Finally, my expertise is acknowledged!

Speaking of Copiers...

(Image from Wikipedia)

I'm the plagiarism expert!

Appearing on my Yahoo Mail site yesterday afternoon and requesting my views on student plagiarism was an email from a certain Sharon Tse, who works as a reporter for Korea University's student magazine, The Granite Tower (pop-up alert). Concerning plagiarism, she posed approximately seven questions, to which I replied in a rather telegraphic fashion, referring her rather to my blog for more details.

For those of my readers with time on their hands and an inordinate interest in the trivial details of my life, read on as I quote Ms. Tse and myself -- intersplicing her queries with my replies:

Tse: Hi! This is Sharon Tse, a reporter of Granite Tower -- the English magazine of the Korea University. We are currently working on an article about plagiarism for our next issue. Knowing that ... [you were] a professor in KU before, we would like to know about your opinion on the the issue of plagiarism in Korea. We notice that you [have] now moved to a new university, so it may be a bit hard for us to meet up for an interview. In view of this, we are sending some questions that we want to ... [have answered] in this email.

Hodges: I'll try to respond to your questions in sequence.

Tse: 1/ Are there ... standard guidelines ... on plagiarism around the world/universities in Korea?

Hodges: 1. A standard definition for plagiarism exists, but it's not rigorously applied everywhere in the world. My impression is that plagiarism hasn't been taken very seriously in Korea. Here's an online plagiarism checker that can be used to check for plagiarism anywhere in the world -- if the plagiarist has used online sources:

Plagiarism Checker

Tse: 2/ Have you ever caught any cases of plagiarism of students? If yes, can you tell us the cases in details?

Hodges: 2. Yes, I have encountered very many cases of plagiarism in Korea, and I can provide some details. Go to my blog and read these entries:

Catching Plagiarists:

Netting Plagiarists
The Cleverest Plagiarists...
Most Egregious Plagiarism Ever!

Dealing with Plagiarists:

A student claims not to have plagiarized...
Prosecuting artful writing: another clever plagiarist bites the dust...
Most foolish plagiarism ever...
Serious Interlude: Plagiarism

Tse: 2-1/ Why do you think students plagiarize? What are circumstances that make students want to do it?

Hodges: 2.1 Why Students Plagiarize: Because they aren't taught to think for themselves and probably think that everyone cheats:

Cho Se-mi on the 'Korean mindset'
How the mighty are fallen...
Problems with the Korean Education System: Education Minister Kim Byong-joon

Tse: 3/ Are there any changes in the standard on plagiarism throughout the years?

Hodges: 3. I think that Korean universities are gradually becoming more aware of the problem. Korea University has recently gotten tougher on its professors.

Tse: 4/ How do you judge whether an essay/homework has plagiarized information from internet/books? How much efforts do the academy pay to caught cases of plagiarism?

Hodges: 4. Perceiving plagiarism is very easy after a few years of experience. Ascertaining plagiarism is particularly easy in Korea, for the plagiarized passages are so much better written than the passages composed by the student. Besides, online plagiarism is so easy to trace that the proof is obvious. Plagiarism from books is also obvious but harder to prove. I simply request that the suspected plagiarist bring the books used in the research and have the plagiarist show me the passages used. Plagiarism then becomes obvious.

I don't know if the academy in Korea takes plagiarism seriously enough yet.

Tse: 5/ What is the penalty for plagiarizing in your class?

Hodges: 5. The penalty was usually an "F" on the paper. An "F" on the final essay usually resulted in an "F" for the course.

Tse: 6/ Do you think Korean students think plagiarizing is not a serious crime? If so why?

Hodges: 6. Yes, I think that Korean students generally think this way. See my response to 2.1.

Tse: 7/ Why is plagiarizing considered a crime? (Why is it bad?)

Hodges: 7. Plagiarism is stealing. It's intellectual theft. Aside from the criminal aspect, plagiarism is dishonest and thus unethical.

Tse: Thank you very much for reading through this email and I am looking forward to receiving your reply soon.

Hodges: I hope that I've been of some help. If you have questions, please contact me.

Ms. Tse later responded to my replies:

Thank you very much for your prompt and comprehensive reply! Would it be okay if we put your answers in our article? Also, we would like to quote some cases in your blog too, would that be possible? Thank you very much again.

I gave permission. Indeed, I had expected them to quote from the stories of student plagiarizing as recounted in my blog, which is so much more interesting than my email replies (as those of you who have trudged along this far will certainly affirm). However, I voiced some reservations on being quoted:

Yes, you may quote. My email response was a bit telegraphic, so it's not particularly quote-worthy. If you want me to fill in some details on a specific response to one of the '7' questions posed, then contact me.

I would add one additional point on why plagiarism is so widespread in Korea. The Confucian tradition of scholarship was a rigorous one, but it lacked the concept of footnotes -- largely because footnotes were unnecessary for the scholars, who were so well trained in the classics and the important commentaries that they knew who and what was being quoted or alluded to without the need to be explicitly told. Footnotes become necessary when one is dealing with a more complex tradition, a combination of traditions, or a large and increasing body of knowledge because readers need to know who said what.

I could say more, but I'll refrain and only write more if you have specific questions.

You'll want to be careful quoting my blog, which is at times ironic, satirical, or even a bit sarcastic. If some remark seems strange, incomprehensible, or weird, you might want to check with me to find out what I meant.

Would I be allowed to see the article before it goes into print -- just in case I've been misunderstood? Plagiarism is a very sensitive issue, especially these days, and I don't want to offend anybody.

And please be careful in quoting examples of plagiarism from my blog, for the students -- despite being unnamed in my blog -- are perhaps still attending Korea University and might be embarrassed to find their 'crime' published in the Granite Tower even though they are not named.

I'll be interested in seeing what becomes of this online interview. For those of you interested in knowing more about Sharon Tse, if you visit this Korea University site, you'll learn that she's an exchange student from the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) -- and you'll also see her lovely photo. Too bad my interview is only online...

A student claims not to have plagiarized...

Sir Gawain Beheads the Green Knight

New penalties announced for plagiarism...

(Image from Wikipedia)

A Korea University student from my course in Medieval Literature wrote me an email:

I was in class 'The Middle Age's English Literature' actually I can't remember exactly .... Please consider my grade again. I can't understand my grade "F" .... I think I did my best in this class and also i've never been absent even once. Please.

I replied:

Your paper had a lot of problems.

The most serious problem was plagiarism, which is especially characteristic of page 5, which is almost entirely full of plagiarized material. You quote online sources word for word without using any quotation marks. Page 6 looks much the same, almost entirely copied from the internet.

Plagiarism results in an automatic "F" -- as I repeatedly made clear.

The student replied:

No, I didn't copy all the things from website absolutley .... I guess there was my mistake or something in my footnote. Eventhough, the reason make my grade worse but I can't understand "F" .... I sear, I did my best. I worked for many days .... My grade "F" made me be in a very difficult situation. If you don't understand me and even there is a concerete rule. Please consider my grade again. Actually I really really want to avoid "F", and I believe I did better than "F" .... Please proffessor.

I replied:

I have pasted below the material on pages 4 and 5 of your essay that you copied from GradeSaver, a website that belies its name if you simply plagiarize from it, as you did:

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

GradeSaver:

The Celts, the people who lived in the British Isles prior to the arrival of the Romans and the Anglo-Saxons, had a strong body of pagan belief, ritual practices, and stories surrounding those beliefs and practices. Many of the characters in these myths were gods and goddesses; many of their ritual practices and beliefs echoed motifs in their myths. As the Middle Ages progressed and Christianity grew more dominant, these motifs and characters were often preserved in the folklore and literature of the British Isles. Arthurian material is particularly notable for its ties to Celtic myth, for many of the characters and events in these stories resemble gods and motifs in the older myths.
...
As the poem progresses, this becomes especially complicated when set against the obvious Christianity in the story.
...
Christian belief and pagan ritual mingle in intricate ways in Gawain.

