How often do you think people are wrongly accused of plagiarism?

Parents Forum
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<p>I was just thinking about a paper I wrote last year. For a research paper where we had to have an argument, I chose to write a paper asserting that borderline personality disorder is underdiagnosed. Before I did any reading, I wrote out all my thoughts on the topic. I had many because I was diagnosed with borderline a while ago. I’ve had a lot of experience with this myself, and I’ve talked to many other people diagnosed with borderline or who have family members diagnosed with borderline. I had reasoned out on my own what I thought the situation was like and why. I wrote down an argument for why I thought this (bpd being underdiagnosed) was true and then three main reasons such a thing would happen. I did a bunch of research (mainly papers I looked up through my school library’s e-reserve), and to me what I was reading seemed to suggest I was correct, so I stuck with the stuff I’d originally brainstormed and made sure to cite all of my sources that backed it up. I turned the paper in. I got an A. Great. </p>

<p>But after that, I was still in the mood to keep reading. I read more and more books about borderline. About a month after I turned in the paper, I found one that also made the argument that bpd’s underdiagnosed, and it literally had a) the same argument for why the author believed borderline is underdiagnosed and b) the same three reasons for how this is the case/why it happens. His explanations were pretty similar to mine. I was really freaked out and tried to figure out if I had read anything in the past that fed me the ideas and then I’d internalized them, but the only borderline books I’d read had been memoirs that didn’t focus on those topics at all. All the web sites I’d gone to about it had just been about what the symptoms are, support for those who have been diagnosed with borderline, or support for family/friends of those diagnosed with borderline. Nothing I’d ever read about borderline had had anything to do with those particular things. </p>

<p>I realized that if I’d been my professor and had had some way to compare my paper to this book, I would 100% think it was plagiarism. The stuff this guy wrote and the stuff I wrote were just strikingly similar in content even if not in the way they were actually expressed.</p>

<p>I asked each of two of my friends with borderline what they thought of this. When I told them what I’d written and what was written in the book, each one’s reaction was, “Well duh, of course, anyone who has a lot of experience with this would know that stuff. Anyone would come up with what you said.” That made me feel better.</p>

<p>But. A professor wouldn’t necessarily see it that way. This was for an English class (he wanted us to choose whatever topic we pleased for our papers), and my English professor had no way of knowing if my ideas were the most obvious things in the world or if they were unique insights, so if he’d known how similar they were to this book, telling him, “But the stuff I said is easy to independently come up with!” wouldn’t have meant anything to him because how would he know if I was lying? He wouldn’t.</p>

<p>So, that is my story. It really made me wonder how often what we think is plagiarism when it comes to copied ideas actually isn’t. Some plagiarism is extremely clear, but other times I’ve heard it said just that the ideas were the same so it had to be plagiarism, even if it was not intended and the plagiarist only did it because they’d internalized someone else’s ideas without knowing it.</p>

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<p>BP: I understand your fears, but I don’t think that the kind of situation you are talking about happens all that often. In my experience (teaching undergrads in a social sciences/humanities department for 10+ years), the most common kind of plagiarism is students cutting and pasting sentences or paragraphs from an internet site. Sometimes the student attempts to cover up this copying by changing a few words. I have occasionally wondered whether a student copied ideas from a scholarly source without providing attribution, and on two occasions I have called a student into my office to talk about this. On both occasions, I was satisfied that the students reached their conclusions independently of the source I was thinking that they might have copied from.</p>

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<p>I don’t think it happens all that often. My friends who are college professors haven’t acted on suspected plagiarism unless there was a smoking gun. Making an accusation like this is likely to be a pain in the neck for the professor and bring on additional paperwork, administrative headaches, etc. So even if you assume bad motives on the professor’s part, they wouldn’t throw accusations around lightly.</p>

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<p>People don’t understand what plagiarism is. It’s using sources inappropriately or without attribution, or deliberately misrepresenting your work as original when it is not. What the OP describes is not plagiarism. </p>

<p>If you were a graduate student in a Ph.D. program or an academic researcher, you would be expected to know all the existing literature on your topic, and you would be held responsible if you published your conclusions as original when, in reality, someone else had published them before you. But college professors don’t generally expect the same level of disciplinary awareness from undergraduates; they just want you to understand how to cite and integrate sources.</p>

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<p>BPD - Plagiarism isn’t a disease. It’s a statement of “what is.” If one turns in a paper that includes Capote’s famous opening line “Until one morning in mid-November of 1959, few Americans–in fact, few Kansans–had ever heard of Holcomb.” Well that’s blatant plagiarism.</p>

