers conference, resigned as Penn's president four days later.

Dr. Gay moved to contain the fallout with an apology in an interview that was published in The Harvard Crimson, the campus newspaper. "When words amplify distress and pain, I don't know how you could feel anything but regret," she said.

One week after her testimony, the Harvard Corporation, the university's governing body issued a unanimous statement of support — after meeting late into the night before — saying said it stood firmly behind Dr. Gay despite the pressure from major financial backers, prominent Jewish alumni and lawmakers calling for her ouster.`

At the same time, the university acknowledged that it had received accusations of plagiarism in three academic articles by Dr. Gay. It said a review had determined that she had not violated the university's standards for "research misconduct," but that the investigation "revealed a few instances of inadequate citation," and that Dr. Gay would request four corrections to two articles.

Then on Dec. 20, amid continuing allegations of plagiarism driven by conservative media, the university said that it had found two new instances of insufficient citation in Dr. Gay's work — this time in her 1997 doctoral dissertation. Harvard described the issues as "duplicative language without appropriate attribution" and said that she would update her dissertation to correct them.

Dr. Gay, who earned her doctorate in government from Harvard in 1998 and returned eight years later to teach government there, found her support — already on shaky ground after the uproar over antisemitism — evaporating as the plagiarism allegations and findings by the university continued to mount.

The accusations also drew more unwelcome attention from Congress, when a committee investigating Harvard sent a letter to the university demanding all of its documentation and communications related to the plagiarism allegations.

Altogether, the charges circulated by conservative media, including in an article by the activist Christopher Rufo and in reporting by The Washington Free Beacon, accuse Dr. Gay of using material from other sources without proper attribution in about half of the 11 journal articles listed on her résumé, in addition to her dissertation.

The examples range from brief snippets of technical definitions to paragraphs summing up other scholars' research that are only lightly paraphrased, and in some cases lack any direct citation of the other scholars. In one example that drew particular attention and ridicule online, the acknowledgments of Dr. Gay's dissertation appear to take two sentences from the 1996 book acknowledgments of another scholar, Jennifer L. Hochschild.

As allegations mounted, faculty members at Harvard and scholars elsewhere offered varying assessments of the severity of the infractions, with some seeing a disturbing pattern, and others calling them minor or dismissing them as a partisan hit job.

But to some, the issue was plain: Dr. Gay had committed plagiarism — a word which does not actually appear in the Harvard board's initial statement on Dec. 12 — and Harvard should admit it.

Carol Swain, a political scientist who retired from Vanderbilt University in 2017, said that she was "livid," both at Dr. Gay's use of her work — Mr. Rufo cited at least two instances of Dr. Gay using Dr. Swain's work with no citation — and at Harvard's defense of her.

But Steven Levitsky, a government professor at Harvard, said the passages in question seemed to mostly be "mild sloppiness."

Many, he said, appeared to occur in sections of the papers dealing not with Dr. Gay's core claims, but with summaries of methodologies and of previous scholarship.

"She's a quantitative scholar," he said. "She cares about the data. These guys don't spend time fussing about their literature reviews."

Dr. Levitsky had organized a faculty petition in support of her that had urged the Corporation to "resist political pressures that are at odds with Harvard's commitment to academic freedom."

Quote from: Langue_doc on January 02, 2024, 10:45:52 AM

QuoteBut Steven Levitsky, a government professor at Harvard, said the passages in question seemed to mostly be "mild sloppiness."

Many, he said, appeared to occur in sections of the papers dealing not with Dr. Gay's core claims, but with summaries of methodologies and of previous scholarship.

"She's a quantitative scholar," he said. "She cares about the data. These guys don't spend time fussing about their literature reviews."

I wouldn't exactly call that much of a defence. More of an indictment of the field, really.

Besides which, it's true of all our plagiarising students, too: they care about X [where X is not one of the values attached to the class]. They don't spend time fussing about their literature reviews (or whatever). And yet, we still give them 0, don't we?

It's really unfortunate that the plagiarism question became so entangled with the political question.

From The Atlantic Daily (https://www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/archive/2024/01/the-daily-2023/676999/):

QuoteTom Nichols
STAFF WRITER
Claudine Gay engaged in academic misconduct. Everything else about her case is irrelevant, including the silly claims of her right-wing opponents.
When Truth Comes From Terrible People
Faced with a new round of accusations over plagiarism in her scholarly work, Harvard's president Claudine Gay announced her resignation on Tuesday, becoming the second Ivy League leader to lose her job in recent weeks amid a firestorm intensified by their widely derided congressional testimony regarding antisemitism on campus.

The resignation of Dr. Gay marked an abrupt end to a turbulent tenure that began in July. Her stint was the shortest of any president in the history of Harvard since its founding in 1636. She was the institution's first Black president, and the second woman to lead the university.

"It is with a heavy heart but a deep love for Harvard that I write to share that I will be stepping down as president," Dr. Gay wrote in a letter to the Harvard community.

Over the last month, plagiarism accusations had surfaced against Dr. Gay, the president of Harvard, signaling that the attacks on her qualifications to lead the Ivy League university are continuing, and miring the university deeper in debate over whether Harvard holds its president and its students to the same standard.

The latest accusations were circulated through an unsigned complaint published Monday in The Washington Free Beacon, a conservative online journal that has led a campaign against Dr. Gay over the past few weeks. The new complaint added additional accusations of plagiarism to about 40 that had already been circulated in the same way, apparently by the same accuser.

Support for Dr. Gay's nascent presidency began eroding after what some saw as the university's initial failure to forcefully condemn the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel and some pro-Palestinian student responses. The caution outraged some Harvard supporters — outrage that grew in early December, after Dr. Gay gave what critics saw as lawyerly, evasive answers before Congress when asked whether calls for the genocide of Jewish people were violations of school policies.

Dr. Gay appeared at a hearing along with two other university presidents, Elizabeth Magill of the University of Pennsylvania and Sally Kornbluth of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. At the hearing, Representative Elise Stefanik, Republican of New York, pelted the presidents with hypothetical questions.

"At Harvard," Ms. Stefanik asked Dr. Gay, "does calling for the genocide of Jews violate Harvard's rules of bullying and harassment? Yes or no?" Dr. Gay replied, "It can be, depending on the context."

That exchange, and a similar back and forth between Ms. Stefanik and Ms. Magill, rocketed across social media and infuriated many people with close ties to the universities. Ms. Magill, whose support had already been shaken in recent months over her refusal to cancel a Palestinian writers conference, resigned as Penn's president four days later.

Dr. Gay moved to contain the fallout with an apology in an interview that was published in The Harvard Crimson, the campus newspaper. "When words amplify distress and pain, I don't know how you could feel anything but regret," she said.

One week after her testimony, the Harvard Corporation, the university's governing body issued a unanimous statement of support — after meeting late into the night before — saying said it stood firmly behind Dr. Gay despite the pressure from major financial backers, prominent Jewish alumni and lawmakers calling for her ouster.`

At the same time, the university acknowledged that it had received accusations of plagiarism in three academic articles by Dr. Gay. It said a review had determined that she had not violated the university's standards for "research misconduct," but that the investigation "revealed a few instances of inadequate citation," and that Dr. Gay would request four corrections to two articles.

Then on Dec. 20, amid continuing allegations of plagiarism driven by conservative media, the university said that it had found two new instances of insufficient citation in Dr. Gay's work — this time in her 1997 doctoral dissertation. Harvard described the issues as "duplicative language without appropriate attribution" and said that she would update her dissertation to correct them.

Dr. Gay, who earned her doctorate in government from Harvard in 1998 and returned eight years later to teach government there, found her support — already on shaky ground after the uproar over antisemitism — evaporating as the plagiarism allegations and findings by the university continued to mount.

The accusations also drew more unwelcome attention from Congress, when a committee investigating Harvard sent a letter to the university demanding all of its documentation and communications related to the plagiarism allegations.

Altogether, the charges circulated by conservative media, including in an article by the activist Christopher Rufo and in reporting by The Washington Free Beacon, accuse Dr. Gay of using material from other sources without proper attribution in about half of the 11 journal articles listed on her résumé, in addition to her dissertation.

The examples range from brief snippets of technical definitions to paragraphs summing up other scholars' research that are only lightly paraphrased, and in some cases lack any direct citation of the other scholars. In one example that drew particular attention and ridicule online, the acknowledgments of Dr. Gay's dissertation appear to take two sentences from the 1996 book acknowledgments of another scholar, Jennifer L. Hochschild.

As allegations mounted, faculty members at Harvard and scholars elsewhere offered varying assessments of the severity of the infractions, with some seeing a disturbing pattern, and others calling them minor or dismissing them as a partisan hit job.

But to some, the issue was plain: Dr. Gay had committed plagiarism — a word which does not actually appear in the Harvard board's initial statement on Dec. 12 — and Harvard should admit it.

Carol Swain, a political scientist who retired from Vanderbilt University in 2017, said that she was "livid," both at Dr. Gay's use of her work — Mr. Rufo cited at least two instances of Dr. Gay using Dr. Swain's work with no citation — and at Harvard's defense of her.

But Steven Levitsky, a government professor at Harvard, said the passages in question seemed to mostly be "mild sloppiness."

Many, he said, appeared to occur in sections of the papers dealing not with Dr. Gay's core claims, but with summaries of methodologies and of previous scholarship.

"She's a quantitative scholar," he said. "She cares about the data. These guys don't spend time fussing about their literature reviews."

Dr. Levitsky had organized a faculty petition in support of her that had urged the Corporation to "resist political pressures that are at odds with Harvard's commitment to academic freedom."

Someone on Reddit just suggested that Harvard should run Gay's resignation letter through TurnItIn.

Quote from: Hegemony on January 02, 2024, 01:59:09 PMIt's really unfortunate that the plagiarism question became so entangled with the political question.

If it were just the plagiarism, the headlines would be something like "Harvard Attempts Cover-Up, Threatens Media."

Here is the second statement by the anonymous whistleblower: https://freebeacon.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/Complaint2.pdf (https://freebeacon.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/Complaint2.pdf). Whoever the person is, they did quality work.

Quote from: spork on January 02, 2024, 08:46:48 PM

Quote from: Hegemony on January 02, 2024, 01:59:09 PMIt's really unfortunate that the plagiarism question became so entangled with the political question.

If it were just the plagiarism, the headlines would be something like "Harvard Attempts Cover-Up, Threatens Media."

Here is the second statement by the anonymous whistleblower: https://freebeacon.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/Complaint2.pdf (https://freebeacon.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/Complaint2.pdf). Whoever the person is, they did quality work.

From the linked document:

QuoteAs for the remaining board members, they appear to have "unresolved personal, professional, or financial conflicts of interest" in this case because, as one Harvard Law School alumnus said to the Jewish Insider, "managing the public's awareness of their potential failures to do proper diligence" on Gay could potentially "impact their own continued tenures." Michael Goodwin, writing for the New York Post, adds, "despite the scandalous plagiarism findings, the same people who picked her continue to protect her — and themselves. Because they did such a shoddy job of vetting her, the board members are refusing to honestly evaluate her history and performance because it would make them look bad for hiring her in the first place."

I'm just curious: has anyone ever done a plagiarism check on the scholarship of a faculty or administrative job candidate?  Was the search committee supposed to spot check Gay's work for plagiarism?

Quote from: Wahoo Redux on January 02, 2024, 09:14:32 PM

Quote from: spork on January 02, 2024, 08:46:48 PM

Quote from: Hegemony on January 02, 2024, 01:59:09 PMIt's really unfortunate that the plagiarism question became so entangled with the political question.

If it were just the plagiarism, the headlines would be something like "Harvard Attempts Cover-Up, Threatens Media."

Here is the second statement by the anonymous whistleblower: https://freebeacon.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/Complaint2.pdf (https://freebeacon.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/Complaint2.pdf). Whoever the person is, they did quality work.

From the linked document:

QuoteAs for the remaining board members, they appear to have "unresolved personal, professional, or financial conflicts of interest" in this case because, as one Harvard Law School alumnus said to the Jewish Insider, "managing the public's awareness of their potential failures to do proper diligence" on Gay could potentially "impact their own continued tenures." Michael Goodwin, writing for the New York Post, adds, "despite the scandalous plagiarism findings, the same people who picked her continue to protect her — and themselves. Because they did such a shoddy job of vetting her, the board members are refusing to honestly evaluate her history and performance because it would make them look bad for hiring her in the first place."

I'm just curious: has anyone ever done a plagiarism check on the scholarship of a faculty or administrative job candidate?  Was the search committee supposed to spot check Gay's work for plagiarism?

I was just thinking along the same lines. My enemies could run my papers through the plagiarism checkers. Likewise, I can do the same to my enemies.

Although it has been several years, I've actually run all my papers through online plagiarism checkers, and I come out clean <Whew!>.

Regarding the political motivations, what ticks me off is if I uncovered plagiarism in the work of a noted conservative scholar administrator (e.g. Ben Sasse) and I found some dirt, do you think he would resign or be pressured to resign? Ha! No chance.

Only women of color who piss off the right are subjected to this level of scrutiny.

The resignation letter (https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/02/us/claudine-gay-resignation-letter-harvard.html) glosses over the numerous instances of what would be considered plagiarism in Freshman Composition courses. Instead of gracefully stepping down, Gay claims that her committment to uphold academic rigor has been challenged, and laments that she has been "subjected to personal attacks and threats fueled by racial animus".