GradeSaver:

One further interpretation of the shield should be mentioned. Recall again the role that Celtic, pagan mythology plays in the poem. The Pentangle is often seen as a pagan, and not a Christian, symbol, so it is unusual that it should appear on Gawain's shield, with the image of Mary on the reverse side. The two-sided shield, with a pagan symbol on one side and a Christian symbol on the other, can thus represent the dual pagan-Christian nature of the story.

GradeSaver:

There are pagan connotations with the obvious emphasis on fertility. We can even see the pagan, magical green girdle:
...
[This] is not acceptable by chivalric and Christian standards: in keeping it, Gawain goes against his code of honesty, courage, and faith.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

For none of the above did you use quotation marks. The two times that you did acknowledge GradeSaver, you did not cite the webpage that you actually used. Sometimes, you cite other websites entirely even though you took the material from GradeSaver. But for much if not most of the copied material, you cited nothing.

The "F" grade stands.

And thus do things also stand, though I expect that I haven't heard the last of this student yet.

Regardless of what this student may believe about the proper consequences for plagiarism, the standards for scholarship are being raised in Korea. Today's Korea Herald notes in an important article by Jin Dae-woong, "Top school to issue plagiarism guideline," that "Korea University yesterday announced ... [that] it will establish a guideline by next month to tighten up rules regarding plagiarism." The article goes on to provide the following welcome information:

"We are working on a guideline for research ethics including plagiarism," the university said in a statement. "It will be officially released around mid-January after gathering opinions from professors through a public hearing."

The guideline will contain a set of concrete concepts constituting plagiarism, including its definition, span and period, along with specific examples for appropriate application.

"It will be a basic standard to judge various different forms of plagiarism allegations although it will not be an absolute principle," said a professor at the university on condition of anonymity.

The new standard will start to be applied from as early as next semester, he added.

The guideline project originally began in July to cope with growing plagiarism scandals in academic circles, another university official said.

The university has been operating a task force comprising six professors from different academic fields since then to set the basic ethics code, the official said.

I humbly submit that this task force add me to their number. Of course ... the fact that I'll soon no longer be working at Korea University might pose some bureaucratic hurdles, but these could be easily bureaucratically hurdled by rehiring me as a professor of scholarly ethics.

That probably won't happen, but at least the standards are officially rising now, so I can just direct any complaining students to these more rigorous standards.

Plagiarism Checker

Those of you who read my plagiarism series will be happy to learn that the war against plagiarism has just acquired a smart weapon.

Darren Hom, who teaches "science, Bible, and study skills classes" to "middle and high school students at Highlands Christian Schools in San Bruno, California," grew tired of tracking down plagiarism using Google:

I ... had to spend a lot of time doing several Google searches on each paper, as some students would copy parts of their papers and write the rest themselves. Using this method, I had to remember to type quotation marks around each phrase, or else the search engine would not find exact copies of the phrases I was typing in.

Rather than just complain like the rest of us, he decided to do something positive about this problem. First, he checked available services:

I spent a few months looking around for a better way to check for plagiarism. I rejected most of the solutions I saw because they wanted me to buy subscriptions to their services. Some were free but required me to submit an entire student's essay online, which was not possible for me because my students turn in printed copies of their work. The remaining free solutions were not any easier to use than Google, since they also required me to type special operators and would only search for one phrase at a time.

At this point, I would have given up and reconciled myself to using Google ... but not Darren Hom:

Because I didn't find a free and easy way to check for plagiarism, I learned Web programming and created one myself.

I'm impressed -- and even more impressed by his search engine. Here's what it offers:

PlagiarismChecker.com allows you to search for several phrases from a student's paper at the same time without having to type quotation marks or special operators, which most search engines require if you're trying to look for exact copies of a student's writing. This site automatically adds the quotation marks and special operators for you .... PlagiarismChecker.com is free and works on any papers, whether students e-mail them to you or turn in hard copies.

So if you're tired both of plagiarism and of Google, try out Darren Hom's Plagiarism Checker.

Jim Davila will be happy.

Egregious, Highly Risky Plagiarism

Euthanasia Machine

Putting a plagiarizing computer out of its misery...

(Image from Wikipedia)

What's a professor to do? I warn students that I can easily catch their plagiarism, for I can find by Google in an instant the same passage that they may have sought for hours, but despite my warnings, they download material from the internet.

One student of mine is writing on euthanasia and had previously copied material from online for the essay assignment's introductory paragraph:

The first gas chamber was designed by professors of psychiatry from 12 major German universities. Psychiatric patients were executed until the hospitals were almost empty. They were joined by some pediatricians, who began by emptying the institutions for handicapped children in 1939. By 1945 almost 300,000 Germans were killed. By then, these doctors were killing bed wetters, children with misshapen ears, and those with learning disabilities.

This passage had been borrowed from a website titled League for Life in Manitoba, which cites page 47 of Fredric Wertham's The German Euthanasia Program (Cincinnati, Ohio: Hayes Publishing Company, 1977), but neither of these sources had been cited in my student's assignment.

I gave the student an "F" for plagiarism and in turn received some green tea and a promise of no more plagiarism. The green tea was some sort of Confucian gesture intended to bring the student-teacher relation back into harmony (in the interests of a harmonious society, of course). The promise was a perfunctory expression of good will that I've learned to ignore.

And a good thing, too, for the first draft of this student's essay has this truly egregious instance of plagiarism:

The pain and suffering a person feels during a disease, even with pain relievers, can be incomprehensible to a person who has not gone through it. Even without considering the physical pain, it is often difficult for patients to overcome the emotional pain of losing their independence. Moreover, despite modern painkillers, there is little available to deal with the problem of 'breathlessness', which makes many ailing patients feel they will suffocate.

This passage comes word-for-word uncited from a section titled "Reasons given for voluntary euthanasia" in Wikipedia's entry on "Euthanasia" -- and that despite my having forbidden not only plagiarism entirely (of course) but even the use of Wikipedia as a source at all!

By the student's logic, this doubtless constituted a case of plagiarism made necessary to resolve a dilemma:

Teacher forbids plagiarism. Student needs Wikipedia passage. Teacher forbids Wikipedia. Student nevertheless needs Wikipedia passage. Teacher forbids Wikipedia. Student must plagiarize Wikipedia passage.

I must admire how the student has taken this load of bull by the horns and courageously plagiarized, for students must speak their minds even if their words are unutterably borrowed.

Yet, if these specific points about euthanasia were so necessary to make, why not go to Wikipedia's sources?

The Wikipedia entry cites the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy for "Voluntary Euthanasia," which has the following passage in the fourth paragraph under point "2. Five Individually Necessary Conditions for Candidacy for Voluntary Euthanasia":

The third condition recognises what many who oppose the legalization of voluntary euthanasia do not, namely, that it is not only release from pain that leads people to want to be helped to die. In The Netherlands, for example, it has been found to be a less significant reason for requesting assistance with dying than other forms of suffering and frustration with loss of independence.

I found this source easily because the Wikipedia entry provides a link to it. Similarly, the entry also links to Jeremy Laurance's article, "Death on prescription?" The Independent (London, May 13, 1999), which says:

Dr Christopher Hindley, a GP in east London who works in a hospice, and claims to have assisted several patients to die at their request, says dealing with pain at the end of life has largely been solved. "It is amazing what we can do -- pain has ceased to be a major problem. What people fear most of all is breathlessness, not pain. They don't want to suffocate. The palliative care movement admits that that is a very difficult symptom to deal with."

These useful and legitimate sources were only two links away and would have quickly solved the student's 'dilemma' so much more elegantly.

Why, then, did the student not do this and thereby avoid this malingering, academic demise?

Expat Living: "If you plagiarize, expect an 'F'"

"Effing A!"