<p>If I’m doing a paper on stem cell research and include the obscure “Since the first description of mouse ES cells, it has been recognized that the derivation of human ES cells could provide a unique resource for the functional analysis of early human development.” Well that’s still plagiarism. It may not be intentional, but it’s still plagiarism since the words, though they are pedestrian and describe a generally accepted concept, are Ruebinoff’s.</p>

<p>There are areas of gray obviously … but the concept is simple. Most professionals have their papers reviewed before publication. Editors are often involved too. If you think it’s hard on a student to receive an “F” due to unreferenced theft, please consider that it’s often a firing offense for professionals.</p>

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<p>^^^^And for professionals, sometimes a lawsuit.</p>

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<p>I think it is very, very rare.</p>

<p>Personally, I think the cult of individualistic originality is highly destructive. In my years, I’ve learned that if I have a truly “original” thought, chances are it’s wrong. I’m a pretty bright guy I think, with lots of books under my belt, but it is most likely that virtually any good thought I’ve ever had, someone else has had before. And I find that comforting.</p>

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<p>I agree with all the above. In those instances, including a very recent one I have mentioned on this site, that I have reported the plagiarism of a student, the papers are generally as described above–sentences and paragraphs lifted from somewhere else, with maybe a word or two changed. Yours is not that–your wording and thought processes leading toward the same conclusion and main points are going to be different. You could explain how you had prior knowledge and clearly convey that, if asked.</p>

<p>HOWEVER–if I was your prof, what I would object to is that you based a “research paper” on prior knowledge, rather than on…research. Learning how to research and synthesize from sources is a major set of skills college classes expect of you. If your research paper was based on what you know from personal life rather than your research process, I would down grade it as not doing what the assignment asked. If research was optional, and it’s more of an essay, that’s different. But if research was the primary goal, then the lack of it would be, for me, an issue.</p>

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<p>I believe the OP knows what is plagarism. What s/he is stating is that in this case it would appear to be plagarism when it is not.</p>

<p>Plagarism is both using others’ words or ideas, and not giving credit where due and thus presenting the work as their own original work. If someone writes a paper that is graded on content (such as not only reviewing the literature but doing something original such as integrating that literature, proposing unexamined future questions, comparing and contrasting two themes), and they use ideas they read elsewhere but do not credit the source (and thus present it as if its their own), that is indeed plagarism. Now whether one can prove that- or whether there may be a mistake in assuming it was plagarized when it was not, such as in the case laid out by the OP- that is another issue.</p>

<p>To answer the OP’s question, I think this example would be rare. It is hypothetically possible but odd and unlikely (not just that the same structure and ideas were presented between a student and an author, but also that the OP just happen to stumble upon it). I think in the rare case where this would happen, the student would be accused for plagarism and nothing they can do about it other than hope someone believes them. I probably would not because after 20 years of ‘dying grandmothers’ and incidents of plagarism and the need for students to come up with great excuses…combined with the low odds this actually took place, I wouldn’t buy it.</p>

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<p>No PhD student or researcher is expected to know ALL the literature in their area of study–unless, it’s very new <em>and</em> very niche. Are they expected to have a very, very strong grasp on it? Yes. Do they likely know all of it, especially very new or “minor” research? No. If they did, no one would have to do extensive lit searches for systematic reviews or meta analyses.</p>

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<p>NewHope, I didn’t mention students getting F’s due to unreferenced theft. Did I say something that suggested I don’t think people who plagiarize should be punished? I meant to ask about instances in which no plagiarism occurred, but it appears as though it did. </p>

<p>Starbright, you are right. I know what plagiarism is. You are right about what I was saying/asking.</p>

<p>Garland, you have a good point about not basing research papers on prior opinions. This particular prof asked us to choose something on which we had an opinion and then back it up, so I guess it wasn’t a true research paper. He gave us tips on how to construct convincing arguments. Its true that that would be a wrong way to go about things most of the time though.</p>

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<p>Newhope, re my post (#11), when you read it, I realize I sounded snippy and I realize I shouldn’t have. Sorry.</p>

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<p>BPD-girl–ah, tht makes sense. And also I think, that as it was an essay grounded in making an argument, not in outside research, it would be tht much less likely to be called out for plagiarism (I would hope, anyway!)</p>

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<p>If you are defending a dissertation on a topic or publishing an article in a peer reviewed journal, then you are expected to know the literature of the area you are writing about so you can make an original contribution to it. I think we are defining “area” differently. I’m defining it as the topic of publication, narrowly defined; not the disciplinary totality.</p>