For those of us who teach undergrads and are required to flag/report instances of plagiarism this seems to be the issue:

QuoteOver the last month, plagiarism accusations had surfaced against Dr. Gay, the president of Harvard, signaling that the attacks on her qualifications to lead the Ivy League university are continuing, and miring the university deeper in debate over whether Harvard holds its president and its students to the same standard.

Gay has far too many instances of missing attributions for such a small list of publications. One of the instances, according to the reports, is the acknowledgement in her dissertation which seems to have been copied from another source--disclaimer: I haven't been able to verify this.

Sorry to be so negative just after the start of a new year, but this whole episode looks bad for everyone.  As many have suggested, it is unfortunate that politics and issues of plagiarism have become entangled - but that just scratches the surface.  Gay surely seems to have been treated differently than a student would have been treated.  The academic community has too many double standards and too much hypocrisy.  But to see that she is brought down by a political agenda is even more disturbing.  Equally troubling is the whole Congressional testimony episode - from the fact that Congress was involved at all to the pressure brought to force resignations because these presidents gave reasoned responses rather than just spouting the politically correct lines.  Bad examples of US politics, bad examples of US academia, bad examples of media coverage - I just don't see anybody coming out of this looking good.  And then I see examples in these forums where academics devote energy to discussing how much time to give students for each question on an exam.  No wonder the public has lost faith in higher education and students appear increasingly unmotivated.

Please excuse the rant.  I am getting older and nearing the end of my career.  These things have always bothered me, but never more than now.  While there are real struggles for food, health, and safety, humans appear to be self-destructing through our failure to be civil, responsible, or sensible.  I am really having a hard time finding anything to be optimistic about.

I don't think its *only* women of color who get this level of scrutiny, though perhaps there are some who seem to have a bit more ghoulish delight in doing so. My guess is that there is someone right now looking at the CV's of all the past Harvard presidents, especially the living ones, to see if they can find something. I can imagine there are *many* who'd like to take a hit at Larry Somers for potential plagarism (although I doubt that was/is one of his foibles). 

Quote from: Wahoo Redux on January 02, 2024, 09:14:32 PM

QuoteAs for the remaining board members, they appear to have "unresolved personal, professional, or financial conflicts of interest" in this case because, as one Harvard Law School alumnus said to the Jewish Insider, "managing the public's awareness of their potential failures to do proper diligence" on Gay could potentially "impact their own continued tenures." Michael Goodwin, writing for the New York Post, adds, "despite the scandalous plagiarism findings, the same people who picked her continue to protect her — and themselves. Because they did such a shoddy job of vetting her, the board members are refusing to honestly evaluate her history and performance because it would make them look bad for hiring her in the first place."

I'm just curious: has anyone ever done a plagiarism check on the scholarship of a faculty or administrative job candidate?  Was the search committee supposed to spot check Gay's work for plagiarism?

Good question. Is it likely, after this, that search committees will start doing this routinely with candidates? Given the amount of resources that go into senior admin searches, this would be a pretty economical procedure to avoid potential future embarrassment.

For that matter, wouldn't it make sense for it to be done by dissertation committees as part of the PhD process?

Quote from: Wahoo Redux on January 02, 2024, 09:14:32 PM

Quote from: spork on January 02, 2024, 08:46:48 PM

Quote from: Hegemony on January 02, 2024, 01:59:09 PMIt's really unfortunate that the plagiarism question became so entangled with the political question.

If it were just the plagiarism, the headlines would be something like "Harvard Attempts Cover-Up, Threatens Media."

Here is the second statement by the anonymous whistleblower: https://freebeacon.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/Complaint2.pdf (https://freebeacon.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/Complaint2.pdf). Whoever the person is, they did quality work.

From the linked document:

QuoteAs for the remaining board members, they appear to have "unresolved personal, professional, or financial conflicts of interest" in this case because, as one Harvard Law School alumnus said to the Jewish Insider, "managing the public's awareness of their potential failures to do proper diligence" on Gay could potentially "impact their own continued tenures." Michael Goodwin, writing for the New York Post, adds, "despite the scandalous plagiarism findings, the same people who picked her continue to protect her — and themselves. Because they did such a shoddy job of vetting her, the board members are refusing to honestly evaluate her history and performance because it would make them look bad for hiring her in the first place."

I'm just curious: has anyone ever done a plagiarism check on the scholarship of a faculty or administrative job candidate?  Was the search committee supposed to spot check Gay's work for plagiarism?

I have never done that and doubt I ever would. Seems like journals should be doing a bit more of this though.

Random questions:

1) Should a dissertation committee take reasonable steps to vet dissertations for plagiarism, esp since this can be done much more easily with computers/ internet, nowadays?   And when found, would there ever be a legitimate reason to show mercy to the candidate, and allow them to get rid of the plagiarism and resubmit?

2) Wrt candidates for academic positions, esp, ahem, the highest such position (uni prez), should this also not be done?

and

3) What other things should regularly be vetted by a search committee, for a candidate for a university presidency?

Given the sheer mass of stuff that is published even on even esoteric subjects, even with computer technology, who could one possible check a dissertation, which is potentially hundreds of pages, for plagiarism in a timely fashion during a semester with everything else going on?

Quote from: Wahoo Redux on January 03, 2024, 06:10:04 PMGiven the sheer mass of stuff that is published even on even esoteric subjects, even with computer technology, who could one possible check a dissertation, which is potentially hundreds of pages, for plagiarism in a timely fashion during a semester with everything else going on?

So dissertations are still submitted hand-typed, on paper? Who knew?
I don't think turnitin has a page limit. You can set the minimum length of text strings to flag, among other things. All kinds of things could be done to automate this even more.

Gay sounds most unpresidential in her op-ed (https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/03/opinion/claudine-gay-harvard-president.html).

In addition to continuing to play the race card, she also claims to have fallen into "a well-laid trap" at the congressional hearings.
As for her scholarship,

QuoteMost recently, the attacks have focused on my scholarship. My critics found instances in my academic writings where some material duplicated other scholars' language, without proper attribution. I believe all scholars deserve full and appropriate credit for their work. When I learned of these errors, I promptly requested corrections from the journals in which the flagged articles were published, consistent with how I have seen similar faculty cases handled at Harvard.

I have never misrepresented my research findings, nor have I ever claimed credit for the research of others. Moreover, the citation errors should not obscure a fundamental truth: I proudly stand by my work and its impact on the field.

It is my understanding that it is the authors and not the journals that are responsible for correcting instances of unattributed passages.

Despite the citation errors, she will continue to draw her $90,000 salary teaching at Harvard.

Yeah, right, "teaching."   90K for probably nothing more than an annual seminar for some graduate students.
Although 90K isn't much for Boston area. Anyway, I doubt she'll be hurting. She could write a book (or get a ghost writer), run for office, whatever.

Among those for whom patriotism no longer carries any cachet, the race/identity card has become the last refuge of the scoundrel.

I saw a recent article that represented all the talk of plagiarism as all just another dirty right-wing trick, with no admission that maybe academia really does have a plagiarism problem.  I expect we'll see a doubling down in some quarters on this shooting of the (admittedly disagreeable) messenger.

And yet academia really does have problems like this.  Our very own foralurker's work was recently the object of plagiarism, by somebody who appears to be pretty well-known in that person's field.  The fact that these "gotcha" efforts to uncover plagiarism may not always be made in good faith doesn't mean that academia couldn't use some soul-searching and bringing-to-the-light on this matter.

Quote from: Langue_doc on January 04, 2024, 06:24:32 AM[. . . ]

Despite the citation errors, she will continue to draw her $90,000 salary teaching at Harvard.

Quote from: Ruralguy on January 04, 2024, 06:47:40 AMYeah, right, "teaching."   90K for probably nothing more than an annual seminar for some graduate students.
Although 90K isn't much for Boston area. Anyway, I doubt she'll be hurting. She could write a book (or get a ghost writer), run for office, whatever.

According to media reports, both of you have left out a zero.

No Harvard professor has a salary as low as 90K.

1. She was the target of a politically-driven racist attack.
2. She is a serial plagiarist.

Both (1) and (2) can be true simultaneously.

There are many interwoven problems here, so its easy to confuse everything (often on purpose) and in the end propose some one size fits all solution (fire the presidents! get rid of DEI!). I saw one opinion piece in particular that bounced around between Gaza, genocide, DEI issues, and plagiarism. I think its important to isolate the problems and address them as separate problems. Gay's plagiarism issues seem to me to be completely separate from everything else. So, yes, those proposing to nuke DEI so we don't get any more plagiarizing women of color as presidents (with the additional subtext that they are likely stoking antisemitism as well) is really the ultimate racist, bad faith argument fueled by mixing together every single issue together and proclaiming that their "easy" answer is "the" answer. 

Oh, yes, and I suspected I may have left out the zero, though I was just using what the previous person had and just assuming that they settled to give her much less than her presidential salary.

Anyway, I don't think any of my points really changed with that correction (in fact, the facetious comment regarding her so-called teaching is emphasized even more).

I will also add:

I don't think its likely that plagiarism searches for presidential or faculty candidate will become a regular thing any more than a tenure committee will read all of the books and articles by faculty up for review. At some point, you have to believe someone else did the vetting competently. After all, the entire point of peer-review is so that everyone knows that trusted colleagues have already looked at the work and declared it to be worthy.

But that doesn't mean no one will do it. Of course, some faculty or admin will continue to be bumped off by this.

Quote from: Ruralguy on January 04, 2024, 08:05:29 AMThere are many interwoven problems here

[. . .]

One problem: she quickly rose to the top of the very top of the academic pyramid despite a thin publication record and a long history of plagiarism. I'm now seeing interwebz comments (which may or may not be valid) that her some of her quantitative conclusions aren't supported by available data, or that at minimum her findings haven't been replicated. Yet a lot of people -- at Harvard, Stanford, and elsewhere -- helped her climb that pyramid for decades. In my opinion, one has to ask "Why?" given that there are numerous academics in a variety of skin colors who had much stronger scholarly and administrative experience.

Quote from: Ruralguy on January 04, 2024, 08:14:50 AMI will also add:

I don't think its likely that plagiarism searches for presidential or faculty candidate will become a regular thing any more than a tenure committee will read all of the books and articles by faculty up for review. At some point, you have to believe someone else did the vetting competently. After all, the entire point of peer-review is so that everyone knows that trusted colleagues have already looked at the work and declared it to be worthy.

Honest question: Is peer review supposed to look for plagiarism? Are journal referees supposed to look for plagiarism?

I don't publish research, but I wasn't aware of anyone who is explicitly expected to detect plagiarism.

Quote from: apl68 on January 04, 2024, 07:51:14 AMAmong those for whom patriotism no longer carries any cachet, the race/identity card has become the last refuge of the scoundrel.

It's like the middle square on a Bingo card; it's free, so *everyone might as well play it.

(*Everyone, that is, of some "marginalized" identity.)

Quote from: spork on January 04, 2024, 08:21:26 AM

Quote from: Ruralguy on January 04, 2024, 08:05:29 AMThere are many interwoven problems here

[. . .]

One problem: she quickly rose to the top of the very top of the academic pyramid despite a thin publication record and a long history of plagiarism. I'm now seeing interwebz comments (which may or may not be valid) that her some of her quantitative conclusions aren't supported by available data, or that at minimum her findings haven't been replicated. Yet a lot of people -- at Harvard, Stanford, and elsewhere -- helped her climb that pyramid for decades. In my opinion, one has to ask "Why?" given that there are numerous academics in a variety of skin colors who had much stronger scholarly and administrative experience.

My sense is that that's not uncommon on the quant side of PoliSci. But that the results aren't robust is a different sort of problem, and not one I'd hold against her in the same way.

Quote from: marshwiggle on January 04, 2024, 08:28:05 AM

Quote from: Ruralguy on January 04, 2024, 08:14:50 AMI will also add:

I don't think its likely that plagiarism searches for presidential or faculty candidate will become a regular thing any more than a tenure committee will read all of the books and articles by faculty up for review. At some point, you have to believe someone else did the vetting competently. After all, the entire point of peer-review is so that everyone knows that trusted colleagues have already looked at the work and declared it to be worthy.

Honest question: Is peer review supposed to look for plagiarism? Are journal referees supposed to look for plagiarism?

I don't publish research, but I wasn't aware of anyone who is explicitly expected to detect plagiarism.

No. We all operate on the assumption that we're reading someone's genuine work. Though sometimes something stands out. I actually think that's a fine assumption, so long as we're good about dealing with the other end--i.e. booting plagiarists when we find them.

Quote from: spork on January 04, 2024, 07:59:14 AM

Quote from: Langue_doc on January 04, 2024, 06:24:32 AM[. . . ]

Despite the citation errors, she will continue to draw her $90,000 salary teaching at Harvard.

Quote from: Ruralguy on January 04, 2024, 06:47:40 AMYeah, right, "teaching."  90K for probably nothing more than an annual seminar for some graduate students.
Although 90K isn't much for Boston area. Anyway, I doubt she'll be hurting. She could write a book (or get a ghost writer), run for office, whatever.

According to media reports, both of you have left out a zero.