(Image from Wikipedia)

Yesterday's Korea Herald came early, but I was so busy grading that I failed to notice it until nearly 6 p.m., when I finally took a break from evaluating final essays and opened the paper to the "Expat Living" section, where I saw, in great big, bold letters:

If you plagiarize, expect an 'F'

"What sort of jerk would threaten that?!" I growled, my hackles raised at the challenge. Below which, of course, appeared my column. "Oh, that," I muttered, realizing that my editor, the recently-stabbed Matt Lamers, had survived long enough -- this week, at least -- to re-title my latest "Language Column," which I'd modestly titled "Netting the plagiarist" (or something innocuous). I guess that I'd better hold off on that glowing obituary that I've already written for him. Better luck next time, Matt. Anyway, here's what I wrote on language:

The academic plague called "plagiarism" has a fascinating etymology, as I have recently learned, for it penultimately derives from the Latin word for "kidnapping," plagium, from plaga, "net" - an obviously handy device for nabbing the unfortunate individual to be abducted and held for ransom. More directly, "plagiarism" stems from the Latin plagiarius, by way of the obscure English synonym "plagiary." A plagiarius was a kidnapper!

I had never realized that plagiarism was such a serious crime, but, armed with this borrowed erudition, I henceforth intend not merely to flunk plagiarists, but also to arrest and march them off to jail, where they can reflect on their crime and reform their behavior. Students shall learn that plagiarizing a term paper has dire consequences indeed.

Many plagiarists, however, believe themselves too clever to get caught. For instance, some who plagiarize from online websites, and imagine themselves cunning, will borrow a passage from one online source but cite a different one. Such individuals think that I will check only the cited source, see that the topic is the same, find no plagiarism, and therefore conclude that all is well. Such plagiarists misjudge me, and therefore make careless mistakes.

One such cyberplagiarist recently submitted a paper on vivisection that briefly summarized the history of this experimental science, mentioning the pre-Socratic medical theorist Alcmaeon, who lived in the Greek colony Croton on the southern Italian coast and vivisected animals to demonstrate that cutting their optic nerve left them blinded. The plagiarizing student cited a rather lengthy article on vivisection, perhaps thinking that I would not bother to read it.

Well, I did not bother to read it; I merely had my trusty computer search the article for "Alcmaeon," and the name did not appear. Obviously, the student had found that name in some other uncited source. My suspicions aroused, I selected a phrase likely to have been copied from a source, plugged it into Google's search engine, and quickly found it in a brief, four-paragraph encyclopedia entry on vivisection that happened to mention Alcmaeon of Croton. Reading through the entry, I found entire stolen sentences and determined that my piratical student had kidnapped Alcmaeon and netted much else from that single, short entry. Further investigation established that the student had not used the lengthy article at all.

I confronted my student with the proof. Usually, plagiarists bow to that evidence and confess. This one, however, proved cheeky and tried to deny the obvious. I called BS on that.

Seeing that I accepted no denials of what was so easily proven, the student turned truly cheeky, pointed to the grade of "F," and informed me: "I can't accept this."

Profoundly annoyed now, I retorted, "You have to accept it. Listen carefully. You are being held to global standards now. If this were an American university, you might be expelled from school. You would certainly get an 'F' for the course. Now, you stop complaining and go work on cleaning up this essay for the final draft. Get rid of the plagiarism, do the work yourself, and turn in a better essay."

The student protested against my unfairness because some students had submitted no first draft at all, so a plagiarized paper should at least receive a grade higher than "F."

"If you plagiarize, you get an 'F,'" I stated. "That's automatic for egregious plagiarism. But only the final essay counts toward your grade."

At that, all protest stopped, leaving only the plagiarist's irritation at getting entangled in his self-woven dragnet.

If only all student protests were so easily thwarted.

Jeffery is a professor at Kyung Hee University and can be reached through his blog, Gypsy Scholar, at gypsyscholarship.blogspot.com - Ed.

I wrote that column by borrowing from a Gypsy Scholar blog entry of a couple of weeks ago, so I suppose that -- like Cheong Jean-gon -- I'm guilty of 'self-plagiarism'.

Now, back to grading final essays...

On the Side of the Angels?

St. Michael the Archangel

Main Icon of Archangel Cathedral

Moscow Kremlin (ca. 1410s)

(Image from Wikipedia)

Teaching for many years in Korea, I've had to deal with the inevitable plagiarism by many of my students, though I have to admit that this sort of academic impropriety has dropped off a bit lately. However, it does still remain a problem that we instructors have to deal with, so every arrow in our quiver increases our likelihood of striking our target. I'm nevertheless unsure what to think about a recent 'helpful' comment from a certain "Anonymous" responding to a four-year-old post about plagiarism:

I guess using plagiarism detection software means trusting a service, because you should be very careful about giving out your work to someone else. I am a professor of English at the St. Michael's College and can share my experience of using an online plagiarism detection service. It is called www.plagiarismdetection.org. I am using it for over 10 months. I have tried them in many ways. For example, I have scanned one document in Nov., let's say. Than I forget about it for a couple of months and scan that same document in March. It does not find any relativity to other documents, so I can be 100% sure these guys are not keeping the databases. Everybody heard of scandals with turnitin and I don't want my students to participate in someone else's database gathering.

This is in fact an advertisement for PlagiarismDetection.org, which claims to be a business for detecting plariarism, offering its services to both professors and students . . . though the fact that a student might turn to such a service seems a bit suspicious to my mind. Might such a student be testing a plariarized paper to see if the plagiarism has been successfully hidden? Be that as it may, Anonymous can surely be no professor of English at 'the' St. Michael's College. I replied:

With all due respect, Anonymous, you don't sound like a professor of English, for your 'comment' is full of grammatical errors, and since I get a lot of advertisements posted in the comments section of my blog, I suspect that your 'comment' is just another ad.

But since I'm all for eliminating plagiarism, I'll let the ad stand this time.

Or so I said, but mostly, I'm letting the advertisement stand because I'm amused that someone who's obviously not even a native speaker of English and who lacks control over something as basic as the present perfect tense claims to be a professor of English at 'the' St. Michael's College.

And if Anonymous really is a professor of English, I'm even more amused . . . though also a little bit dismayed, given my own derailed career.

UPDATE: The "Professor at St. Michael's College" replies. Infer what you will.

"I thought he was weird and odd."

Scale of Justice

Intellectual Property Law

(Image from Wikipedia)

Some readers may recall my post of March 19, 2007, in which I noted that the Granite Tower -- the Korea University glossy-covered magazine written by students -- had recognized my 'expertise' as a scholar.

Expertise in catching plagiarists, a usually thankless job.

It truly is a nasty job, but someone really does have to do it, and I've now actually received attention for my efforts, as the most recent issue of the Granite Tower (April 2007) has just appeared on campus and includes an interview with me (page 21) as part of a larger article (pages 16-21) titled "You Do You Die" -- a rather threatening title, for you shall not truly die from plagiarizing, though your eyes will definitely be opened when you get caught . . . if you get caught by me.

The article begins by prefacing a quote from my interview:

"Plagiarism is stealing. It's intellectual theft. Aside from the criminal aspect, plagiarism is dishonest and thus unethical."

These words appeared in quotation marks but, ironically, were not attributed to me. Only if you read the entire article do you find out who uttered the words.

Reading, however, will prove inconvenient for anyone who doesn't stroll across the KU campus this week, for oddly -- since the magazine is free on campus -- the Granite Tower's online version appears to be blocked!

I'm disappointed. My opportunity for fame and glory rushing toward me with no forelock to seize! Well, as the Romans used to say, "Carpe Diem!", which -- if my Latin doesn't fail me -- means something like "Complain to God!"

Aside from my interview with its pithy remarks, the article includes some interesting observations by other individuals. An interview with an anonymous student on page 20 caught my attention, for this student acknowledged plagiarizing and getting caught. The interviewer asked:

What was the course?

The student replied:

Western Civilization 2.

That course might sound familiar to regular readers of my blog, for I often referred to it over my years of teaching at Korea University. It's my course.

