Plagiarism at Harvard

[ciao_yall]

Marc 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.

[marshwiggle]

Marc 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.

[ciao_yall]

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.

[Ruralguy]

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.

[pgher]

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.

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.

[Wahoo Redux]

Plenty 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.

[jimbogumbo]

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.

[marshwiggle]

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.

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.)

[kaysixteen]

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?

[spork]

Since Neil Gorsuch went to Harvard Law School:

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.

[Hegemony]

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?

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).

[Langue_doc]

Since Neil Gorsuch went to Harvard Law School:

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 --apologies if this link has been posted before and also for relying on The Washington Free Beacon.

[ciao_yall]

Interesting article from The New Yorker interviewing the guy she allegedly plagiarized from.

[Parasaurolophus]

Interesting article from The New Yorker interviewing the guy she allegedly plagiarized from.

Of particular interest:

What 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.

But 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.

I 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.

I'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.

[marshwiggle]

Interesting article from The New Yorker interviewing the guy she allegedly plagiarized from.

Of particular interest:

What 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).