No Harvard professor has a salary as low as 90K.

1. She was the target of a politically-driven racist attack.
2. She is a serial plagiarist.

Both (1) and (2) can be true simultaneously.

Mea culpa.
Despite the serial plagiarism, she will continue to draw her presidential salary, which was $90,0000, and also be expected to either detect or overlook plagiarism while grading her students' submissions.

Even if #2 is true, it is still unpresidential and unprofessional to mention this in the resignation letter as well as in the op-ed. "Woe is me, they're all out to get me" is the antithesis of leadership qualities as it comes across as whining.

Quote from: Ruralguy on January 04, 2024, 08:14:50 AMI will also add:

I don't think its likely that plagiarism searches for presidential or faculty candidate will become a regular thing any more than a tenure committee will read all of the books and articles by faculty up for review. At some point, you have to believe someone else did the vetting competently. After all, the entire point of peer-review is so that everyone knows that trusted colleagues have already looked at the work and declared it to be worthy.

But that doesn't mean no one will do it. Of course, some faculty or admin will continue to be bumped off by this.

Trust, but verify.

Marc Lamont Hill has tweeted that the next Harvard president "must be a black woman."

Quote from: financeguy on January 04, 2024, 10:21:47 AMMarc Lamont Hill has tweeted that the next Harvard president "must be a black woman."

Since that's what pissed people off about Gay, it seems only fair to stick it back to them that way.

Though it may not be fair to the candidates, who will find themselves at the wrong end of a pile of trolls.

Maybe they should just look at a group of really strong candidates from a variety of backgrounds and see who is best among them? Or is that too old fashioned? I'm not a big fan of "musts" such as Marc Hill's, but I am also sympathetic to some of the feelings behind it, considering a lot of the bad faith exhibited around Gay's ouster---oh, sorry, I mean "resignation."

.

Quote from: marshwiggle on January 04, 2024, 05:11:10 AM

Quote from: Wahoo Redux on January 03, 2024, 06:10:04 PMGiven the sheer mass of stuff that is published even on even esoteric subjects, even with computer technology, who could one possible check a dissertation, which is potentially hundreds of pages, for plagiarism in a timely fashion during a semester with everything else going on?

So dissertations are still submitted hand-typed, on paper? Who knew?
I don't think turnitin has a page limit. You can set the minimum length of text strings to flag, among other things. All kinds of things could be done to automate this even more.

As long as the material is in TurnItIn's database.

It seems pretty ridiculous to run a senior hire's dissertation through Turnitin. Nor are many committees going to run the 20 or 30 articles they may have published as an assistant or associate through the software. This is really something that administrators at universities, journals, and presses should be doing before approving these pieces for publication.

Don't use turnitin — get your university to subscribe to iThenticate— it actually checks against published journal articles and web pages.

Many journals now run submitted papers through the Crossref Similarity Check (which uses iThenticate), and the NIH appears to do some screening of submitted proposals.

But of course this does nothing to detect historical cases like with Gay.

A new twist. Bill Ackman, the Harvard donor who led the charge against President Gay got so insenced about plagiarism in dissertations. Now it turns out that another prominent scholar has been found with serious plagiarism (https://www.businessinsider.com/bill-ackman-wife-neri-oxman-mit-dissertation-plagiarism-2024-1?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=insider-highereducation-sub-post). Ackman is married to this one. How has their dinner conversation been?

Quote from: Hibush on January 04, 2024, 06:17:04 PMA new twist. Bill Ackman, the Harvard donor who led the charge against President Gay got so insenced about plagiarism in dissertations. Now it turns out that another prominent scholar has been found with serious plagiarism (https://www.businessinsider.com/bill-ackman-wife-neri-oxman-mit-dissertation-plagiarism-2024-1?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=insider-highereducation-sub-post). Ackman is married to this one. How has their dinner conversation been?

I like the irony. But...

Sounds like apart from one paragraph which is entirely uncited, it's all stuff that is not properly paraphrased (or quoted) but is cited, plus publishing parts of her dissertation more or less word for word.

I'd say the paragraph is straight-up plagiarism, the cited but unquoted stuff is very sloppy and bad and unacceptable but not quite what I ordinarily flag as plagiarism, and as for the third, Business Insider is clueless.

From the article.

QuoteAdditionally, she recycled phrasing she used in her dissertation in subsequent papers. The opening paragraph of her dissertation, for instance, appears almost word-for-word in an article she published in 2013.

Plenty of people chop up their dissertations into article-length publications.  I did.  Is that considered plagiarism?

I think the Parabeast hit it on the head: this is some sloppy work but hardly worth the teeth-gnashing and clothes-rending.  The charges against Gay were also Trumped up. 

WRT her plagiarized diss, from '97, the main sources she stole from were two profs in her own dept, from a pub of theirs from the very year before this-- so the question might well be asked, why did these profs, and/or some of their colleagues, not notice this, and if they did, why did they not flag it?  Or perhaps they just did not want to do that.

Now obviously her silly, whiny, self-righteous NYT op-ed is demonstrative of clueless manifest unrepentance.   Get thee gone.   Those defenders of hers who rightly point out that she was a target of rightist pursuit just simply do not seem to want to deal with her plagiarism, which of course smashes headlong into their narrative.  But facts are stubborn things-- Harvard's own very publicly stated policies on plagiarism suggest that Gay was treated vastly differently than an 18yo first semester froshburger would have been, and this is unacceptable. 

One more thing-- many professional journalists seem also to be giving her a pass on this, even though, ahem, plagiarism is also supposed to be a professional death penalty offense there as well (even though journos are allowed to publish things using anonymous sources, etc., something scholars just cannot do).

Quote from: Wahoo Redux on January 04, 2024, 08:39:40 PMPlenty of people chop up their dissertations into article-length publications.  I did.  Is that considered plagiarism?

No, it is not. You are not stealing from a published work by another author. You are reusing an unpublished work you wrote yourself. That is not plagiarism. And it is not a parallel with the plagiarizers discussed in this thread.

Quote from: Parasaurolophus on January 04, 2024, 11:47:25 AM

Quote from: financeguy on January 04, 2024, 10:21:47 AMMarc Lamont Hill has tweeted that the next Harvard president "must be a black woman."

Since that's what pissed people off about Gay, it seems only fair to stick it back to them that way.

It's good to know that we've now got to the point that there is such a vast supply of candidates for even these rare positions that we can decide in advance on what criteria unrelated to the job requirements can be used.

"We're going to hire a left-handed green-eyed person for this job."

 

Quote from: Hegemony on January 05, 2024, 05:05:47 AM

Quote from: Wahoo Redux on January 04, 2024, 08:39:40 PMPlenty of people chop up their dissertations into article-length publications.  I did.  Is that considered plagiarism?

No, it is not. You are not stealing from a published work by another author. You are reusing an unpublished work you wrote yourself. That is not plagiarism. And it is not a parallel with the plagiarizers discussed in this thread.

It's the norm in some disciplines to publish chapters (https://www.insidehighered.com/advice/2020/08/27/how-adapt-your-dissertation-so-it-works-published-article-opinion) from one's dissertation.

QuoteIt's good to know that we've now got to the point that there is such a vast supply of candidates for even these rare positions that we can decide in advance on what criteria unrelated to the job requirements can be used.

"We're going to hire a left-handed green-eyed person for this job."

This also seems to be the norm these days. Didn't the CA governor declare that only a Black woman could succeed Diane Feinstein?

The comments in the latest NYT articles are quite instructive. The first one, The Claudine Gay Debacle Was Never About Merit (https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/04/opinion/claudine-gay-resignation-harvard.html), claims that merit cannot be defined.

QuoteThat is because merit, itself, cannot be defined. That is why the concept is so useful for slippery slopes. It cannot be proved or disproved. It can only be argued.

Academicians and practitioners know that you cannot operationalize merit.

Here's the link to the second one: The Problems Only Start With Plagiarism (https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/04/opinion/plagiarism-academia-claudine-gay.html)

Quote from: Langue_doc on January 05, 2024, 05:45:23 AM

QuoteIt's good to know that we've now got to the point that there is such a vast supply of candidates for even these rare positions that we can decide in advance on what criteria unrelated to the job requirements can be used.

"We're going to hire a left-handed green-eyed person for this job."

This also seems to be the norm these days. Didn't the CA governor declare that only a Black woman could succeed Diane Feinstein?

The comments in the latest NYT articles are quite instructive. The first one, The Claudine Gay Debacle Was Never About Merit (https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/04/opinion/claudine-gay-resignation-harvard.html), claims that merit cannot be defined.

QuoteThat is because merit, itself, cannot be defined. That is why the concept is so useful for slippery slopes. It cannot be proved or disproved. It can only be argued.

Academicians and practitioners know that you cannot operationalize merit.

Non-paywalled version (https://archive.is/2YhbW) of the article.

There's not a lot of "there" there. The quotation above seems to be an assertion, supported only by examples of how, in the past, the word "merit" was used as cover for a lot of discriminatory stuff, rather than a refutation of the idea that objective, job-based criteria can be used to select the best candidate. (So basically the exact opposite of what those examples reflected.)

Has anyone taken a look at how the age of candidates selected for these sorts of positions has declined over time? In the past, it was assumed that people without a lot of experience wouldn't be up to it, but now with DEI hiring younger candidates, (who by definition have less experience), are almost preferred as though experience in the system is a liability, rather than an asset.

Quote from: marshwiggle on January 05, 2024, 05:32:54 AM

Quote from: Parasaurolophus on January 04, 2024, 11:47:25 AM

Quote from: financeguy on January 04, 2024, 10:21:47 AMMarc Lamont Hill has tweeted that the next Harvard president "must be a black woman."

Since that's what pissed people off about Gay, it seems only fair to stick it back to them that way.

It's good to know that we've now got to the point that there is such a vast supply of candidates for even these rare positions that we can decide in advance on what criteria unrelated to the job requirements can be used.

"We're going to hire a left-handed green-eyed person for this job."

It's not about checking boxes. It's about representation of communities.

Quote from: ciao_yall on January 05, 2024, 06:42:06 AM

Quote from: marshwiggle on January 05, 2024, 05:32:54 AM

Quote from: Parasaurolophus on January 04, 2024, 11:47:25 AM

Quote from: financeguy on January 04, 2024, 10:21:47 AMMarc Lamont Hill has tweeted that the next Harvard president "must be a black woman."

Since that's what pissed people off about Gay, it seems only fair to stick it back to them that way.

It's good to know that we've now got to the point that there is such a vast supply of candidates for even these rare positions that we can decide in advance on what criteria unrelated to the job requirements can be used.

"We're going to hire a left-handed green-eyed person for this job."

It's not about checking boxes. It's about representation of communities.

This assumes that "representation of communities" is more important than all of the other considerations that go into hiring, if it can be established as a requirement.

Okay, not technically an academic, nor do I play one on TV.

Still, the examples I saw didn't seem like plagiarism to me. What is generally known and accepted in the field? How many ways are there to say "The sky is blue?"

While I was writing one of the papers leading up to my dissertation I mentioned the concept of public and private goods. My (soon-to-be-ex) advisor asked "where was I getting this from?" I said it came up in one of the readings, and was a common concept in economics.

He sneered "I don't think you know enough about economics to discuss these ideas." I heard his sphincter freeze up when I calmly said "My undergrad is in Political Economics. And I have a Master's in Business where I took a lot of advanced econ classes. So... I think I know enough about econ to discuss these ideas. Do you think I need to explain these more for the average reader?"

Needless to say, I eventually changed programs.

Clearly Dr. Gay was fired largely because she *didn't* any longer represent some powerful constituencies.
So, I think representation of communities/stakeholder is always going to be very important. Its just not always going to be the same community/stakeholder that wins in the end. Although there are probably a number of highly qualified candidates who are black women, I don't see how it really helps to *demand* that the next Harvard president, or NotQuiteAsDinkyAsSuperDinky President for that matter, be a black woman or anything else so precise before you even start the search.

Quote from: Parasaurolophus on January 04, 2024, 08:38:57 AM

Quote from: marshwiggle on January 04, 2024, 08:28:05 AM

Quote from: Ruralguy on January 04, 2024, 08:14:50 AMI will also add:

I don't think its likely that plagiarism searches for presidential or faculty candidate will become a regular thing any more than a tenure committee will read all of the books and articles by faculty up for review. At some point, you have to believe someone else did the vetting competently. After all, the entire point of peer-review is so that everyone knows that trusted colleagues have already looked at the work and declared it to be worthy.

Honest question: Is peer review supposed to look for plagiarism? Are journal referees supposed to look for plagiarism?

I don't publish research, but I wasn't aware of anyone who is explicitly expected to detect plagiarism.

No. We all operate on the assumption that we're reading someone's genuine work. Though sometimes something stands out. I actually think that's a fine assumption, so long as we're good about dealing with the other end--i.e. booting plagiarists when we find them.

I am an associate editor for a journal. I am expected to check the iThenticate report for every paper. Also, when I review papers, one question I need to answer is whether I know of a previous publication of the work. That is, I am not expected to go looking for plagiarism, but I am expected to report what I happen to know.

So yes, there are fairly robust plagiarism checks within the peer-review process. Now, at least, though perhaps not ten years ago.

