plagiarism

Would the real inventor of calculus please stand up?

XKCD has done a strip on the conflict of calculus invention.

Most stories of calculus (but wikipedia does a very nice history) tend to forget all the work done by the ancient and medieval mathematicians (not to mention the foreigners) and skip straight away into the Newton vs Leibniz conflict.

The problem was that Newton didn’t publish his work so when Leibniz figured out a system for the calculus of infinitesimals he was accused of plagiarism by Newton. The petty academic discussion continued for a while and Leibniz was apparently very hurt the great man’s accusations.

The image at the end with Newton in shades is a perfect example of the man who was a bit of a diva.

Posted on by mklang

Travel Fraud & Plagiarism

Just because it’s plagiarism doesn’t mean that it has to be bad writing. A travel writer for Lonely Planet, my favorite travel series, has admitted to the Sunday Telegraph that he has not been in the countries he has written about. He wrote his book on Colombia from San Francisco and has admittedly never been in that country he has also admitted to plagiarising  large sections of the book.

The Lonely Planet has fact checked his books but discovered no faults in them.

So what is the problem with a travel writer who has never been in the country? Well it is dishonest and fraudulent since the premise is that the writer is writing from personal experience. The fact that it is good writing is not the point. In fact, as most students are aware, a prerequisite for good plagiarism is good writing.

Posted on by mklang

Plagiarism Saga

Following the embarrassing case of plagiarism at my university (Göteborg) has turned into a long process (here, here, here and here).

The brief outline of the case is that a researcher acting as a supervisor for a mastes thesis used some of the students work in a conference paper without referencing the work of the students. Apparently the students were mentioned in the oral presentation of the paper. Not that this matters.

May 2005: The conference when the paper was presented.

November 2005: The plagiarism is addressed by the Faculty, unsure what they actually did probably just decided to send the errand on to the ethics committee.

May 2006: A split ethics committee is not in agreement and send the case on to the National Science Council (Vetenskapsrådet)

March 2007: National Science Council reaches the conclusion that the researcher had behaved in an unethical manner by plagiarising student essays.

June 2007: The expert group at the Science council reach the same conclusion.

September 2007: The Human Resources Committee at Göteborg University is the body with the power to punish the researcher for her actions is unable to act since the university failed to notify the researcher, in writing, that disciplinary actions could be taken. This notification must take place within two years of the waking of the errand.  This means that since nobody at the university bothered to notify the researcher in writing during the past two year no disciplinary actions can be taken.

This situation has been handled incredibly badly….

Posted on by mklang

God Bless You

Ok – I will confess. Sometimes, only sometimes, I read spam. Not always and not all of it but enough. My reason for reading it is that I often find it fascinating. My favorite spam is not the helpful tips for member enlargement or the false degrees (even though the latter is kind of amusing considering how much time I have spent at university), no my favorite is the Nigerian 419*

Today I was reading one of these and was amused that people fall for these things. Naturally people do. I had a boss many, many years ago when I worked in a pet store who used to say:

Remember, people are not as stupid as you think – they are much stupider!

Words of wisdom from the bottom of the fish tank. Anyway badly written online scams amaze me. They make me think of the poor stupid saps who fall for them. Today for example I received an email from a Mr Harry Thomas, the Director of Operations for Barclays Bank in London. He naturally wanted me to email him all sorts of information about my account:

Do update me back in Details so that we can proceed further how to Transfer your funds Directly to your Bank Account, and you will have to come Down to our Bank so that you can make some Signing so that your funds will be wired to you.

Your Reply is Needed.

Beyond the bad grammar and the fake email address (who would fall for: barclaysbankmails@i.ua) – the thing that really gave it all away was the way in which he ended the letter

God Bless you.

No Way! A bank was all of a sudden concerned about my spiritual well-being 🙂

Obviously I should not read spam. But I do feel a desire to correct there most glowing errors. I don’t know why – its just that a pathetic attempt to do anything kind of cries out for help.

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*Online scammers pretending to be deposed presidents or corrupt oil company employees often contact people in an attempt to establish contact for a future scam. The reason this is called a Nigerian 419 is that many of these scammers were traditionally based in Nigeria and 419 is the fraud section of the criminal code.

Posted on by mklang

Plagiarism case continues

In May last year I wrote about a case of plagiarism from my university. The interesting thing about this plagiarism was that it was a teacher who had stolen part of a masters thesis written by two students whom she had supervised.

At the department of business studies two students wrote their masters thesis. Their supervisor then took parts of the text and included it word for word in an article she presented at an international conference. The students were not acknowledged in any way. The head of department defended the supervisorâ??s actions in the student press â?? which is sad, but in a sense an understandable defence. Still sad and it shows a definite lack of backbone. (this blog in May 2006)

The case was sent to the research ethics committee

The majority of the research ethics committee found that while it was wrong that the supervisor did not ask the students, it was too far to say that the supervisor had cheated. This position was motivated that by calling the supervisor actions plagiarism would effectively be damage scientific research. (from earlier post).