The interviewer then asked:

What have you learned from the experience?

To this query, the student had some fascinating things to say -- fascinating for me, anyway:

For starters, I pay much more attention on whether or not I'm plagiarizing when I take reference when I'm writing reports. I'm sure that if I hadn't taken the course and hadn't met that professor, I would have gotten into a bigger mess later on in my life. I take the experience that I had as a freshman and think of it as a blessing.

At first, I really did hate him. I thought he was weird and odd. But now that I think about it, that professor was doing what was only right. College is a place that requires official documentation of a person's ideas and research. It is also a place that teaches academic attainments that can sometimes be abstract. It's a shame that the techniques to express the abstract knowledge are not offered at such a place.

Later in the interview, the student added:

Honestly, I don't think that other professors take the time to look over reports that we hand in compared to the professor who gave me the F.

I'm touched. Honestly. A student actually learned something from me. I wonder if that student ever took another course under my tutelage.

The interviewer also asked this same student a very important question:

Did you get any instructions from the school or other professors about plagiarism?

The student replied:

No, I never did get any heads-up about anything concerning plagiarism. Well, even if I did get instructions about it, it was probably a very vague outline. I feel that there is a great lack of the general idea and education about this issue. We students don't receive any guidelines when we first enter college. This is a serious problem.

I echo this student's lament that more attention is not given to the problem. Why isn't more done at Korea University to alert students and professors to the problem of plagiarism? Here's why:

When asked if the school had any plans to make regulations or guidelines on plagiarism, the staffer, Jun Young Min[, of KU's Records and Registration Team,] replied, "No, the school does not have any plans to do so whatsoever. You see, the mere act of making such regulations and guidelines would be the same as to admitting that students at our school are in fact plagiarizing. Therefore, this would be a disgrace to KU."

Well, that's certainly honest. It's so bluntly honest, in fact, that I must assume Jun Young Min to be wryly making a critical observation. Taken broadly, it aptly expresses a problem pervasive here in Korea, namely, an excessive concern with superficial appearances over deeper substance.

Or what my wife might call "Flashy fluff."

UPDATE: The link above to the article now appears to be working.

Plagiarism, Revisited . . .

A Teacher's Education

I've not complained about plagiarism in a while, but I recently encountered a case of egregious plagiarism in a graduate student's paper that I was asked to proofread, and here is the worst paragraph that I noticed before stopping in annoyance:

However, with China playing the host, the first Six-Party Talks were launched in August 2003. The second and third Six-Party Talks were held in March and June 2004, respectively, giving momentum to the multilateral process. During the fourth Six-Party Talks, which were held from July to September 2005, the historic September 19 Joint Declaration was announced. In the Declaration, the six-parties unanimously reaffirmed that the goal of the Six-Party Talks is the verifiable denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula. Here, the purpose of the Six-Party Talks was proclaimed. Also, North Korea and the U.S. undertook to respect each other's sovereignty, exist peacefully together and take steps to normalize their relations subject to their respective bilateral principles. Both states pledged to improve bilateral relations. The six parties also undertook to promote economic cooperation in the fields of energy, trade and investment, bilaterally and/or multilaterally. The talks have merged security factors and economic factors into a political deal. As a security regime in Northeast Asia, the six-parties agreed to explore ways and means for promoting security cooperation in the region. Above all, the Declaration proclaimed that the directly related parties will negotiate a permanent peace regime on the Korean Peninsula.

It sounds good, but a bit too good, and it has some resonant echoes that roused my suspicions, so I Googled and found the quotes, which I've red-fonted:

However, with China playing the host, the first six-party talks were launched in August 2003. The second and third six-party talks were held in March and June 2004, respectively, giving momentum to the multilateral process. During the fourth six-party talks, which were held from July to September 2005, the historic September 19 Joint Declaration was announced. In the Declaration, "the six-parties unanimously reaffirmed that the goal of the six-party talks is the verifiable denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula." Here, the purpose of the six-party talks was proclaimed. Also, North Korea and the U.S. "undertook to respect each other's sovereignty, exist peacefully together, and take steps to normalize their relations subject to their respective bilateral" principles. Both states pledged to improve bilateral relations. "The six parties also undertook to promote economic cooperation in the fields of energy, trade and investment, bilaterally and/or multilaterally." The talks have merged security factors and economic factors into a political deal. As a security regime in Northeast Asia, the six-parties agreed to "explore ways and means for promoting security cooperation" in the region. Above all, the Declaration proclaimed that "the directly related parties will negotiate a permanent peace regime on the Korean Peninsula."

I wrote, "Here, you are quoting without quotes and without even citations, rather egregious instances of plagiarism." I didn't accuse the student -- NOT an Ewha student, incidentally -- of intentional plagiarism, but I did make very clear the consequences of getting caught, namely, the ruination of one's scholarly reputation. Unfortunately, that seems to be less often true these days.

As for the sources of these borrowed quotes, I leave those as Googling homework for interested readers.

Teaching a student a lesson...

Plagiary: Cross-Disciplinary Studies

in Plagiarism, Fabrication, and Falsification

I've discovered a new journal in which to publish!

(Image from Plagiary)

Regular readers might have noticed that I have somewhat of a mild dislike for plagiarism. But I very much enjoy tracking it down . . . as readers may also have noticed.

One of my recent composition courses was for first-semester students (the spring semester being the first semester here in Korea), and I figured that my task was to educate these students not only about writing but also about consequences.

Too many professors in Korea don't seem to take plagiarism seriously enough, thereby leaving their students with the impression that plagiarism will be lightly forgiven, so students invariably try to plagiarize in my classes -- only to be shocked at the result (as well as by my ability to uncover their copying).

Just yesterday, a student sent me his first draft -- three weeks late! -- and I looked at it briefly without bothering to correct it since it was so late. Also, much of it was intentionally plagiarized, and I never go to any extra trouble helping a student who has plagiarized.

For example, the student 'wrote' this:

Charles R. Walgreen 3rd transformed Walgreens into an exceptional company that outperformed Intel, GE, Coca-Cola, and Merck in the twenty-five years 1975 to 1999 -- its stock exceeded the growth of the market by fifteen times.

This doesn't sound much like the writing of a freshman, especially one composing in English as a second language. He offered a source:

University of Chicago Center for Research in Securities Prices data, all dividends reinvested and adjusted for stock splits.

Hmmm . . . no page number provided. Would I have to sift through all the 'data' to find the precise source? Nah, I wouldn't, because the student's source was in fact totally different, namely, page 92 of Good to Great, by Jim Collins.

To show this, I will again provide the student's 'writing' with some words highlighted in red:

Charles R. Walgreen 3rd transformed Walgreens into an exceptional company that outperformed Intel, GE, Coca-Cola, and Merck in the twenty-five years 1975 to 1999 -- its stock exceeded the growth of the market by fifteen times.

Now, check page 92 of Good to Great:

Consider the case of Walgreens versus Eckerd. Recall how Walgreens generated cumulative stock returns from the end of 1975 to 2000 that exceeded the market by over fifteen times, handily beating such great companies as GE, Merck, Coca-Cola, and Intel. It was a remarkable performance for such an anonymous -- some might even say boring -- company. When interviewing Cork Walgreen, I kept asking him to go deeper, to help us understand these extraordinary results. Finally, in exasperation, he said, "Look, it just wasn't that complicated! Once we understood the concept, we just moved straight ahead."

What was the concept? Simply this: the best, most convenient drugstores, with high profit per customer visit. That's it. That's the breakthrough strategy that Walgreens used to beat Intel, GE, Coca-Cola, and Merck.

Now, this was clever plagiarism . . . but not quite clever enough. I used the sequence "Intel, GE, Coca-Cola, and Merck" to track down this source via Google, but if the student had simply scrambled the sequence, he would have been more clever and have made my job rather harder.