Quote from: Hegemony on January 05, 2024, 05:05:47 AM

Quote from: Wahoo Redux on January 04, 2024, 08:39:40 PMPlenty of people chop up their dissertations into article-length publications.  I did.  Is that considered plagiarism?

No, it is not. You are not stealing from a published work by another author. You are reusing an unpublished work you wrote yourself. That is not plagiarism. And it is not a parallel with the plagiarizers discussed in this thread.

Yeah, of course it is not.  As someone who's done some journalism, I abide by the philosophy that journalists are not interpreters or arbiters, they are reporters who simply relay the facts as they are presented at that time----but coverage like the linked article illustrate why so many people from all walks mistrust journalism.

It seems like we have entered a new phase of life in the Tower.  Admin are going to be sniffing each new hire for any whiff of plagiarism.  And journalists, primarily rightwing, will be oiling up their Coronas.

It seems that now (Elon Musk anyone?) if you even try to have a faculty which represents the demographics of your student body you are accused of being racist, or in the case of what marshwiggle stated above, making it the most important criterion. I o personally thought Marl Cuban's response to Musk re DEI was absolutely spot on.

Quote from: jimbogumbo on January 05, 2024, 11:39:29 AMIt seems that now (Elon Musk anyone?) if you even try to have a faculty which represents the demographics of your student body you are accused of being racist, or in the case of what marshwiggle stated above, making it the most important criterion. I o personally thought Marl Cuban's response to Musk re DEI was absolutely spot on.

My anecdata: Every year, I hire TAs for my course. They are all people who have taken my course. Over the years I've hired men, women, of various ethnicities, etc. When choosing who to hire, I look at the final grades of the applicants, and I typically choose the highest available. Usually the people I hire have grades in the 90's from my course. My experience is that if I have 2 TAS, and one got a 90 in my course, and the other got a 95, I can see the difference in  quality as a TA. They're both competent, but that difference is visible.

If I were to impose some a priori condition on who to hire, even if it were for *"white male", it would often get me less than the best person.

So I'm skeptical that imposing identity criteria up front is a good idea, especially in a much more selective process (and with much higher stakes) than my TA hiring.

(*And white males typically make up a significant portion of my class, but they don't always include the top student in the class.)

Something else crossed my mind today, wrt academics and plagiarism: say Asst. Prof. X had engaged in serial plagiarism, not only in their diss, but then in subsequent published scholarship, and that this was discovered by his school prior to his going up for tenure-- would this nuke X's tenure candidacy?

Since Neil Gorsuch went to Harvard Law School:

https://www.politico.com/story/2017/04/gorsuch-writings-supreme-court-236891 (https://www.politico.com/story/2017/04/gorsuch-writings-supreme-court-236891).

What's good for the goose is good for the gander, though I find Clarence Thomas's corruption far more problematic. Who knows, maybe Thomas is a serial plagiarist also.

Quote from: kaysixteen on January 05, 2024, 09:19:41 PMSomething else crossed my mind today, wrt academics and plagiarism: say Asst. Prof. X had engaged in serial plagiarism, not only in their diss, but then in subsequent published scholarship, and that this was discovered by his school prior to his going up for tenure-- would this nuke X's tenure candidacy?

We discovered sustained plagiarism in one of our faculty who was pre-tenure. I saw the plagiarized passages and hoo boy, no mistake that it was out-and-out plagiarism. A report was made, an investigation began. Lo and behold, the faculty member moved to a job elsewhere before the investigation got very far. I don't know if someone tipped off the new place — I was a very lowly beginner at that point, so I was not in a position to contact the new place (in fact I don't even think I knew where they went).

Quote from: spork on January 06, 2024, 12:20:27 AMSince Neil Gorsuch went to Harvard Law School:

https://www.politico.com/story/2017/04/gorsuch-writings-supreme-court-236891 (https://www.politico.com/story/2017/04/gorsuch-writings-supreme-court-236891).

What's good for the goose is good for the gander, though I find Clarence Thomas's corruption far more problematic. Who knows, maybe Thomas is a serial plagiarist also.

This wouldn't surprise me. Thomas was the designated "minority" shoo-in, as some of you might recall.

Examples of Gay's plagiarism (https://freebeacon.com/campus/harvard-president-claudine-gay-hit-with-six-new-charges-of-plagiarism/) --apologies if this link has been posted before and also for relying on The Washington Free Beacon.

Interesting article from The New Yorker interviewing the guy she allegedly plagiarized from. (https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/why-some-academics-are-reluctant-to-call-claudine-gay-a-plagiarist)

Quote from: ciao_yall on January 06, 2024, 09:29:13 AMInteresting article from The New Yorker interviewing the guy she allegedly plagiarized from. (https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/why-some-academics-are-reluctant-to-call-claudine-gay-a-plagiarist)

Of particular interest:

QuoteWhat I teach my students, and what most people in the social sciences teach their students, is that borrowing either large chunks of text or a paragraph's exact logic constitutes plagiarism. So, yes, that's technically plagiarism.

Why do you append "technically" to the front of "plagiarism"?

I use the analogy of speeding. If you're driving fifty-seven miles per hour on a fifty-five-mile-per-hour highway, that's technically speeding. But we don't expect law enforcement to crack down any time behavior crosses over the line. The plagiarism in question here did not take an idea of any significance from my work. It didn't steal my thunder. It didn't stop me from publishing. And the bit she used from us was not in any way a major component of what made her research important or valuable.

QuoteBut the difference between plagiarism among academics and plagiarism in journalism or undergraduate papers is that what matters is less a few words or phrases and more the bigger scholarly ideas. Somebody could steal good ideas I had, write them up differently, and they'd have done serious damage to me. Whereas, if Claudine had borrowed three times as many words, but it was all in an unimportant part of the paper, that would have done me no harm.

QuoteI don't want to suggest that any borrowing from one scholar to another would be O.K., or should be held to a lower standard than we hold students to. But we're talking about a specific case here, where Claudine and I were in the same lab, working with the same adviser, moving forward the same method. Borrowing is extremely common. Had we been in the natural sciences, I'm not sure the plagiarism case ever would have involved me because there would have been a decent chance that Gary King, our adviser, would have been the final author on both her work and mine.

QuoteI've seen a number of academics trying to describe what Gay did as something other than plagiarism. A few weeks ago, for example, before Gay resigned, Harvard itself described her actions as using "duplicative language without appropriate attribution." Why is it controversial to call what she did plagiarism?

It shouldn't be controversial to call what Claudine did plagiarism. We teach students that it's plagiarism all the time. But the problem with using language that's customary within academic institutions in a public setting is that outsiders will warp what we say. The one phrase I've intentionally avoided using is "academic dishonesty." Within an academic setting, plagiarism is an example of academic dishonesty. But if I'd said she committed academic dishonesty, that would have been warped and manipulated quite deceptively. So I avoided the term.

Quote from: Parasaurolophus on January 06, 2024, 09:50:56 AM

Quote from: ciao_yall on January 06, 2024, 09:29:13 AMInteresting article from The New Yorker interviewing the guy she allegedly plagiarized from. (https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/why-some-academics-are-reluctant-to-call-claudine-gay-a-plagiarist)

Of particular interest:

QuoteWhat I teach my students, and what most people in the social sciences teach their students, is that borrowing either large chunks of text or a paragraph's exact logic constitutes plagiarism. So, yes, that's technically plagiarism.

Why do you append "technically" to the front of "plagiarism"?

I use the analogy of speeding. If you're driving fifty-seven miles per hour on a fifty-five-mile-per-hour highway, that's technically speeding. But we don't expect law enforcement to crack down any time behavior crosses over the line. The plagiarism in question here did not take an idea of any significance from my work. It didn't steal my thunder. It didn't stop me from publishing. And the bit she used from us was not in any way a major component of what made her research important or valuable.

So by his "technical" definition, it's no big deal to take big chunks from Wikipedia or similar without attribution because it doesn't "steal [their] thunder" or "stop [them] from publishing"?

He seems to be conflating copyright infringement with plagiarism; i.e. if the person who was copied from doesn't really care, it's no biggie. No, plagiarism is getting credit for work you didn't produce, whether or not the producer cares (or is even alive).

Quote from: marshwiggle on January 06, 2024, 10:22:12 AM

Quote from: Parasaurolophus on January 06, 2024, 09:50:56 AM

Quote from: ciao_yall on January 06, 2024, 09:29:13 AMInteresting article from The New Yorker interviewing the guy she allegedly plagiarized from. (https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/why-some-academics-are-reluctant-to-call-claudine-gay-a-plagiarist)

Of particular interest:

QuoteWhat I teach my students, and what most people in the social sciences teach their students, is that borrowing either large chunks of text or a paragraph's exact logic constitutes plagiarism. So, yes, that's technically plagiarism.

Why do you append "technically" to the front of "plagiarism"?

I use the analogy of speeding. If you're driving fifty-seven miles per hour on a fifty-five-mile-per-hour highway, that's technically speeding. But we don't expect law enforcement to crack down any time behavior crosses over the line. The plagiarism in question here did not take an idea of any significance from my work. It didn't steal my thunder. It didn't stop me from publishing. And the bit she used from us was not in any way a major component of what made her research important or valuable.

So by his "technical" definition, it's no big deal to take big chunks from Wikipedia or similar without attribution because it doesn't "steal [their] thunder" or "stop [them] from publishing"?

He seems to be conflating copyright infringement with plagiarism; i.e. if the person who was copied from doesn't really care, it's no biggie. No, plagiarism is getting credit for work you didn't produce, whether or not the producer cares (or is even alive).

The "technical definition" correctly identifies it as problematic. Subsequently, he minimizes the problem.

And it's true that, compared to wholesale paper copying or theft of ideas, it's not as bad. But that doesn't make it acceptable.

But, yeah. Once you have a PhD, you should be beyond that kind of "sloppiness". That you aren't suggests a bigger underlying problem.

Gay didn't "allegedly" plagiarize from Voss; such copying is considered plagiarism in Freshman Comp classes in most academic institutions, including Harvard. Voss makes it very clear that he is merely protecting his job.

QuoteDo you think that Gay should have been fired from her job rather than being allowed to resign? And do you think that she should get to remain on Harvard's faculty?

You're asking me about these bigger-picture academic questions that I'm not comfortable answering. Claudine Gay was an immensely successful political scientist and university administrator. I'm off in the trenches teaching two-hundred-person undergraduate introductory classes. These questions of what should happen to Claudine Gay—we're so far beyond my pay grade.

I would say that unless she admits to it, then it will remain "alleged" since she was never afforded any kind of hearing  to determine whether or not this happened and what exactly she did. Or maybe she was, but decided to just resign instead.

I think what you really mean is that the accusation constitutes plagiarism, which may be true, but I don't think we can say that the accusation itself is one hundred percent true.

She did admit to the plagiarism in her resignation letter where she states that she had asked the journals to make the corrections--my suspicion is that she had to revise her articles so that the plagiarisms or misappropriated passages were corrected.

The final stages in the events/communication that led to the resignation (https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/06/business/claudine-gay-harvard-corporation-board.html), according to the NYT:

QuoteHow Harvard's Board Broke Up With Claudine Gay
Facing intense pressure, it went from standing behind her as the university's president to pushing her out within weeks.

Let me know if anyone would like me to post the link to the article--I might have two or three articles left that I can share.

This makes me nervous.

QuoteI don't want to suggest that any borrowing from one scholar to another would be O.K., or should be held to a lower standard than we hold students to. But we're talking about a specific case here, where Claudine and I were in the same lab, working with the same adviser, moving forward the same method.

Thinking about my dissertation - where is the line between common language and methods to plagiarism? I wrote mine from the ground up, as it were, and didn't plagiarize as far as I can consider. But can anyone's work stand up to this level of scrutiny, from paragraph to paragraph?

Quote from: ciao_yall on January 06, 2024, 02:50:28 PMThis makes me nervous.

QuoteI don't want to suggest that any borrowing from one scholar to another would be O.K., or should be held to a lower standard than we hold students to. But we're talking about a specific case here, where Claudine and I were in the same lab, working with the same adviser, moving forward the same method.

Thinking about my dissertation - where is the line between common language and methods to plagiarism? I wrote mine from the ground up, as it were, and didn't plagiarize as far as I can consider. But can anyone's work stand up to this level of scrutiny, from paragraph to paragraph?

I think so, and I'm not just speaking about myself. I think that the nature of the plagiarism in Gay's work is pretty telling. It's pretty much all cases of her failing to properly paraphrase--i.e., she changes a word here and there and calls it a day, rather than writing from scratch. Students do this all the time because they don't understand that it's not paraphrasing. That's what resulted in me rewriting my grade 6 report on the ISS over and over and over again, until my mother realized that I just didn't understand that putting things "in my own words" didn't just mean "words whose meaning I know".

In this case, it seems clear she knew she had to do something, but wasn't really clear on what. That's both a relatively minor failing--it's not the kind of deliberate and nefarious plagiarism ordinary people have in mind when they hear the word--and quite a troubling one (since someone with a PhD ought to know better). I don't think it's the sort of thing that seriously undermines her scholarship (it's "sloppiness", as others are calling it). It's not the sort of thing one should be hounded out of one's job for (stealing and translating a graduate student's work, as happened to a friend of mine, is!). But I do think it's the kind of thing that seriously undermines her ability to lead an educational institution (since it's "technically" plagiarism).

