Plagiarism

This message, by former Department Chair Doug Blum, originally appeared in the Spring, 2000, issue of Politicus, the Political Science Department newsletter.

I think I can safely say that plagiarism is the single most disturbing issue that we have to confront in the department.  Personally-and I know that I speak on behalf of all faculty - I consider plagiarism to be an utterly unacceptable academic offense. Without making this a lengthy harangue I want to briefly identify the different forms of plagiarism and suggest how we can work together to avoid misunderstandings and problems.

One kind of intentional plagiarism is simply submitting someone else's work. This might involve copying an article out of a book or journal, getting a friend to write the assignment, or paying a professional outfit like "College Sucks" to take care of it all. This is such a flagrant breach of ethics that I'm not even going to bother discussing it.

Another, slightly more subtle form of intentional plagiarism involves cutting and pasting together a composite of other people's work. This could be copying passages from different books or articles, or from Internet sources, and then rearranging all the material with maybe your own introduction and conclusion thrown in. Totally unacceptable! There's no originality or independence involved in doing such a paper. Of course, if every single sentence was attributed to the actual author it wouldn't technically be plagiarism, since there would be no pretense of originality. But it would be a no-brainer to give such a paper an F, since even my daughter in third grade is required to produce something original. Which is probably why, when people engage in such cutting-and-pasting exercises, they generally don't reveal their sources.

I want to make a real obvious point about the Internet here. The Internet is a wonderful research tool, but boy is it easy to abuse. Internet sources have to be cited just like anything else. Even if the author is anonymous, you have to at least cite the webpage.

Still more subtle, and possibly unintentional-but still plagiarism-is paraphrasing someone else's work without attribution. That is, using exactly the same idea, or following the identical logic of argument, but putting it into your own words. You might as well just keep the original text and put it in quotes, and in fact it would be far preferable to do so since that would be honest. Don't misunderstand me: there's nothing wrong with paraphrasing, per se. You could certainly paraphrase the original author, as long as you state clearly that you're doing that, and provide a footnote to show the source. No problem. Except of course if you're constantly doing it, after a while it pretty much turns into just cutting and pasting: no independent contribution from you.

It's the same thing with an idea: if you borrow an idea from an author you have to admit it. And again, it's fine to do that! We want you to do that. We also want you to be critical, to evaluate other people's ideas on your own, and perhaps to come up with entirely new ideas. But the point is that when you use someone else's idea it's just like using their language or the flow of their argument: it's theirs, and you can't pass it off as your own or simply neglect to mention that someone else had the idea first. I think students sometimes fail to do this, and never even imagine that they're plagiarizing. Well, they are!

Finally, I want to say something about misunderstandings and allegations of plagiarism. This has come up in the department, and it's very unfortunate and unpleasant. Here's the scenario. If I receive a paper which is absolutely brilliant-I mean, not only beautifully written and constructed, but also full of highly sophisticated and profound ideas, reflecting truly extensive and careful reading and thinking-you know what crosses my mind? Right. Plagiarism. Now, let me explain-it's not that I think PC students are incapable of outstanding work. In fact, our best students are every bit as good as any in the country. And who knows, there might be a genius lurking out there in the department today, in which case they'd naturally produce genius-level work. So let's say a student really did write this fabulous paper-researched it like crazy, thought about it all the time, poured their heart and soul into it, and wrote it up with a flair. And then Dr. Blum thinks they were cheating. Is that unfair? You bet! But is it understandable? Absolutely. Most college students are not yet ready to produce publishable-quality work in areas of advanced scholarship. I don't think I or any other faculty member can comfortably assume that such brilliance is authentic, unless we really know the student quite well. And then even if I discuss the paper with the student in question, he or she may justifiably claim that they just can't remember the details anymore. After all, the semester is a busy time, and students take multiple classes in addition to extra-curricular activities.

So how can we avoid such problems or misunderstandings in the future? My suggestion is, keep your notes. In fact, that applies not only to the scenario I just outlined but to allegations of all forms of plagiarism. This is the way I now handle the issue: if you can show me your extensive note taking and demonstrate that you understand all the material, and I can therefore check your sources, then I'm satisfied and you get the grade you deserve. Nobody, and certainly not me, feels good about making false accusations. And I'd love it if I never saw another case of plagiarism again.