Of course, the student could have attempted to bluff since he had been fairly clever, but he was also smart enough to foresee that I'd then simply prod him to supply me with the specific passage in the website for the University of Chicago Center for Research in Securities Prices where he'd gotten his data, and that would have been as impossible a task as any posed in "Scarborough Fair."

He therefore capitulated without protest, supplying the correct source, even adding in that citation that he'd borrowed not only from page 92 but also from page 32 of Good to Great. That was generous of him. Indeed, his paper had borrowed so much from Good to Great that the student had to provide seven separate footnotes citing the book.

The paper's bibliography, however, shrank a bit as we were forced to bid adieu to the following three 'sources':

Hoover's Online

University of Chicago, University of Chicago Center for Research in Securities

Walgreens, Walgreens Annual Report 1998

A sad good-bye to these witless 'witnesses', but three's a crowd when they don't belong. I now eagerly await the final, hard copy of this student's essay, which he will have to send by express delivery, for I don't normally grade essays by email.

I expect that this student has learned an important lesson in an exceedingly teachable moment.

Paraphrasing Techniques

L.H.O.O.Q. (1919)

"Elle a chaud au cul"

Marcel Duchamp

Plagiarism or Paraphrase?

(Image from Wikipedia)

I'm taking part -- a bit abruptly, actually -- in a funded study on how to avoid plagiarism. I say "abruptly" because I found out on Tuesday evening and received the materials on Wednesday evening for the first session on Thursday. Consequently, the Thursday session was a bit rough because I wasn't thoroughly prepared, but I actually learned some important techniques for paraphrasing a passage. Take this nonsense passage, for instance, which I've just now patched together from some sample words, clauses, and sentences that I initially came up with for class last Thursday:

Profound and humorous is the evidence that supports their interpretation. To express this in a different way, "To be, or not to be," for the data show a causal relation. Thus, the coward dies a thousand deaths; a brave man dies but one. However, therefore, let us now conclude.

That's my patched-together nonsense passage. Let's now look at a list of paraphrasing techniques that was given to me on Wednesday evening, and for which I came up with those sample words, clauses, and sentences:

1. Change to synonyms.
2. Change word forms.
3. Change from a clause to a phrase.
4. Change from quoted speech to indirect speech.
5. Change from active voice to passive voice.
6. Interpret meaning / Identify the underlying meaning of a statement.
7. Change transitions.

Such techniques was I given to work with. Well, let's apply these to avoid plagiarism:

Deep and funny is the evidence through which their interpretation receives support. In other words, to continue living, or to kill oneself, for a causal relation is shown by the data. Thus, a brave man may die, though only one physical death, but a coward dies in many ways even if he escapes physical death. But so, let us now end.

I've applied these techniques rather mechanically, somewhat as a translation engine might, so this is rather crudely done. Does this paraphrase escape plagiarism? Not entirely, for it reproduces the sequence of clauses in the original, and some of the sentences are too close as well.

For that reason, the material that I was given last Wednesday also adds a few paraphrasing strategies, one of these being:

Reordering: Paraphrase by reordering word(s) or phrase(s) of source texts.

I won't bother with that in today's post, but that would be necessary -- though a "thorough rewriting" (as the material suggests) would also prove beneficial in avoiding plagiarism.

I might return to this issue of paraphrase over the next four weeks.

The Cheeky Plagiarist

Alcmaeon of Croton

"Cut out that plagiarizing!"

(Image from Giannis Stamatellos)

I have yet another batch of essays to mark up with my red ink pen, so this will be a short entry, merely a progress report on my quest to reform the world, one correction at a time.

I aim for utopia, but my steps are incremental.

Yesterday evening, one student was encouraged to take a big step toward that ultimate goal . . . albeit not entirely successfully. Perhaps only a grudging half-step.

This student had written an essay on "Vivisection" and had copied material from a website titled "Vivisection: An Ancient History," a section from Volume 6 (Vivisection - An Ancient History, Battle Lines Are Drawn, The Debate Today) of something called Science Encyclopedia. The section from which the student drew material is very short, merely four paragraphs:

The practice of true vivisection dates back to ancient times. Around 500 B.C., one of the earliest known vivisectionists, Akmaeon of Croton [sic. "Alcmaeon of Croton"!], discovered that the optic nerve is necessary for vision by cutting it in living animals. One of the most well known -- and controversial -- early vivisectionists was Galen of Pergamon, physician to Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius. Galen, who lived in the second century A.D., is remembered today for his pioneering use of vivisection of animals to understand health and disease in the human body. But Galen was also a poor scientist, failing to identify such major bodily functions as the circulation of the blood. An unquestioning adherence to Galen's false beliefs in succeeding generations of physicians was undoubtedly a major hindrance to medical progress in Europe.

Real progress in medical knowledge began again with the experiments of the Italian physicians Andreas Vesalius and his student, Realdo Colombo, in the sixteenth century. They pioneered the use of vivisection to correct and expand, rather than merely to confirm, Galen's science. In the early seventeenth century, English physician William Harvey used vivisection to discover the circulation of the blood and to debunk many of Galen's other beliefs.

But this century also saw the beginnings of an anti-vivisectionist movement. Physician Jean Riolan Jr. in France and Irish physician Edmund O'Meara both argued that the painful and violent deaths suffered by vivisected animals -- remember, there was no anesthesia yet -- were putting the animals into an unnatural state that could lead to faulty assumptions about the functioning of a healthy animal.

Also in this century, vivisection received an important philosophical boost from the French philosopher René Descartes. Descartes believed that the mind and the body are separate entities, and that animals differ from humans in that they have bodies but no true minds. As such, animals were morally no different from machines, and so vivisection was not morally wrong. Descartes even went so far as to say that animals did not feel real pain (a belief that is sometimes still repeated today, although few believe it to be true), although he stressed that vivisection was primarily defensible because it helped humans, not because hurting animals was right. Unfortunately, some of Descartes's later followers lost this fine distinction, and were known for their gratuitous cruelty to animals.

With its criticism of Galen as a poor scientist for "failing to identify such major bodily functions as the circulation of the blood," this is pretty shoddy history of science and ought to be avoided as a source, but the student had hidden the source in a rather clever fashion, for the copied material was not an entire, continuous passage but terms, phrases, and clauses spliced with the student's own words.

Further to hide the plagiarism, this student had then cited a different source on vivisection, a website identified by its sole article, a somewhat lengthy one titled "The History of Medical Progress (by Dr. Ray Greek, Director of the Medical Research Modernization Committee)," from which no material had been drawn by the student, who had perhaps assumed that because of the article's length (about 150 paragraphs), it would contain everything included on the other, far shorter, encyclopedia entry at the other website (merely 4 paragraphs).

Unfortunately, this was not a clever assumption, for the long article not only lacks, for example, the heterographic expression "Akmaeon of Croton," which happens to appear in the encyclopedia entry's first paragraph, but even any mention of 'Akmaeon' at all (as well as of the orthographic "Alcmaeon"), whereas this expression does appear in the student's essay, along with other terms, phrases, and clauses that collectively trace only to the encyclopedia's short entry.

The student attempted to deny the obvious plagiarism. I called "bullsh*t" on that.

Seeing that I wouldn't accept denials of what could easily be proven, the student then turned truly cheeky, pointed to the grade of "F" and informed me: "I can't accept this."

Profoundly annoyed now, I retorted, "You have to accept it. Listen carefully. You are being held to global standards now. If this were an American university, you might be expelled from school. You would certainly get an 'F' for the course. Now, you stop complaining and go work on cleaning up this essay for the final draft. Get rid of the plagiarism, do the work yourself, and turn in a better essay."

The student then protested that this still wasn't fair because some students hadn't written a first draft at all and that a plagiarized paper should at least receive a grade higher than "F."

"If you plagiarize, you get an 'F,'" I stated. "That's automatic for egregious plagiarism. But only the final essay counts toward your grade."

When the student finally understood that plagiarism on the first draft would not actually affect the final grade, all protests stopped leaving only the student's irritation at having gotten caught.