I'm reasonably confident that most of us are not that "sloppy". Despite what people in some quarters are insisting, most of these instances are really not cases of someone formulating a definition of a technical term in a way that's standard to the field (e.g. in philosophy, an argument is a set of statements, at least one of which--the premise--is offered in support of another--the conclusion. Google that, and you'll come up with any number of basically the same formulations, because that's just what we say an argument is, and that's a bedrock fact.) I, for one, discuss technical stuff all the time, including from other fields. When I do so, I work pretty hard to make sure I understand how the thing works so that I can describe it for myself without relying on someone else's description.

Quote from: ciao_yall on January 06, 2024, 02:50:28 PMThis makes me nervous.

QuoteI don't want to suggest that any borrowing from one scholar to another would be O.K., or should be held to a lower standard than we hold students to. But we're talking about a specific case here, where Claudine and I were in the same lab, working with the same adviser, moving forward the same method.

Thinking about my dissertation - where is the line between common language and methods to plagiarism? I wrote mine from the ground up, as it were, and didn't plagiarize as far as I can consider. But can anyone's work stand up to this level of scrutiny, from paragraph to paragraph?

Suppose someone is doing a replication study. Using this sort of low bar for plagiarism:

• Since it's a replication, all of the introduction will be the same, (with a sentence or two added about the specific study being replicated, properly cited.)
• Since it's a replication, all of the methodology will be the same.
• Since it's a replication, all of the analysis will be the same, with just their data, graphs, etc. replacing the original
• If the replication was successful, then the discussion and conclusions will be the same, (again with a sentence or two added referring to the original with proper citation).
• All of the bibliography will be the same, with the addition of the original article reference.

So about 90% of the article, could, in principle, be copied directly to avoid extra work. It wouldn't "steal thunder" from the original authors, since it's clearly identified as a replication.

It's a real pain in the neck to have to recreate in your own words what has already been done, but that's why it's not fair not to; because it's a freakin' lot of work. You shouldn't get credit for work that someone else did. Period.

I don't wish to divert readers from this interesting flow, but this spot is the place to insert an addition to the sordid mess.

Apparently Bill Ackman has been stirring the pot in Cambridge in other intersting ways. He was a major benefactor whe disgraced biologist David Sabatini was fired from MIT. Wahoo brought us up to speed on the mess nearly a year ago,

Quote from: Wahoo Redux on February 01, 2023, 10:50:11 AMSabatini's situation is a bit more complicated

The Ackman angle is covered by CNN. (https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/12/us/ackman-sabatini-mit-whitehead-institute-sexual-misconduct/index.html)

Quote from: Hibush on January 06, 2024, 07:05:33 PMI don't wish to divert readers from this interesting flow, but this spot is the place to insert an addition to the sordid mess.

Apparently Bill Ackman has been stirring the pot in Cambridge in other intersting ways. He was a major benefactor whe disgraced biologist David Sabatini was fired from MIT. Wahoo brought us up to speed on the mess nearly a year ago,

Quote from: Wahoo Redux on February 01, 2023, 10:50:11 AMSabatini's situation is a bit more complicated

The Ackman angle is covered by CNN. (https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/12/us/ackman-sabatini-mit-whitehead-institute-sexual-misconduct/index.html)

Actually, it was the late great mahagonny during one of his many harangs against the state of the world who brought this guy up.  I just looked into it.  It's one of those truly problematic cases. 

Quote from: ciao_yall on January 06, 2024, 02:50:28 PMThis makes me nervous.

QuoteI don't want to suggest that any borrowing from one scholar to another would be O.K., or should be held to a lower standard than we hold students to. But we're talking about a specific case here, where Claudine and I were in the same lab, working with the same adviser, moving forward the same method.

Thinking about my dissertation - where is the line between common language and methods to plagiarism? I wrote mine from the ground up, as it were, and didn't plagiarize as far as I can consider. But can anyone's work stand up to this level of scrutiny, from paragraph to paragraph?

We (comp instructors) spend several classroom hours going over what constitutes plagiarsim, especially with reference to citations. Students are given examples and exercises. In addition, I give students checklists to ensure that their assignments meet the MLA/APA formatting guidelines for content and formatting. Here are just a few examples from academic websites.
https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/avoiding_plagiarism/plagiarism_exercise.html
https://www.brandeis.edu/writing-program/resources/faculty/handouts/plagiarism-exercises.html
https://wr.english.fsu.edu/College-Composition/Plagiarism-Exercises
https://libguides.marist.edu/c.php?g=87279&p=562386

Last but not least, Harvard's very own guide to using sources (https://usingsources.fas.harvard.edu/what-constitutes-plagiarism-0).

Quote from: Langue_doc on January 07, 2024, 05:56:08 AMWe (comp instructors) spend several classroom hours going over what constitutes plagiarsim, especially with reference to citations. Students are given examples and exercises. In addition, I give students checklists to ensure that their assignments meet the MLA/APA formatting guidelines for content and formatting. Here are just a few examples from academic websites.
https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/avoiding_plagiarism/plagiarism_exercise.html
https://www.brandeis.edu/writing-program/resources/faculty/handouts/plagiarism-exercises.html
https://wr.english.fsu.edu/College-Composition/Plagiarism-Exercises
https://libguides.marist.edu/c.php?g=87279&p=562386

Last but not least, Harvard's very own guide to using sources (https://usingsources.fas.harvard.edu/what-constitutes-plagiarism-0).

IMO, most of these kinds of documents get an important thing about plagiarism wrong: they characterise its main harm as theft. Harvard's policy does this, for example. And certainly, when we're talking about academics plagiarizing, that seems like an appropriate characterization. But when it's students, I think the main harm is that they're lying to their instructors. The point of whatever the assessment is is just to check that they've done the work and are understanding some basic stuff. When they plagiarize, they're claiming that they've done the work when, in fact, they haven't. And they're deliberately trying to deceive their instructors about it.

What annoys me the most is when students keep lying to my face by denying it even when shown incontrovertible proof of their deception. Like... do you really think that I'll just believe you when you tell me the chapter you cited exists when I found the very same edition of the book you cited and I just showed you that it's not in there? I'm lazy, but I'm not stupid.

Quote from: Parasaurolophus on January 07, 2024, 07:36:39 AMIMO, most of these kinds of documents get an important thing about plagiarism wrong: they characterise its main harm as theft. Harvard's policy does this, for example. And certainly, when we're talking about academics plagiarizing, that seems like an appropriate characterization. But when it's students, I think the main harm is that they're lying to their instructors. The point of whatever the assessment is is just to check that they've done the work and are understanding some basic stuff. When they plagiarize, they're claiming that they've done the work when, in fact, they haven't. And they're deliberately trying to deceive their instructors about it.

This is why I always make a distinction with students between plagiarism and copyright infringement. Copyright infringement recognizes the harm of theft; i.e. the rightful person does not get credit for the work. Plagiarism, on the other hand, recognizes the harm of dishonesty; i.e. someone is taking credit for work that they didn't do. For the former, the victim is the creator of the work; for the latter, the victim is the audience.

Quote from: Parasaurolophus on January 07, 2024, 07:36:39 AMIMO, most of these kinds of documents get an important thing about plagiarism wrong: they characterise its main harm as theft. Harvard's policy does this, for example. And certainly, when we're talking about academics plagiarizing, that seems like an appropriate characterization. But when it's students, I think the main harm is that they're lying to their instructors.

I think that "steal" is better language for students, mainly because it conceptualizes something illegal and wrong, while lying to instructors may not carry that same emotional and ethical weight.

At risk of sounding like a broken record, we've trained students to think of college as a job credential and they go into such debt that many of them see nothing wrong with cheating the system which just makes it hard for them to get on in the world.

QuoteWhat annoys me the most is when students keep lying to my face by denying it even when shown incontrovertible proof of their deception. Like... do you really think that I'll just believe you when you tell me the chapter you cited exists when I found the very same edition of the book you cited and I just showed you that it's not in there? I'm lazy, but I'm not stupid.

My second year of grad-school teaching I got a freshman comp research paper that was clearly a PhD-level lab report on cloning Dolly the Sheep, including format and font.  I found the actual document complete with the scientists' names on Google within seconds.  The student vehemently denied copying-and-pasting the document and kept saying, "I don't know how this happened, but I wrote this!" Finally he emailed me and admitted he'd turned in a copied document.  It took all my strength not to email back, "No duh, dipshit.  The plagiarism might not get you kicked out this time, but your lameness probably should."

After a couple of these types of paper (none nearly as egregious as this example), Gay's sloppiness just doesn't seem that bad.  I suppose the level expected of a PhD dissertation is a much different criteria, however.

Quote from: Wahoo Redux on January 07, 2024, 04:31:12 PMI think that "steal" is better language for students, mainly because it conceptualizes something illegal and wrong, while lying to instructors may not carry that same emotional and ethical weight.

At risk of sounding like a broken record, we've trained students to think of college as a job credential and they go into such debt that many of them see nothing wrong with cheating the system which just makes it hard for them to get on in the world.

I'm not sure about that. The person they're stealing from is some nebulous other, and what they're taking seems pretty unimportant. But I'm right there, real, in their face, and angry (/disappointed).

At any rate, mine seem pretty concerned to convince me that they aren't lying, and disturbed when it becomes clear that they are and I know it!

Quote from: Wahoo Redux on January 07, 2024, 04:31:12 PM

Quote from: Parasaurolophus on January 07, 2024, 07:36:39 AMIMO, most of these kinds of documents get an important thing about plagiarism wrong: they characterise its main harm as theft. Harvard's policy does this, for example. And certainly, when we're talking about academics plagiarizing, that seems like an appropriate characterization. But when it's students, I think the main harm is that they're lying to their instructors.

I think that "steal" is better language for students, mainly because it conceptualizes something illegal and wrong, while lying to instructors may not carry that same emotional and ethical weight.

The problem with the idea of "stealing" is that it suggests there's nothing wrong with it if the other person approves of it. Students frequently copy from one another, and I've even seen a student hand in something one year from  another student the previous year. Just because someone allows someone else to submit something as their own doesn't remotely reduce the validity of the charge of plagiarism.

And I'm sure most students believe that people lying to them is completely unacceptable.

QuoteAfter a couple of these types of paper (none nearly as egregious as this example), Gay's sloppiness just doesn't seem that bad.  I suppose the level expected of a PhD dissertation is a much different criteria, however.

This is much worse, because Gay had the privilege of attending an exclusive private school before going to Stanford and Harvard. A couple of examples might not seem "that bad", but there appear to be several examples of missing attributions in her list of eleven publications. According to her website (https://aaas.fas.harvard.edu/people/claudine-gay) her Harvard dissertation as well as her Stanford thesis were awarded prizes by the departments concerned.

QuoteI earned my PhD from the Department of Government at Harvard University in 1998 and was awarded the department's Toppan Prize for the best dissertation in political science. I earned a Bachelor's degree in Economics from Stanford University, where I graduated in 1992 with Honors and Distinction and was awarded the Anna Laura Myers Prize for the best senior thesis in Economics.

Dancing around the word "plagiarism" does no one any favors. Regardless of the reasons--laziness or sloppiness to properly credit sources or willfully appropriating someone's ideas/findings, such copying is still cheating. Despite having the honor code in the syllabus, having one of the students read it aloud the first day of class, and warning the class that instructors are required to report instances of plagiarism, I once had a hand go up the first day of class, followed by a question as to whether or not I used Turnitin. I don't use Turnitin, so the student promptly uploaded a plagiarized low-stakes assignment on the LMS. When I showed Stu the original along with the webiste it was copied from, Stu withdrew. Stu had the option of resubmitting the assignment.

What Gay did was egregious, because there appears to be a pattern of forgetting to attribute sources, and even more so because she was the president of a university.

In the NYT today--

QuoteHarvard Defends Its Plagiarism Investigation  (https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/20/us/harvard-report-plagiarism-house-committee-claudine-gay.html)of Its Former President
The university released its most detailed account of its handling of plagiarism accusations against Claudine Gay, who resigned earlier this month.

The first six paragraphs of the article:

QuoteIn a report to a congressional committee, released on Friday, Harvard gave its most detailed account yet of its handling of the plagiarism accusations against Claudine Gay, who resigned this month as the university's president.

The basic outlines of the saga were known, but Harvard had not disclosed many details, which had led to questions about the impartiality and rigor of its investigation.

In its account, Harvard defended the thoroughness of its plagiarism review. It said an outside panel had found Dr. Gay's papers to be "sophisticated and original," with "virtually no evidence of intentional claiming of findings" that were not hers, even as it found a pattern of duplicative language in three papers.

But its account also shows a university governing board that was slow to do a full accounting of her work. Instead, over several weeks, Harvard scrambled to investigate a steady drip of plagiarism accusations, unable to give an immediate, authoritative response to questions about Dr. Gay's scholarship.

The report is part of a broader submission of documents by Harvard, made in response to a Dec. 20 letter from the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, which is investigating plagiarism and antisemitism accusations against universities. That committee held the now notorious hearing on campus antisemitism at which Dr. Gay and two other college presidents were criticized for their legalistic answers to questions about antisemitism.

The committee said it was currently reviewing Harvard's submission. So far, only the plagiarism report has been publicly released.