Thankfully today the local newspaper writes that the University Dean has sent the errand onwards and upwards to the research ethics group of the National Swedish Research Council. Maybe by going beyond the confines of the own organisation the message can be stated clearly that plagiarism by researchers is as unacceptable as we claim it is when students attempt it.

Today the local paper reports that the VetenskapsrÃ¥det (Swedish Science Council) have reached the unanimous decision that the supervisor’s actions were a clear cut case of plagiarism. The fate of the supervisor will be decided by the university dean after the summer.

Posted on by mklang

Rewards of Plagiarism

Back in May last year I wrote about a case of plagiarism from my university. The interesting thing about this plagiarism was that it was a teacher who had stolen part of a masters thesis written by two students whom she had supervised.

At the department of business studies two students wrote their masters thesis. Their supervisor then took parts of the text and included it word for word in an article she presented at an international conference. The students were not acknowledged in any way. The head of department defended the supervisorâ??s actions in the student press â?? which is sad, but in a sense an understandable defence. Still sad and it shows a definite lack of backbone. (this blog in May 2006)

The local newspaper reports that the case has been under review again and that this time the plagiarizing researcher is not being defended. She has, according to the experts, not followed good research practice and the case is clearly one of plagiarism.

The embarrassment must have been bad when the department defended the plagiarizing researcher, but now that the guilty opinion has been delivered it must be really bad. In addition the whole department that defended her actions as common practice really has egg on its face now.

Good. Stealing other peoples work is not acceptable. Stealing from students is unacceptable and really quite pathetic.

Posted on by mklang

good plagiarists arenâ??t caught

The BBC ran a story on plagiarism a couple of days ago. The main point was to present the work of Professor Sally Brown. The results are not surprising but the interesting thing is that this has become an issue to report on the BBC website (or maybe it was a slow news day!). Sally Brown says that plagiarism is affecting all UK universities: â??The ones that say they havenâ??t got a problem have got their heads in the sand.â??

I have written about university plagiarism before â?? both when itâ??s students plagiarising and when itâ??s the researchers. The non-recognition of the problem is not only due to the google-generation. There are too many examples of scholars schooled in pre-google, and indeed pre-Internet, who have been caught cheating in this way.

Professor Brown also comments on the flaws of software based solutions against plagiarism: â??The good plagiarists arenâ??t caught.â?? Again this is not new but it is interesting that it needs to be said.

But is â??goodâ?? plagiarism really plagiarism? The amount of work it takes to personalise a text can really be greater than writing it. Editing other peoples work is not an easy process and it is most definitely a learning process which the university in one way claims to be interested in.

If plagiarism is when the student (lets ignore the professional plagiarists for now) hands in someone elseâ??s work and claims that it is his/her own â?? by these standards ripping off someoneâ??s name from an essay and adding ones own is plagiarism. But so is bad or inadequate use of references.

All too often we demand that our students think independently on issues where many superior minds have thought for a long time. If the student â??simplyâ?? collects the thoughts of others and references this process well it is considered a fair essay â?? it lacks the individual thought. If the references are badly done its plagiarism.

Maybe, just maybe, we should begin to reappraise this process. In the age of Internet and CIO (Chief Information Officers) is the goal independent thought? Or is the goal the ability to sift through the mass of information and then present it in a new and coherent way? By focusing on the independent thought we are (indirectly) promoting the urge to plagiarise since the student always will be able to find someone who has had their idea before themâ?¦

Posted on by mklang

Note from my university

As some of you may know â?? I am concerned with plagiarism (some earlier posts on the subject). In one of these earlier posts I wrote about a situation where a supervisor had borrowed/stolen/plagiarised a student work and presented it as his/her own at the EMAC conference in Milan in 2005.

The plagiarist is a PhD â?? not a student. The conference submission was a five-page paper. There is something very wrong with the fact that a person with a PhD cannot write his/her own five-page conference paper (Actually I would call five pages an extended abstract).

What really annoyed me (besides the bad plagiarism and all it stands for) was the fact that:

The majority of the research ethics committee found that while it was wrong that the supervisor did not ask the students, it was too far to say that the supervisor had cheated. This position was motivated that by calling the supervisor actions plagiarism would effectively be damage scientific research. (from earlier post).

Thankfully today the local newspaper writes that the University Dean has sent the errand onwards and upwards to the research ethics group of the National Swedish Research Council. Maybe by going beyond the confines of the own organisation the message can be stated clearly that plagiarism by researchers is as unacceptable as we claim it is when students attempt it.

Posted on by mklang