As I said, a cheeky plagiarist.

Problems with the Korean Education System: Education Minister Kim Byong-joon

Kim Byong-joon

Minister of Education

(Image from July 27th issue of The Korea Times)

In last Thursday's Korea Times (July 27, 2006), "Minister Admits Bungle: Kim Apologizes for Publishing Thesis Twice," staff reporter Park Chung-a informed us that:

Kim Byong-joon, deputy prime minister and minister of education and human resources development, on Thursday apologized for having published identical research papers in academic journals .... He admitted that he published identical papers in two journals as if they were separate papers under a government-funded research project, when he was a professor at Kookmin University in Seoul in 2001. This double publication of a single paper was not intended to get state research funding twice, he said. "Printing the same paper twice is my fault although I believe my assistant made a mistake in helping me process the research paper,'" the minister nominee told reporters on Thursday.

I don't know Kim Byong-joon personally, nor am I familiar with his work, but I suppose that anybody can bungle and publish a paper twice ... though I, for one, have enough trouble publishing a paper a single time. That's probably why I don't get much academic notice -- learning experts say that educators should make a point of repeating themselves to ensure that their students get the point.

I think that we must be getting the point by now, for in Saturday's JoongAng Daily (July 29, 2006), "Kim accused of cheating at least three more times," Park Seung-hee and Ser Myo-ja reported that:

Besides the one he already admitted, Deputy Prime Minister for Education Kim Byong-joon resubmitted at least three other research papers as if they were new works, a JoongAng Ilbo investigation has found.

For instance:

While serving as a Kookmin University professor, Mr. Kim published a paper in August 1998 with the Korea Regional Political Science Association on the civic groups' influence on policymaking. One year later, he published the same paper with the university's social science research institute, carrying a slightly reworded title. The two papers' contents were identical. Mr. Kim used Chinese characters in the title for the first publication, and Korean in the latter.

Kim should receive an opportunity to defend himself -- and I won't make any accusations since I know only what I read in the funny papers -- but I do want to focus upon the attitude of one official:

With mounting pressure, the Blue House held a meeting yesterday, hosted by the Chief of Staff Lee Byung-wan, where it concluded the issue was not serious enough to fire [Kim] .... "Mr. Kim denied he had committed self-plagiarism and he also apologized for the discrepancy," a senior Blue House official said. "Since it has been a common practice among scholars in Korea in the past, I don't think the matter is serious enough to let him go."

According to this anonymous "senior Blue House official," self-plagiarism -- which Kim Byong-joon denies having committed -- has not been considered a serious academic offense in Korea and is therefore no reason to bar an individual from holding the office of Education Minister.

Regardless of Kim's innocence or guilt, the attitude that plagiarism -- even if 'only' self-plagiarism -- presents no serious breach of academic ethics is very problematic. The younger generation of Korean scholars would not agree, and I suspect that the Blue House will soon come around to this younger generation's point of view.

But the point may bear repeating before the Blue House gets the point.

Netting Plagiarists

Well, this plagiarism series has proven so fascinating and even popular that I may just blog on it forever.

Just kidding.

But I will blog on the topic today. Mark Goodacre, whose "editorial fatigue" principle I explained in my Friday entry, has posted an interesting response to my use of his principle.

Goodacre poses a number of questions concerning how to catch plagiarists who are not so naive, the truly clever ones:

(1) It's easier to catch the weak plagiarists who betray their sources all too quickly because they do not think to hide or know how to hide the distinctive phrases of their sources. But how easy is it to catch the better plagiarists, who can see the distinctive, Google-friendly phrases in their source material, and who change words but not sentence structure?

(2) On-line plagiarism is so easy to do that, as Jeffery points out, it is relatively easy to catch. But does this mean that some of our students are getting away with book-plagiarism all the more easily? If someone plagiarizes Sanders, Crossan or Wright, you can bet that we'll be able to find it. But if they plagiarize Howard Clark Kee, are we going to spot it?

(3) Does our satisfaction in discovering the on-line plagiarists mask us from seeing the students who have paid someone $75 to write their essay for them, or who have pulled their essay from a model stock essay for which they have paid $25 access? Google is not going to spot those, and however much we might suspect, are we going to be able to convict?

I have a few responses to these questions. Let me take them in reverse order.

Concerning number (3), how do we catch these cheaters who buy essays?

If a student pays somebody to write an essay, then Google wouldn't help, but if I suspect that a student didn't write an essay, I can retain the essay in my office and ask the student to come to pick it up. I can then ask the student questions about the research process or about the essay's arguments. I think that many such students would demonstrate their ignorance and confess under the pressure of even courteous questions.

If a student purchases an essay online, then in my experience, Google often finds these. Why? Partly because the stock essays recycle arguments in other stock essays, but partly because complete or partial copies of stock essays often appear online and accessible to Google.

Concerning number (2), how do we catch book-plagiarists?

I've found that although this poses a problem for tracking down some plagiarized passages, such as those passages that nobody has ever quoted online, it doesn't stop me from catching a plagiarist anyway because other plagiarized passages in the same student essay do show up online.

About the passages that don't show up online but that I figure are plagiarized, I can tell the student, "We've seen that you've plagiarized already. These other passages also look plagiarized. I suggest that you rewrite them and add the proper footnotes." This assumes that I'm giving the student a second chance, which I usually do since I'm teaching in Korea.

Concerning number (1), how do we catch the really clever online plagiarists, who know to change words while keeping the sentence structure in an attempt to elude Google?

My reply? Well, how much time do you want to spend? Catching such a plagiarist takes a bit more time, but I find them by constructing a search net. A copied passage modified in the way described still betrays its origin because it retains a pattern of expressions and structures from its source.

Take the following actual example of a passage containing plagiarism:

The cross of the vision in the beginning part of the poem is depicted as being lifted high in air presenting the images of light. This light imagery symbolizes the staggering spiritual brightness of God. The speaker becomes a receiver of God's light, an undefiled witness.

I wondered if it was plagiarized, so I began constructing a net to dredge it up from the abyss of the internet.

First, I opened Advanced Google. Then, in the category "with the exact phrase," I typed "The cross of the vision" from the suspect paragraph and clicked "Google Search." Up came only six items. That surprised me. For such a sentence, hundreds of items might have shown up. With only six, I might take a look first, but I also might not. If you do look at this early stage, then click on "cached" so that the text will have the words highlighted.

Anyway, I then backed up the browser to the category "with all of the words" and typed in the two-word expression "lifted high" in double quotation marks so that Google would look for the full expression rather than two separate words. Up came a single item. I looked using "cached" and found a passage with both expressions highlighted.

I then backed up the browser again and returned to the category "with all the words," where I gradually added the multiple-word expressions "in air," "light imagery," "spiritual brightness," and "of God's light" by a process of trial and error.

If an expression doesn't work, then I either shorten it or discard it. For example, I tried "staggering spiritual blindness" and found nothing, so I backed up and trimmed "staggering." The expression "spiritual blindness" did work.

If you play around with this process, you'll get the hang of it.

Finally, I had constructed my net. Look what I dragged in, a passage from Robert V. Graybill's "The Dream of the Rood: Apotheosis of Anglo-Saxon Paradox," Essays in Medieval Studies, Volume 1, 1984:

The cross of the vision, which is lifted high or "towers" in air, presents a double vision to the dreamer. It is "leohte bewundon," twined around with brightness as the arm of a braceleted Viking wench might be with golden jewelry, or "compassed" with shining gold. Here the light imagery crescendos for six lines to create a visual climax of stunning spiritual brightness. Then comes the antithesis. The light of God and the dirt of man are contrasted. The dreamer sees himself as dim and soiled with flesh, dark and loathsome as any coalpit stone, yet paradoxically and miraculously a recipient of God's light, a beholder of wondrous whiteness.

Compare to the plagiarist's attempt to hide it:

The cross of the vision in the beginning part of the poem is depicted as being lifted high in air presenting the images of light. This light imagery symbolizes the staggering spiritual brightness of God. The speaker becomes a receiver of God's light, an undefiled witness.