Quote from: Langue_doc on January 20, 2024, 06:27:41 AM

QuoteIn its account, Harvard defended the thoroughness of its plagiarism review. It said an outside panel had found Dr. Gay's papers to be "sophisticated and original," with "virtually no evidence of intentional claiming of findings" that were not hers, even as it found a pattern of duplicative language in three papers.

So are they basically saying that as long as it's not results published in the paper that are copied, it's not a big deal if other stuff is?

Quote from: marshwiggle on January 20, 2024, 07:02:53 AM

Quote from: Langue_doc on January 20, 2024, 06:27:41 AM

QuoteIn its account, Harvard defended the thoroughness of its plagiarism review. It said an outside panel had found Dr. Gay's papers to be "sophisticated and original," with "virtually no evidence of intentional claiming of findings" that were not hers, even as it found a pattern of duplicative language in three papers.

So are they basically saying that as long as it's not results published in the paper that are copied, it's not a big deal if other stuff is?

Authors sometimes paraphrase too closely to the original.  It's hard sometimes when someone says something so gracefully and perfectly to keep from absorbing it.  I am doubly watching myself as I get stuff ready for the publisher right now----although I assume no one would care as much if I used "duplicative language" as they do with Gay.

Quote from: Wahoo Redux on January 20, 2024, 07:53:33 AM

Quote from: marshwiggle on January 20, 2024, 07:02:53 AM

Quote from: Langue_doc on January 20, 2024, 06:27:41 AM

QuoteIn its account, Harvard defended the thoroughness of its plagiarism review. It said an outside panel had found Dr. Gay's papers to be "sophisticated and original," with "virtually no evidence of intentional claiming of findings" that were not hers, even as it found a pattern of duplicative language in three papers.

So are they basically saying that as long as it's not results published in the paper that are copied, it's not a big deal if other stuff is?

Authors sometimes paraphrase too closely to the original.  It's hard sometimes when someone says something so gracefully and perfectly to keep from absorbing it.  I am doubly watching myself as I get stuff ready for the publisher right now----although I assume no one would care as much if I used "duplicative language" as they do with Gay.

Agreed. When are you following an "editorial style" and when are you duplicative?

The sky is... Blue. Azure. Aquamarine. Cornflower. Sapphire.

Quote from: ciao_yall on January 20, 2024, 09:44:26 AM

Quote from: Wahoo Redux on January 20, 2024, 07:53:33 AM

Quote from: marshwiggle on January 20, 2024, 07:02:53 AM

Quote from: Langue_doc on January 20, 2024, 06:27:41 AM

QuoteIn its account, Harvard defended the thoroughness of its plagiarism review. It said an outside panel had found Dr. Gay's papers to be "sophisticated and original," with "virtually no evidence of intentional claiming of findings" that were not hers, even as it found a pattern of duplicative language in three papers.

So are they basically saying that as long as it's not results published in the paper that are copied, it's not a big deal if other stuff is?

Authors sometimes paraphrase too closely to the original.  It's hard sometimes when someone says something so gracefully and perfectly to keep from absorbing it.  I am doubly watching myself as I get stuff ready for the publisher right now----although I assume no one would care as much if I used "duplicative language" as they do with Gay.

Agreed. When are you following an "editorial style" and when are you duplicative?

The sky is... Blue. Azure. Aquamarine. Cornflower. Sapphire.

So I guess then if students run someone else's stuff through a synonymizer and submit it as their own, it's no problem, since that's way less "duplicative".

Quote from: Wahoo Redux on January 20, 2024, 07:53:33 AM

Quote from: marshwiggle on January 20, 2024, 07:02:53 AM

Quote from: Langue_doc on January 20, 2024, 06:27:41 AM

QuoteIn its account, Harvard defended the thoroughness of its plagiarism review. It said an outside panel had found Dr. Gay's papers to be "sophisticated and original," with "virtually no evidence of intentional claiming of findings" that were not hers, even as it found a pattern of duplicative language in three papers.

So are they basically saying that as long as it's not results published in the paper that are copied, it's not a big deal if other stuff is?

Authors sometimes paraphrase too closely to the original.  It's hard sometimes when someone says something so gracefully and perfectly to keep from absorbing it.  I am doubly watching myself as I get stuff ready for the publisher right now----although I assume no one would care as much if I used "duplicative language" as they do with Gay.

Duplicative language is considered plagiarism, at least in Freshman Comp classes where we spend hours going over examples of what is considered plagiarism. See some of the postings earlier in the week on the Bang your head thread. Institutions and instructors do care. All Gay had to do was to use quotation marks. Harvard and other institutions penalize students for improper citations including the omission of quotation marks. Talk to anyone who teaches writing/comp classes.

Defining Deviancy Down.

Quote from: Langue_doc on January 20, 2024, 01:52:32 PMTalk to anyone who teaches writing/comp classes.

Well, that would be me.

It is definitely plagiarism, but there are levels, and this does not rise to the level of serious academic misconduct imo. That said, I have come to the conclusion that it is serious enough for her to have lost the presidency over, even though it was obviously not an investigation carried out in good faith by her critics.

Quote from: Sun_Worshiper on January 26, 2024, 08:21:58 AMIt is definitely plagiarism, but there are levels, and this does not rise to the level of serious academic misconduct imo. That said, I have come to the conclusion that it is serious enough for her to have lost the presidency over, even though it was obviously not an investigation carried out in good faith by her critics.

It seems to me that the obvious standard that should be applied is one that is, at least, as strict as what would be applied to students. So, if you'd fail a student for it, then you sure better have pretty serious consequences for the president of Harvard-freakin-University.
Otherwise stop hassling students over it.

Quote from: marshwiggle on January 26, 2024, 09:26:43 AM

Quote from: Sun_Worshiper on January 26, 2024, 08:21:58 AMIt is definitely plagiarism, but there are levels, and this does not rise to the level of serious academic misconduct imo. That said, I have come to the conclusion that it is serious enough for her to have lost the presidency over, even though it was obviously not an investigation carried out in good faith by her critics.

It seems to me that the obvious standard that should be applied is one that is, at least, as strict as what would be applied to students. So, if you'd fail a student for it, then you sure better have pretty serious consequences for the president of Harvard-freakin-University.
Otherwise stop hassling students over it.

Applying any minimal standard of honesty would bar Gay from a faculty position at any university.

While it may indeed seem that some of the plagiarizing is trivial -- forgetting to enclose one or the other passage in quotes -- there are 40 to 50 of such instances! It seems plagiarism for Gay is a way of life.

Less attention has been paid in public to her apparent data falsification. She got different results in her PhD thesis and the paper that ensued from it. Ostensibly, the same data was used, but it could not have been. She also refused to make her data public. The lack of attention is probably due to the fact that most journalists don't understand the problem.

For all that, if Harvard had wanted to keep her, that would've been OK. Competition among universities would right things.

Quote from: dismalist on January 26, 2024, 09:50:02 AM

Quote from: marshwiggle on January 26, 2024, 09:26:43 AM

Quote from: Sun_Worshiper on January 26, 2024, 08:21:58 AMIt is definitely plagiarism, but there are levels, and this does not rise to the level of serious academic misconduct imo. That said, I have come to the conclusion that it is serious enough for her to have lost the presidency over, even though it was obviously not an investigation carried out in good faith by her critics.

It seems to me that the obvious standard that should be applied is one that is, at least, as strict as what would be applied to students. So, if you'd fail a student for it, then you sure better have pretty serious consequences for the president of Harvard-freakin-University.
Otherwise stop hassling students over it.

Applying any minimal standard of honesty would bar Gay from a faculty position at any university.

While it may indeed seem that some of the plagiarizing is trivial -- forgetting to enclose one or the other passage in quotes -- there are 40 to 50 of such instances! It seems plagiarism for Gay is a way of life.

Less attention has been paid in public to her apparent data falsification. She got different results in her PhD thesis and the paper that ensued from it. Ostensibly, the same data was used, but it could not have been. She also refused to make her data public. The lack of attention is probably due to the fact that most journalists don't understand the problem.

For all that, if Harvard had wanted to keep her, that would've been OK. Competition among universities would right things.

A faculty position? No. Not necessarily. It is not imo the case that this rises to serious academic misconduct of the sort that would lead to firing a tenured faculty member. She did not, as far as we know, fake or manipulate her data, for example - if she did, as you suggest, then that is a different story. But the presidency is not like a tenured faculty position, it is a public facing position that requires the confidence of various stakeholders, and she had lost that.

I don't follow what you are saying about competition among universities. That already exists.

And there is no uniform standard for failing students on plagiarism. Everywhere I have ever been, the language is something like "students can suffer various penalties for plagiarism, including failing the assignment or even the class." Plagiarism has levels to it and the penalties for students vary accordingly.

There are levels of plagiarism, and levels of potential punishment for it, but Harvard's own www statement makes it clear that the conduct was plagiaristic, and would produce, ahem, negative consequences for even a first-semester frosh doing what Gay clearly did-- and doing it once, unlike Gay's serial plagiarism adventurism.   And in any case, does any school not punish unambiguous plagiarism at all?

Quote from: kaysixteen on January 26, 2024, 11:05:28 AMThere are levels of plagiarism, and levels of potential punishment for it, but Harvard's own www statement makes it clear that the conduct was plagiaristic, and would produce, ahem, negative consequences for even a first-semester frosh doing what Gay clearly did-- and doing it once, unlike Gay's serial plagiarism adventurism.   And in any case, does any school not punish unambiguous plagiarism at all?

It has produced punishment for Gay. The question is whether that punishment should be expanded to a lost faculty position.

Quote from: Sun_Worshiper on January 26, 2024, 11:16:35 AM

Quote from: kaysixteen on January 26, 2024, 11:05:28 AMThere are levels of plagiarism, and levels of potential punishment for it, but Harvard's own www statement makes it clear that the conduct was plagiaristic, and would produce, ahem, negative consequences for even a first-semester frosh doing what Gay clearly did-- and doing it once, unlike Gay's serial plagiarism adventurism.   And in any case, does any school not punish unambiguous plagiarism at all?

It has produced punishment for Gay. The question is whether that punishment should be expanded to a lost faculty position.

The level of opprobrium and discipline far outstrip the crime of "duplicative language" in a dissertation written a quarter century ago.

Quote from: Wahoo Redux on January 26, 2024, 11:20:48 AM

Quote from: Sun_Worshiper on January 26, 2024, 11:16:35 AM

Quote from: kaysixteen on January 26, 2024, 11:05:28 AMThere are levels of plagiarism, and levels of potential punishment for it, but Harvard's own www statement makes it clear that the conduct was plagiaristic, and would produce, ahem, negative consequences for even a first-semester frosh doing what Gay clearly did-- and doing it once, unlike Gay's serial plagiarism adventurism.   And in any case, does any school not punish unambiguous plagiarism at all?

It has produced punishment for Gay. The question is whether that punishment should be expanded to a lost faculty position.

The level of opprobrium and discipline far outstrip the crime of "duplicative language" in a dissertation written a quarter century ago.

Were the standards for plagiarism lower then?

John McWhorter, in his article "We Need a New Word for 'Plagiarism'" (https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/23/opinion/plagiarism-claudine-gay-ackman-oxman.html), argues for distinguishing between "duplicative language" and plagiarism, the stealing of ideas.

The first few paragraphs from the article:

QuoteIn December, a group of outside scholars appointed by a Harvard board was roundly criticized for describing the plagiarism that ultimately contributed to former President Claudine Gay's resignation as "duplicative language." This description was seen by many as an effort to minimize Gay's transgression. And it was. But I think the board was on to something useful nevertheless. The term "plagiarism" is overstretched.

Ironically, Bill Ackman, the billionaire hedge fund manager who worked so hard to push Claudine Gay out of her job, would now seem to agree. In a twist so uncanny you couldn't have written it any better, Ackman's wife, Neri Oxman, a former M.I.T. professor, appears to have lifted chunks of her dissertation from other sources, including Wikipedia.

In the blink of an eye after these revelations, Ackman acquired an exquisite sensitivity to the difference between real plagiarism and the other, accidental-word-copying kind. Yet the difference he suddenly understands is one that anyone can. To think that neither Gay nor Oxman "really" plagiarized, or to believe that the sanction for such errors should be less severe, is an entirely reasonable point of view.

But here in this world, in this language, the term "plagiarism" still covers both "real" plagiarism — the theft of another person's ideas — and the use, perhaps inadvertent, of another person's language. For that reason, I continue to think Gay was correct to step down — especially given that Harvard, like many universities, explicitly defines plagiarism for undergraduates in the "old" way. If accidental cutting and pasting could theoretically get a sophomore suspended, repeated instances of the same should lead an administrator to step down. Meanwhile, given his support for the attacks on Gay, Ackman's defense of his wife is a hot mess: He should knock off the sputtering and just eat crow.

Leave it to a linguist to say this, but we need another word. In this case, we need a word for the relatively minor, "duplicative language" version of plagiarism.

To present someone else's ideas as one's own is unquestionably wrong, in academia and elsewhere. However, to cite boilerplate statements — the assumptions basic to a field, for instance — word for word, or close to it, without citing the person who typed the words originally is something different, and vastly less egregious. I would argue, in fact, that there may be nothing wrong with it at all, in particular when it is done accidentally.

