Plagiarism at Harvard

[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.

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.

[Langue_doc]

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.

Do 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.

[Ruralguy]

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.

[Langue_doc]

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, according to the NYT:

How 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.

[ciao_yall]

This makes me nervous.

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.

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?

[Parasaurolophus]

This makes me nervous.

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.

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.

[marshwiggle]

This makes me nervous.

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.

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.

[Hibush]

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,

Sabatini's situation is a bit more complicated

The Ackman angle is covered by CNN.

[Wahoo Redux]

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,

Sabatini's situation is a bit more complicated

The Ackman angle is covered by CNN.

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. 

[Langue_doc]

This makes me nervous.

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.

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.

[Parasaurolophus]

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.

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.

[marshwiggle]

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.

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.

[Wahoo Redux]

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.

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.

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.

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.

[Parasaurolophus]

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.

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!

[marshwiggle]

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.

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.