Not only are the highlighted words the same and in the same paragraph, but they are even in the same order. Note also that the student has altered "stunning" to "staggering" and "recipient" to "receiver," which thus provide more evidence of the plagiarist's source. Interestingly, the student also misunderstood "a beholder of wondrous whiteness" to refer to the state of the beholder rather than of the beheld and therefore described the "receiver of God's light" as "an undefiled witness" despite the original text having already described the recipient as "soiled."

Or has the plagiarist understood better than I?

At any rate, I've sufficiently made my point. Even a clever plagiarist can be caught by constructing a net cobbled together using multiple-word expressions.

Not exactly plagiarism...

No, this isn't yet another post on plagiarism.

Well . . . maybe it is -- or about nipping plagiarism in the bud.

Yesterday morning, I found that a University of Massachusetts student had posted on the Milton Listserve (to which I subscribe) the following query:

what fate does mankind deserve following the fall?

That was it. Nothing else, not even a name.

Now, first off, if I were a student posting a question to Milton scholars, I'd at least capitalize the initial letter in the first word of my sentence.

But that's just me.

I'd also phrase the query in terms of what Milton thought that mankind deserved.

And I'd wouldn't use the word "fate." I'd ask what "judgement" Milton thought that mankind deserved.

That's what I'd do if I were a student posing the question.

As a scholar responding to this query -- or even to a properly worded version of it -- I'd ask, "Why do you want to know?"

I think, however, that I know why the student wanted to hear our views on "what fate . . . mankind deserve[d] following the fall," and a few other scholars on the listserve also thought that they knew why. One succinctly wrote:

I suspect that's something your teacher wants you to determine.

To whose words, another scholar humorously responded with:

Spoilsport!

Yet another scholar, implicitly skeptical about the purity of motive behind the query but with a bit more elaboration, wrote:

If you expect to get a useful answer to this question, you're going to have to provide some context. "Deserve" according to whom? And are you looking to more or less simply describe what happens in the poem (in a limited sense a matter of debate), to choose among various understandings of what might be said to happen (a matter of debate in a much wider sense), or evaluate those narrative events and/or understandings in some wider context (a matter of even wider debate)?

Still another scholar, very openly skeptical, wrote:

At least try to contribute something beyond this, like, say, maybe the entire draft text of the paper you're obviously trying to get us to write for you.

Now, I couldn't allow an opportunity like this one to slip by, so I also wrote a post, hoping to 'help' the hapless student:

Pay no attention to those other scholars. They wish to hide knowledge from you, to keep you low and ignorant. Why? Because in the day that you receive an answer, you shall be like them, knowing good texts from bad -- if there be bad.

Here, accept what I offer: After eating the apple, which turned out to be unripe, mankind deserved a bellyache, and that is exactly what mankind received.

All scholars are secretly agreed upon this, but I am revealing it openly for the first time. Share it freely with other students. Put it into your term papers. Quote me on it.

But don't bellyache afterwards.

Jeffery "Wormtongue" Hodges

At least one scholar on the listserve enjoyed reading the 'help' that I offered, responding heartily with:

A resounding . . . BRAVO!!

Ah . . . the first "Bravo" of my life. How nice! Should I bow?

I bow.

Plagiarism Index

To help those who wish to maintain just one link for accessing all of my posts on plagiarism, I'm here providing links to all five posts in the order that I wrote them:

The Folly of Online Plagiarizing

Be sure to give me credit...

Most Egregious Plagiarism Ever!

The Cleverest Plagiarists...

Netting Plagiarists

Now, Jim Davila of PaleoJudaica will have an easier task linking to them next semester when he teaches his Old Testament 2 course.

Be sure to give me credit...

. . . when you 'borrow' my post on plagiarism.

My site meter, located at the bottom of this blog, shot up yesterday when Jim Davila of PaleoJudaica linked to my post on plagiarism.

Thanks, Jim, for the interesting distraction from the grind of grading essays. I had a lot of fun clicking on the site-meter readings to see whence came the people who were perusing what I had to say about the ease of catching online plagiarists.

I now expect that within a few days, I'll be able to Google-search a line from my plagiarism-post and find people citing me . . . or (irony of ironies) quoting me without acknowledgement.

Such are the pleasures and risks of a life online.

Most Egregious Plagiarism Ever!

Usually, when students plagiarize from online, they shape part of the downloaded essay to meet my essay requirements.

They know that I require a thesis statement of a very specific form, one having this logical form:

A --> B b/c A --> C

What does that mean? Here's a simple exemplar:

Socrates is mortal because he is human.

Most readers will recognize that a famous syllogism stands behind this exemplar:

Major Premise: All humans are mortal.
Minor Premise: Socrates is human.
Conclusion: Socrates is mortal.

The exemplar simply begins with the conclusion, grounds it in the minor premise, and leaves implied the major premise.

But students need not know all of that (although I explain it). They need only know how to make a claim and provide a reason:

The Enlightenment contributed to the French Revolution because it led people to question traditional authority.

From this example, you can see that my thesis-statement requirement does not demand too much intellectual sophistication. It merely requires that a student construct a simple argument expressing a claim and giving a reason AND making sure that these together have the logical form A --> B b/c A --> C.

Not too difficult. I daresay that some computer programmer somewhere has already formulated an algorithm for generating thesis statements.

But the algorithm in our brain should work well enough.

Thus, when a well-written paper by one of my students avoids presenting the requisite thesis statement at the end of its introductory paragraph, little alarm bells start ringing in my head.

Last night, I 'graded' such a paper. Here's the introductory paragraph:

This essay will illustrate why Napoleon Bonaparte is regarded as one of the greatest military masterminds in the history of mankind. It will show the life of Napoleon from when he was a young boy, till he died in 1821. It will show how he deceived the French into giving him power, and how he used this power for his own interests. It will also reveal how Napoleon almost killed of an entire generation of France, and proved that all good things always come to an end.

Now, this might serve as an adequate beginning to an essay on Napoleon, but it doesn't fit my requirement, for it fails to reduce the central thesis to a single sentence with the logical form that I require.

Interestingly, the student had provided a thesis on a separate sheet of paper:

Thesis: Why Napoleon Bonaparte is regarded as one of the greatest military masterminds in history even though he failed to maintain his military empire.

This might have worked if he had rewritten it and given a reason:

Napoleon Bonaparte is regarded as one of the greatest military masterminds in history, even though he failed to maintain his military empire, because he mastered the strategies developed by previous generals throughout history and used brilliant tactics to carry them out.

I don't know if this is true, but it would at least fit the form that I require.

Anyway, since the student hadn't followed my very explicit instructions and yet seemed to have written a decent-enough essay (which I stopped reading after the first paragraph), I had my suspicions. So, I Googled a phrase and found this: Napoleon.

Exactly the same essay handed in by my student (except for a subordinate clause added to the thesis).

The website hosting this essay calls itself Essay Depot. Naturally, it presents a disclaimer:

DISCLAIMER: This web site was made for research purposes! Don't turn these papers in, unless you wish to be failed for the act of plagiarism. These papers are to be used for ideas, which means you need to include them in your bibliographies. All papers located on this site are submitted by students so they're not all professional quality. Your teachers know about this site so be wary!

That gets the Essay Depot folk off the hook. And they're right. We teachers do know about this site. The disclaimer is disingenuous since the essays are not professional, don't belong in bibliographies, and exist only to provide cheating students with ready-made thesis papers.

Ironically, the Essay Depot staff also worries about cheating:

All images, coding, essays, and pages cannot be used without the prior written consent of this web site.Copyright © 1996-2005 . The Essay Depot. All rights reserved. Privacy Policy. Managed By: Hosting Bits.

I wonder if my student obtained the "prior written consent" required. Should I notify the website and inquire? Wouldn't that be an irony, asking the Essay Depot staff to investigate?