John McWhorter in all honor, but

Quote... there may be nothing wrong with it at all, in particular when it is done accidentally

.

Sure. But not 40 - 50 accidents. As I said, that's a way of life.

Quote from: dismalist on January 26, 2024, 12:48:12 PMJohn McWhorter in all honor, but

Quote... there may be nothing wrong with it at all, in particular when it is done accidentally

.

Sure. But not 40 - 50 accidents. As I said, that's a way of life.

And, as I understand it, there were paragraphs that were "duplicative; that's not like a phrase here and there.

I think "duplicative language" is to plagiarism what "alternative facts" is to lying.

Quote from: marshwiggle on January 26, 2024, 12:58:15 PM

Quote from: dismalist on January 26, 2024, 12:48:12 PMJohn McWhorter in all honor, but

Quote... there may be nothing wrong with it at all, in particular when it is done accidentally

.

Sure. But not 40 - 50 accidents. As I said, that's a way of life.

And, as I understand it, there were paragraphs that were "duplicative; that's not like a phrase here and there.

I think "duplicative language" is to plagiarism what "alternative facts" is to lying.

"My truth" is the technical term. :-)

Things can be nuanced fellas. And we should be able to differentiate between different types of plagiarism, even as we are clear that all forms are bad (just as we do with lying).

Quote from: marshwiggle on January 26, 2024, 11:46:05 AM

Quote from: Wahoo Redux on January 26, 2024, 11:20:48 AM

Quote from: Sun_Worshiper on January 26, 2024, 11:16:35 AM

Quote from: kaysixteen on January 26, 2024, 11:05:28 AMThere are levels of plagiarism, and levels of potential punishment for it, but Harvard's own www statement makes it clear that the conduct was plagiaristic, and would produce, ahem, negative consequences for even a first-semester frosh doing what Gay clearly did-- and doing it once, unlike Gay's serial plagiarism adventurism.   And in any case, does any school not punish unambiguous plagiarism at all?

It has produced punishment for Gay. The question is whether that punishment should be expanded to a lost faculty position.

The level of opprobrium and discipline far outstrip the crime of "duplicative language" in a dissertation written a quarter century ago.

Were the standards for plagiarism lower then?

Not that I know of, but it would have been much more difficult to check without technology.  And even today, according to what I read, her writing is simply sloppy in regards to source-material and not really germane to her job as prez after 26 years of solid academic work.  We just live in knee-jerk intemperate times.

Quote from: Sun_Worshiper on January 26, 2024, 02:16:17 PMThings can be nuanced fellas. And we should be able to differentiate between different types of plagiarism, even as we are clear that all forms are bad (just as we do with lying).

I have no problem with that from anyone who makes the same distinctions with students. I can't remember ever hearing any discussion of plagiarism at any university distinguishing it from "duplicative language", but I'd be fascinated to see the difference defined and explained with examples for undergraduates.

People on here who discuss plagiarism with students (and deal with it) are welcome to enlighten me.

Quote from: marshwiggle on January 26, 2024, 06:45:19 PM

Quote from: Sun_Worshiper on January 26, 2024, 02:16:17 PMThings can be nuanced fellas. And we should be able to differentiate between different types of plagiarism, even as we are clear that all forms are bad (just as we do with lying).

I have no problem with that from anyone who makes the same distinctions with students. I can't remember ever hearing any discussion of plagiarism at any university distinguishing it from "duplicative language", but I'd be fascinated to see the difference defined and explained with examples for undergraduates.

People on here who discuss plagiarism with students (and deal with it) are welcome to enlighten me.

This is part of the handout I used to give to my students that I plagiarized from the Purdue Owl.  I am not sure they are using this anymore on the OWL website.

QuoteOriginal (from "Plagiarism."  Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia.  2 Sep 2008.  1 Sep 2008 <http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Plagiarism&oldid=235682422>. Para 1.)
Plagiarism is the unauthorized use or close imitation of the language and thoughts of another author and the representation of them as one's own original work.

Plagiarized:

Plagiarism can be defined as the illegal use or imitation of the words and ideas of another author and the claiming of them as a writer's own.

Non-Plagiarized (basic):

Plagiarism is the "unauthorized use or close imitation" of the intellectual property (words, ideas, concepts, phrases, etc.) and the claim that this intellectual property is "one's own original work" ("Plagiarism" para. 1). 

Non-Plagiarized (advanced):

Plagiarism is the illegal and unacknowledged use of an author's intellectual property, which can be in the form of words, phrases, ideas, concepts, images, etc., and the false claim that that property is in fact the work of the plagiarizer.

The first example is straight-up plagiarism (the same words with maybe a single word substitution).

The second example is not plagiarized but could be the gray area plagiarism (uncomfortably close to the original, but experience indicates that many professors will overlook this sort of duplicative language) and is it really plagiarism?.  Probably not.

The third example is a true paraphrase.

Also, experience has taught me that many students cite their source like----

According to Professor Marshwiggle, duplicative language is to plagiarism what alternative facts is to lying.

----without quotation marks or a citation in a recognized style at the end of the sentence.

Technically, this could be considered plagiarism, but no one does because it is clearly a lazy student who probably wrote their paper in a hurry and is not truly trying to cheat.

P.S.---"duplicative language" is a new coinage as far as I know; I've never heard it used outside the Gay case, but perhaps I am just out of the loop.

At least as serious a prob wrt Gay is the sheer amount of instances of plagiarism she chose to commit, all of which save that on her diss were committed whilst she was a PhD-possessing college professor.   Which honest professors did not get the jobs Gay has held, in order for her to have been able to cheat her way to academic success.  Do not let the door hit your ass on the way out.

Quote from: marshwiggle on January 26, 2024, 06:45:19 PM

Quote from: Sun_Worshiper on January 26, 2024, 02:16:17 PMThings can be nuanced fellas. And we should be able to differentiate between different types of plagiarism, even as we are clear that all forms are bad (just as we do with lying).

I have no problem with that from anyone who makes the same distinctions with students. I can't remember ever hearing any discussion of plagiarism at any university distinguishing it from "duplicative language", but I'd be fascinated to see the difference defined and explained with examples for undergraduates.

People on here who discuss plagiarism with students (and deal with it) are welcome to enlighten me.

I'm not endorsing the creation of a new category to be called "duplicative language." I'm just saying that there are degrees of bad behavior and those should correspond to the severity of the punishment.

Quote from: Wahoo Redux on January 26, 2024, 07:49:15 PMAlso, experience has taught me that many students cite their source like----

According to Professor Marshwiggle, duplicative language is to plagiarism what alternative facts is to lying.

----without quotation marks or a citation in a recognized style at the end of the sentence.

Technically, this could be considered plagiarism, but no one does because it is clearly a lazy student who probably wrote their paper in a hurry and is not truly trying to cheat.

I don't see how that fits the definition of plagiarism, since it's clearly not trying to pass someone else's work as one's own. (Now, if whoever is evaluating the document has a separate criterion for evaluation regarding proper citations, this might violate it, but that's a different story.)

QuoteP.S.---"duplicative language" is a new coinage as far as I know; I've never heard it used outside the Gay case, but perhaps I am just out of the loop.

Just like "alternative facts"; it's a term that was invented as a way of sort-of kind-of admitting that there's a reason this gets peoples' attention, but since the accused person is from "our" tribe, it doesn't really deserve the criticism that it would if the "other" tribe did it, (because they'd be doing it for nefarious purposes.)

Quote from: marshwiggle on January 27, 2024, 10:21:45 AMJust like "alternative facts"; it's a term that was invented as a way of sort-of kind-of admitting that there's a reason this gets peoples' attention, but since the accused person is from "our" tribe, it doesn't really deserve the criticism that it would if the "other" tribe did it, (because they'd be doing it for nefarious purposes.)

You know who first uttered the phrase "alternative fact," right?  And you know the context, correct?

Quote from: Wahoo Redux on January 27, 2024, 06:20:23 PM

Quote from: marshwiggle on January 27, 2024, 10:21:45 AMJust like "alternative facts"; it's a term that was invented as a way of sort-of kind-of admitting that there's a reason this gets peoples' attention, but since the accused person is from "our" tribe, it doesn't really deserve the criticism that it would if the "other" tribe did it, (because they'd be doing it for nefarious purposes.)

You know who first uttered the phrase "alternative fact," right?  And you know the context, correct?

Absolutely. And it was a "new coinage", as you put it, for basically trying to downplay the significance of something that, if done by their opponents, they would have denounced as totally unacceptable.

When journalists or politicians in the past got identified as having used others' material as their own, they got identified as having plagiarised. Have you ever once prior to this case heard any explanation suggesting that this was somehow not plagiarism? "Duplicative language" is a weasel phrase to try and soften the criticism of someone who is not supposed to be criticized.

Honestly, if anybody has had information in their syllabus describing something like this (even without the term "duplicative language") and indicating that it's not a big deal, I'd be happy to see it. In fact, people on here have even complained about students' use of synonomizers as a way to avoid a charge of plagiarism, and debated whether there's some way to prove it and punish them for it.

Turnitin has, if I recall correctly, a minimum string length of 8 words for comparison, so short phrases of similar language won't get flagged. But the only way people repeat whole paragraphs verbatim other than copying is to have intentionally memorized them, such as scripts and poems.

I don't have the attention span to read the never ending bun fights between Marshie and Wahoo, so I'll just paste in a a quote from John McWhirter in today's NY Times.  The longer article makes the point that setting up an argument by restating, with minor changes, generally accepted information is not the same "plagiarism" as claiming someone's original ideas as one's own.

So..... it seems there may be cases of PLAGIARISM as well as cases of plagiarism.  From what i can tell, Gay's transgressions appear to be in the 2nd group.  I'd argue that the whole situation is about 25% about academic honesty and about 75% about Fuck Harvard.

That said, I love schadenfreude. 

McWhirter's prose (properly with citations acknowledged) is below.

QuoteI find this passage at the start of one of the chapters: "In recent years researchers in artificial intelligence have unveiled systems that seem to 'write' without any human involvement. The best of these churn out remarkably convincing prose."

This is a simple statement of fact, provided as background for the meat of the chapter. It's not a notable idea, and it's not written with meaningful style. But if that sentence were to appear in a book of mine, even decades later, precisely as written or with just a couple of words changed, I'd be guilty of plagiarism. However, I'd be fine if I just reworded the thought minimally as: "Artificial intelligence researchers have recently developed algorithms that seem to 'write' by themselves, with the most advanced of them easily generating text that is uncannily similar to what a human would write."

A few phrases flipped and a few words changed, but the precise same content — so what purpose would my minimal rewording have served? It would seem to be a kind of politesse at best, prioritizing form over content.

Once again, McWorther in all honor, but I think he's wrong here. His error may be discipline dependent. For his example, instead of rewriting

Quote"In recent years researchers in artificial intelligence have unveiled systems that seem to 'write' without any human involvement. The best of these churn out remarkably convincing prose."

by changing a few words, I would write: According to Smith [1776] and others¹, "in recent years ... ".

What we seem to have are two conventions clashing. I'm fairly certain that the Poli Sci convention is close to the Econ convention. I can't speak to conventions in Letters.

If I am wrong about two distinct existing conventions, and there is just one then McWorter is just playing with words, wishing there were two conventions. Useful definitions depend on existing conventions.

Quote from: secundem_artem on January 28, 2024, 03:42:34 PMI don't have the attention span to read the never ending bun fights between Marshie and Wahoo

Sometimes we agree.

Quote from: secundem_artem on January 28, 2024, 03:42:34 PMI don't have the attention span to read the never ending bun fights between Marshie and Wahoo,

One of the reasons I enjoy having these discussions is that Wahoo, who I think I'm safe in thinking would identify as progressive, is willing to point out when even progressives go too far. I respect that.

QuoteI'll just paste in a a quote from John McWhirter in today's NY Times.  The longer article makes the point that setting up an argument by restating, with minor changes, generally accepted information is not the same "plagiarism" as claiming someone's original ideas as one's own.

So..... it seems there may be cases of PLAGIARISM as well as cases of plagiarism.  From what i can tell, Gay's transgressions appear to be in the 2nd group. 

I like John McWhorter, but as I've said I can't begin to take these "gradations" of plagiarism seriously unless and until people want to say how they apply to everyone, from first year students to PhD candidates and professionals.

Any serious attempt to be consistent about it I'll be glad to entertain.

Freshmen comp students are drilled on what constitutes plagiarism. Here is a typical example of exercises (https://www.historians.org/teaching-and-learning/teaching-resources-for-historians/plagiarism-curricular-materials-for-history-instructors/exercises) students are given to decide whether or not a sentence or phrase in considered to be plagiarized:

QuoteExercise 3: Summarizing, Paraphrasing, Quoting, and Citing

Instructors should explain the proper use of summary, paraphrase, quotation, and citation before assigning the following exercise.

The passage below, taken from George Trevelyan's England in the Age of Wycliffe, 1368–1520, discusses the Peasant's Rising of 1381. The sentences that follow it use the passage as a source. Determine whether the sentences use and cite the material in the passage properly or whether they constitute plagiarism, and rewrite the sentences where necessary. All notation symbols refer to the footnote at the bottom of the exercise.