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<p>^^^ I didn’t think your response was snippy. And like other responders, I don’t think what you described in your OP was plagiarism. But students besides yourself will read this thread to gain insight. Some of them will be quite grumpy after lifting a paragraph or two (unattributed) and getting marked down two grades. Frankly, I get grumpy just listening to their excuses. My favorite? “The paragraph wasn’t even mine. A friend was helping me with this. It’s his paragraph!” (You can’t make this stuff up.)</p>

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<p>BPD, when I was in HS, many decades ago, I wrote a paper for an independent study on the Irish Literary Renaissance. At that age, I really didn’t have any experience with or knowledge of literary scholarship. I read a bunch of original works–at least 20 plays, novels, and novellas, and of course quite a bit of poetry by authors such as Yeats, Synge, and Lady Gregory–and wrote a long paper about them. I didn’t consult any scholarly journals or books.</p>

<p>The teacher, as it turned out, was mad at me because I didn’t go to see her as much as she would like. (She and I apparently had different ideas about what “independent” study meant.) She gave me a D on the paper, she circled observations I made and specific words I used–such as noting that in some work or other the English were portrayed as “phlegmatic” in comparison to the Celts–and wrote “footnote this” next to them. She was, in effect, accusing me of plagiarism, and giving me a D as punishment. She also took my paper and PINNED IT TO A PUBLIC BULLETIN BOARD in her classroom!! (What a rhymes-with-witch! :slight_smile: ) This teacher was new to the school, and apparently did not consult any of the other people in the department who knew me, and might have told her that I was fully capable of achieving those insights–and using that vocabulary–on my own.</p>

<p>So yes, it does happen. And I have to say that my experience leads me to give students more benefit of the doubt than many here, who seem to assume that students are probably guilty of cheating and so forth if accused. (And I’m sure many, if not most of them, are. But not necessarily all.) But I REALLY doubt that it often happens when the instructor is well-intentioned. In your case, obviously you would have had the work product to make it crystal clear that you were not plagiarizing.</p>

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<p>I never accuse a student of plagiarizing; however, I do catch them. If I suspect a student has lifted work, I write “source?” in the margin, but I do not take off points. If I catch a student plagiarizing, I have the source in-hand.</p>

<p>The original post to me seemed like much of what was used would fall under the category of common knowledge, which is exactly what other people are referring to when they talk about someone being versed on the research and ideas that are out there.</p>

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<p>It was strange because I know it was supposed to be a run-of-the-mill research paper. It was the English class absolutely everyone is required to take and it must include a research paper. But I guess the professor thought it would be more fun if it was an opinion piece that nonetheless was backed up by research. He did stress not plagiarizing. </p>

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<p>Oh, wow, that excuse is classic. Two people in my lab turned in the exact same lab report that both or one of them had written together, and I was surprised there was no consequence aside from getting an F for the lab report. (I know this because one of the people who did it insisted on talking about it with the TA in the middle of lab.) Maybe the TA was being generous because one of the people is a single mom. </p>

<p>I hadn’t thought of other students reading this to gain insight. I guess I should have. I would tend not to believe 99% of people who claim they didn’t plagiarize, which makes me think that it’s very important to be able to explain <em>exactly</em> how you reached your conclusions. I was thinking about it, and I realized that if my professor had somehow read the book I read after turning the paper in, I could have had my current therapist/psychiatrist and several past ones write letters about how I’d said all the stuff in the paper to them in the past because I was dissatisfied with my treatment and angry that I’d been misdiagnosed for years before getting the proper diagnosis. I would have been able to clearly explain my entire thought process and where it had come from.</p>

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<p>You are very generous. I always think I would be an extremely mean professor because even as a student I want to throw people’s phones across the room when they text in class, and I want to yell at people who have conversations while the professor is speaking. I guess I have a lot of pent up anger. I also feel deeply offended by people who squat and leave pee on toilet seats as well as people who walk slowly in the middle of the sidewalk while swaying from side to side so that you can’t pass them. No excuse! :p</p>

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<p>BPD girl–in one of the schools I teach at, we do something similar–one essay is larger than the others–it’s still based on the student’s thinking on an issue (so, opinion), but based on outside reseach on the topic–they call it a “documented essay,” not a “research paper.” Students can draw from their own experiences, but those are augmented by the outside research. They need to demonstrate proper and useful use of sources, formatting, MLA citation style, etc, as well as critical thinking on the topic. That sounds similar to what your prof is doing.</p>

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<p>The ones I catch would not agree with you!</p>