The adage "to catch a thief" comes to mind.

If my student did cheat the cheaters, would this ripoff-essay assay constitute the "Most Egregious Plagiarism Ever!"? I doubt it. Cheating students probably steal such essays every chance that they get.

My only remaining question is this: When I used "Google" as a verb, should I continue to capitalize the word or write it in miniscule?

Paraphrasing Techniques: Applied!

Technique?

(Image from Free Dictionary)

For those interested in paraphrasing techniques, I worked up some materials yesterday morning, as you can see:

Paraphrasing (25 Minutes)

Text on "Women's Liberation"

Original Passage:

The traditional husband-wife relationship is undergoing a radical transformation. Because so many women are working, men are learning to share the household tasks of cooking, cleaning, and even caring for children. In some families, there has been a complete reversal of the traditional roles: the husband stays home, while the wife earns the family's income. It should be pointed out, however, that this is an exception, not the rule. In most families in the United States, the husband still earns most of the money, and the wife still does most of the housework.

Alice Oshima and Ann Hogue, Writing Academic English (4th ed), White Plains, NY: Pearson Longman, 2006.

Paraphrasing Techniques (with examples from last week):

1. Change to synonyms.

Examples: profound --> deep; humorous --> funny

2. Change word forms.

Example: The evidence supports their interpretation. --> Their interpretation receives support.

3. Change from a clause to a phrase.

To express this in a different way . . . --> In other words . . .

4. Change from quoted speech to indirect speech.

Hamlet asked, "To be, or not to be?" --> Hamlet asked if one should be or not be.

5. Change from active voice to passive voice.

The data show a causal relation. --> A causal relation is shown by the data.

6. Interpret meaning / Identify the underlying meaning of a statement.

The coward dies a thousand deaths; a brave man dies but one. --> A brave man may die, though only one physical death, but a coward dies in many ways even if he escapes physical death.

7. Change transitions.

However . . . --> But . . . ; Therefore . . . --> So . . .

Let's take the first sentence of the passage and apply some of these techniques to its parts:

"The traditional husband-wife relationship is undergoing a radical transformation."

Let's first use "Technique Number 1" (synonyms). Let's apply this technique to the word "traditional," choosing from a list of synonyms: old-fashioned, old, established, conventional, standard, fixed, usual, transmitted, orthodox, accustomed, customary, ancestral, long-established, unwritten, or time-honoured. If we use "established," we get:

The established husband-wife relationship is undergoing a radical transformation.

This is no longer an exact quote, so we don't use quotation marks, but it is still too close to the original and thus constitutes plagiarism rather than a good paraphrase.

Let's turn to "Technique Number 2" (word forms). Let's apply this technique to the expression "radical transformation" by altering the adjective-noun combination to an adverb-verb combination: "radically transforming." We can drop the original verb, "undergoing," since the new, adverb-verb combination contains its meaning:

The established husband-wife relationship is radically transforming.

But we notice that a passive construction would work better, so let's apply "Technique Number 5" (active voice to passive voice):

The established husband-wife relationship is being radically transformed.

This is still rather close to the original sentence:

The traditional husband-wife relationship is undergoing a radical transformation.

We therefore need to change this sentence some more. Techniques 3, 4, 6, and 7 don't apply here, but we can apply "Technique Number 1" (synonyms) three more times, for "relationship," "radically," and "transformed":

Synonyms for relationship: association, bond, communications, connection, conjunction, affinity, or rapport

Synonyms for radically: extremely, completely, entirely, sweepingly, violently, severely, extensively, excessively, thoroughly, drastically, or rigorously

Synonyms for transformed: changed, converted, altered, translated, reconstructed, metamorphosed, transmuted, or renewed

Let's use "bond," "thoroughly," and "changed." These give us the following paraphrase of the original (with the unchanged parts in red):

Paraphrase: The established husband-wife bond is being thoroughly changed.

Original: "The traditional husband-wife relationship is undergoing a radical transformation."

This paraphrase looks different enough from the original to avoid plagiarism.

Now, can we apply techniques 3, 4, 6, or 7 to any of the remaining sentences in the original passage? Yes, "Technique Number 3" (clause to phrase) can be applied, with the change shown in red:

Original: "Because so many women are working, men are learning to share the household tasks of cooking, cleaning, and even caring for children."

Paraphrase: Due to the many working women, men are learning to share the household tasks of cooking, cleaning, and even caring for children.

The paraphrase is obviously still too close to the original, but we’ve already seen how to deal with that problem.

Applying "Technique Number 4" (quoted speech to indirect speech) can also work. The passage itself has no quotes, but we can quote from the passage:

Quoted Speech: As Oshima and Hogue (2006) observed, "the husband still earns most of the money, and the wife still does most of the housework."

Indirect Speech: Oshima and Hogue (2006) observed that the husband still earned most of the money, and the wife still did most of the housework.

This paraphrase is also obviously still too close to the original, but, again, we've already seen how to deal with that problem.

Applying "Technique Number 6" (interpret meaning) can also work. Let's take another sentence:

Original: "It should be pointed out, however, that this is an exception, not the rule."

Paraphrase: Note, however, that this is not the usual case.

And we immediately see that "Technique Number 7" (transitions) can be applied here:

First Paraphrase: Note, however, that this is not the usual case.

Second Paraphrase: But note that this is not the usual case.

We've now used each of the paraphrasing techniques, numbers 1 through 7.

Let's now look at the result of all our effort at paraphrasing the original passage given at the beginning:

Paraphrase: The established husband-wife bond is being thoroughly changed. Due to the many working women, men are learning to share the household tasks of cooking, cleaning, and even caring for children. In some families, there has been a complete reversal of the traditional roles: the husband stays home, while the wife earns the family's income. But note that this is not the usual case. In most families in the United States, Oshima and Hogue (2006) observed that the husband still earned most of the money, and the wife still did most of the housework.

Compare this to the original:

Original: "The traditional husband-wife relationship is undergoing a radical transformation. Because so many women are working, men are learning to share the household tasks of cooking, cleaning, and even caring for children. In some families, there has been a complete reversal of the traditional roles: the husband stays home, while the wife earns the family's income. It should be pointed out, however, that this is an exception, not the rule. In most families in the United States, the husband still earns most of the money, and the wife still does most of the housework."

There are still too many things in common for this paraphrase to avoid plagiarism. But here's a much more complete paraphrase in which many things change:

More Complete Paraphrase: The established husband-wife bond is being thoroughly changed. Due to the many working women, men have now accepted the division of housework and are willing to cook, clean, and take care of children. Some families have even completely reversed the conventional roles, with the husband remaining at home and the wife serving as wage-earner. But note that this is not the usual case. Oshima and Hogue (2006) observed that most American families still had the wife doing the greater part of the housework and the husband earning the larger salary (Oshima & Hogue, 2006, p. 36).

Note that even though this is a paraphrase, one must still cite the source, i.e., Oshima & Hogue, 2006, p. 36. (Incidentally, I've had to make up a page number since I don't know the original page, but you should always use the correct page number for quotes and paraphrases.)

I would add one final point. Although this paraphrase is more complete, it is not quite ideal, for the sequence of sentences in this paraphrase follows the sequence of sentences in the original passage. Let's rework things a bit more through some restructuring:

More Complete Paraphrase Restructured: Due to the many working women, the established husband-wife bond is being thoroughly changed. Men have now accepted the division of housework and are willing to cook, clean, and take care of children. Some families have even completely reversed the conventional roles, with the husband remaining at home and the wife serving as wage-earner. But note that Oshima and Hogue (2006) observed that most American families still had the wife doing the greater part of the housework and the husband earning the larger salary (Oshima & Hogue, 2006, p. 36).

I have moved the phrase "Due to the many working women" to the first sentence and deleted the clause "this is not the usual case," and adjusted the results.

There. I hope this is benefical for somebody, and there may be more to come.

Just thought that I'd warn everybody . . .