The demand for personal freedom, which had been the chief cause of revolt, was for the moment crushed. The Parliament of November gratefully confirmed the King's repeal of the liberating charters. A unanimous vote of county and town members together contradicted all rumours that the emancipation of the serfs was seriously considered by Parliament. The Rising had failed. But the process of manumission, which had been going on for so long, continued steadily during succeeding generations. Under the Tudors the last remains of serfage were swept away, and in James the First's reign it became a legal maxim that every Englishman was free. It must remain a matter of opinion whether this process was accelerated or retarded by the Peasants' Rising; it is impossible to apply hard facts to the solution of such a problem. (George Macaulay Trevelyan, England in the Age of Wycliffe, 1368-1520 (1899; reprint, New York: Harper and Row, 1963), 253.)

The events that followed the Peasant's Rising crushed the chief cause of the revolt: the demand for personal freedom.1 [Plagiarism. The sentence uses identical language to that found in the passage from Trevelyan: "chief cause of the revolt" and "the demand for personal freedom."]

Trevelyan found it difficult to determine the effect that the Peasant's Rising had on the development of freedom in England.1 [Correct. The sentence summarizes Trevelyan's idea and cites the source.]

Although freedom did not come all at once for England's serfs, George Trevelyan claims in England in the Age of Wycliffe, 1368–1520, that manumission "continued steadily during succeeding generations." [Incorrect citation. The writer may be trying to cite the source in the text, rather than in the notes, and fails to include the page number. But since the writer does place the borrowed material in quotation marks and attempts to cite Trevelyan, the sentence does not represent plagiarism.]

According to George Trevelyan, a vote confirming the King's repeal of the liberating charters "contradicted all rumours that the emancipation of the serfs was seriously considered by Parliament."1 [Plagiarism. Although the writer correctly cites the material in quotation marks, the phrase "confirming the King's repeal of the liberating charters" precisely tracks Trevelyan's language but remains unattributed.]

The idea that all Englishmen were born free did not become a common belief until the reign of James the First.1 [Correct. The sentence summarizes Trevelyan's claim and cites the source.]

Although the actions of the King and Parliament after the Peasant's Rising denied freedom to England's serfs, serfdom nevertheless continued to erode. By the reign of the Tudors, it had disappeared completely, and by the time of James the First, all Englishmen considered themselves free. The role played by the Peasant's Rising in this transition remains unclear. [Plagiarism. This is a good summary of Trevelyan's paragraph, but it fails to cite the source.]

The King of England reneged on his promises to the peasants, and in November 1381, Parliament confirmed the King's actions. [Correct. Since the sentence relies on Trevelyan only for factual material that is widely available elsewhere, the writer does not need to cite the source.]
1 George Macaulay Trevelyan, England in the Age of Wycliffe, 1368-1520 (1899; reprint, New York: Harper and Row, 1963), 253.

The so-called "duplicative language" is a new-fangled term, presumably designed to protect the egos and reputations of higher-ups who should know better.

Quote from: marshwiggle on January 29, 2024, 07:16:06 AMOne of the reasons I enjoy having these discussions is that Wahoo, who I think I'm safe in thinking would identify as progressive

No.  "Progressive" is largely conservative jargon.  I don't know anyone who self-identifies that way.  I am a registered independent and moderate left-leaning.

Never heard of a "bun fight" before.  I love learning new things here.

Quote from: Wahoo Redux on January 29, 2024, 10:09:52 AM

Quote from: marshwiggle on January 29, 2024, 07:16:06 AMOne of the reasons I enjoy having these discussions is that Wahoo, who I think I'm safe in thinking would identify as progressive

No.  "Progressive" is largely conservative jargon.  I don't know anyone who self-identifies that way.  I am a registered independent and moderate left-leaning.

I hear it all the time, especially in the media. Maybe there's a difference between Canadian and U.S. usage?

QuoteNever heard of a "bun fight" before.  I love learning new things here.

I think a "bun fight" is like in a high school cafeteria, where students are throwing buns at each other. (Either that or a conflict between Amish girls, or people with similar head coverings.)

Quote from: marshwiggle on January 29, 2024, 10:21:22 AM

Quote from: Wahoo Redux on January 29, 2024, 10:09:52 AM

Quote from: marshwiggle on January 29, 2024, 07:16:06 AMOne of the reasons I enjoy having these discussions is that Wahoo, who I think I'm safe in thinking would identify as progressive

No.  "Progressive" is largely conservative jargon.  I don't know anyone who self-identifies that way.  I am a registered independent and moderate left-leaning.

I hear it all the time, especially in the media. Maybe there's a difference between Canadian and U.S. usage?

"Progressive" is used in American media, but again, it is a term found in rightwing media.

QuoteNever heard of a "bun fight" before.  I love learning new things here.

I think a "bun fight" is like in a high school cafeteria, where students are throwing buns at each other. (Either that or a conflict between Amish girls, or people with similar head coverings.)

[/quote]

I thought it was when bunnies fought with dandelions. 

Progressive as a label has a long history in the US, and for many decades was not a pejorative at all. That has changed both with the right wing media as well as (in many ways) mainstream media in the last 10-15 years.

Now it is the chief diversity officer (https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2024/1/31/sherri-charleston-plagiarism-allegations/).

QuoteHarvard's Chief Diversity and Inclusion Officer Sherri A. Charleston faced 40 allegations of plagiarism in an anonymous complaint filed with the University on Monday.

The complaint, first reported by the Washington Free Beacon on Tuesday, alleged 28 instances of plagiarism in Charleston's doctoral dissertation at the University of Michigan and 12 allegations against a 2014 article in the Journal of Negro Education, co-authored with her husband LaVar J. Charleston and Michigan State University College of Education Dean Jerlando F.L. Jackson

Quote from: Wahoo Redux on January 31, 2024, 08:52:55 AMNow it is the chief diversity officer (https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2024/1/31/sherri-charleston-plagiarism-allegations/).

QuoteHarvard's Chief Diversity and Inclusion Officer Sherri A. Charleston faced 40 allegations of plagiarism in an anonymous complaint filed with the University on Monday.

The complaint, first reported by the Washington Free Beacon on Tuesday, alleged 28 instances of plagiarism in Charleston's doctoral dissertation at the University of Michigan and 12 allegations against a 2014 article in the Journal of Negro Education, co-authored with her husband LaVar J. Charleston and Michigan State University College of Education Dean Jerlando F.L. Jackson

Curiouser and curiouser

QuoteThe complaint also alleged that extensive passages in Sherri Charleston's 2009 Ph.D. dissertation lifted language from a 2005 book written by Rebecca J. Scott, a professor of history and law at the University of Michigan. Scott co-chaired Charleston's doctoral committee and advised Charleston on her dissertation.

Many passages describe or analyze historical events using phrases — and sometimes whole sentences — identical to those in Scott's book. In each case, Charleston cites Scott but does not quote the shared language.

That a lot of chutzpah; lifting passages for your dissertation from someone on your committee.

These are the folks who require professors

QuoteJanuary 30, 2024, 10:32:33 AM
to tell them about my deliberate efforts at Justice, Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging (JDEIB). I don't actively do anything other than try to treat folks fairly and not be an asshole.

See the JDEIB thread. It's perfectly legit to plagiraize as long as you use the right buzz words to virtue signal your anti-racist accomplishments.

Quote from: marshwiggle on January 31, 2024, 09:25:23 AM

Quote from: Wahoo Redux on January 31, 2024, 08:52:55 AMNow it is the chief diversity officer (https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2024/1/31/sherri-charleston-plagiarism-allegations/).

QuoteHarvard's Chief Diversity and Inclusion Officer Sherri A. Charleston faced 40 allegations of plagiarism in an anonymous complaint filed with the University on Monday.

The complaint, first reported by the Washington Free Beacon on Tuesday, alleged 28 instances of plagiarism in Charleston's doctoral dissertation at the University of Michigan and 12 allegations against a 2014 article in the Journal of Negro Education, co-authored with her husband LaVar J. Charleston and Michigan State University College of Education Dean Jerlando F.L. Jackson

Curiouser and curiouser

QuoteThe complaint also alleged that extensive passages in Sherri Charleston's 2009 Ph.D. dissertation lifted language from a 2005 book written by Rebecca J. Scott, a professor of history and law at the University of Michigan. Scott co-chaired Charleston's doctoral committee and advised Charleston on her dissertation.

Many passages describe or analyze historical events using phrases — and sometimes whole sentences — identical to those in Scott's book. In each case, Charleston cites Scott but does not quote the shared language.

That a lot of chutzpah; lifting passages for your dissertation from someone on your committee.

I'm reasonably confident I would notice, were I the supervisor in question!

I dunno that this particular case warrants the same treatment as Gay's, since it doesn't seem to me that it's a leadership position (and if the sources are credited, just not appropriately quoted).

I'm mot going to investigate the details because it's not worth my time. But it seems to be absolutely both (1) something that shouldn't happen, and (2) part of a bad-faith witch hunt.

Quote from: Parasaurolophus on January 31, 2024, 12:51:10 PM

Quote from: marshwiggle on January 31, 2024, 09:25:23 AM

Quote from: Wahoo Redux on January 31, 2024, 08:52:55 AMNow it is the chief diversity officer (https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2024/1/31/sherri-charleston-plagiarism-allegations/).

QuoteHarvard's Chief Diversity and Inclusion Officer Sherri A. Charleston faced 40 allegations of plagiarism in an anonymous complaint filed with the University on Monday.

The complaint, first reported by the Washington Free Beacon on Tuesday, alleged 28 instances of plagiarism in Charleston's doctoral dissertation at the University of Michigan and 12 allegations against a 2014 article in the Journal of Negro Education, co-authored with her husband LaVar J. Charleston and Michigan State University College of Education Dean Jerlando F.L. Jackson

Curiouser and curiouser

QuoteThe complaint also alleged that extensive passages in Sherri Charleston's 2009 Ph.D. dissertation lifted language from a 2005 book written by Rebecca J. Scott, a professor of history and law at the University of Michigan. Scott co-chaired Charleston's doctoral committee and advised Charleston on her dissertation.

Many passages describe or analyze historical events using phrases — and sometimes whole sentences — identical to those in Scott's book. In each case, Charleston cites Scott but does not quote the shared language.

That a lot of chutzpah; lifting passages for your dissertation from someone on your committee.

I'm reasonably confident I would notice, were I the supervisor in question!

I dunno that this particular case warrants the same treatment as Gay's, since it doesn't seem to me that it's a leadership position (and if the sources are credited, just not appropriately quoted).

I'm mot going to investigate the details because it's not worth my time. But it seems to be absolutely both (1) something that shouldn't happen, and (2) part of a bad-faith witch hunt.

I doubt I would notice, honestly. I can barely remember the details of some of my articles, let alone the specific wording.

Quote from: Langue_doc on January 31, 2024, 11:23:11 AMThese are the folks who require professors

QuoteJanuary 30, 2024, 10:32:33 AM
to tell them about my deliberate efforts at Justice, Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging (JDEIB). I don't actively do anything other than try to treat folks fairly and not be an asshole.

See the JDEIB thread. It's perfectly legit to plagiraize as long as you use the right buzz words to virtue signal your anti-racist accomplishments.

I really do wonder whether this branch of academia hasn't developed a tendency to let ideology trump academic standards.  I wish the fact that many of the charges being leveled are, as others have pointed out, being made in bad faith wasn't obscuring what may be a real story here.

Re "bun fights" (Which sounds like a specialized form of cafeteria food fight):  Years ago, on an entirely different forum, I heard this sort of thing referred to as "slap fights."

Quote from: apl68 on February 01, 2024, 07:41:00 AM

Quote from: Langue_doc on January 31, 2024, 11:23:11 AMThese are the folks who require professors

QuoteJanuary 30, 2024, 10:32:33 AM
to tell them about my deliberate efforts at Justice, Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging (JDEIB). I don't actively do anything other than try to treat folks fairly and not be an asshole.

See the JDEIB thread. It's perfectly legit to plagiraize as long as you use the right buzz words to virtue signal your anti-racist accomplishments.

I really do wonder whether this branch of academia hasn't developed a tendency to let ideology trump academic standards.  I wish the fact that many of the charges being leveled are, as others have pointed out, being made in bad faith wasn't obscuring what may be a real story here.

Re "bun fights" (Which sounds like a specialized form of cafeteria food fight):  Years ago, on an entirely different forum, I heard this sort of thing referred to as "slap fights."

"bun fight" actually has a dictionary definition.

(idiomatic) A debate or disagreement, usually with several parties involved, often political in nature.

(chiefly UK, slang) A formal tea party or other social gathering, especially one at which food is served.

Related terms
tea fight

So Brits were having nice tea parties, and then someone brought up some controversial tops, and the party devolved into a bun fight.

Quote from: Wahoo Redux on February 01, 2024, 08:59:03 AM"bun fight" actually has a dictionary definition.

(idiomatic) A debate or disagreement, usually with several parties involved, often political in nature.

(chiefly UK, slang) A formal tea party or other social gathering, especially one at which food is served.

Related terms
tea fight

So Brits were having nice tea parties, and then someone brought up some controversial tops, and the party devolved into a bun fight.

Well, on the other side of the pond, tea parties have a history of getting pretty intense.

Withdrawn.

Others have defined the term above.