Decoding Academia 25: A (chilled) discussion of Academic Plagiarism
Added 2024-01-18 04:08:51 +0000 UTCThe topic of plagiarism and how much of a sin it is in an academic context has been in the news recently. And with Matt and I being academics we thought we could provide some relevant perspectives on the topic. Our positions are probably in the minority amongst academics but this just confirms our renegade status.
As the whispered tones at the beginning (and random background noises) indicate this was a discussion recorded late at night in a ryokan lobby. We are not trying to expand into the ASMR market.
Also, it is a Decoding Academia episode but given the holiday vibe we decided to make it available to all!
Comments
I tend to agree with you. I am old and so went to uni in the medieval days of paper submission, so there was no software to check for plagiarism - but I still didn't do this. Maybe I'm a goody two shoes. I think there's a point where it can be genuinely hard, like I know there were times when I couldn't tell whether I was using my own words or I'd internalised an article so much that its language felt like my own. And I get that copy pasting a wiki definition is trivial. But also you shouldn't do it :P
Artemis Green
2024-01-20 07:24:58 +0000 UTCI think it depends on how people work. Some people might copy and paste stuff they like into documents as reference/to help paraphrase. But I dunno it’s all case by case. A definition being copied from Wikipedia seems trivial to me. You should cite it but 🤷🏻♂️.
Christopher Kavanagh
2024-01-19 23:46:59 +0000 UTCYup happens all the time. Willfully and through laziness.
Christopher Kavanagh
2024-01-19 23:45:13 +0000 UTCOn a semi related note, one thing I did find when I was doing my masters was that a ridiculous number of papers would assert a given thing, but then cite a paper that couldn't even remotely be interpreted as supporting the claim in the parent paper. Is that something you guys encounter when you're doing lit reviews?
Subodh Kafle
2024-01-19 22:44:54 +0000 UTCI did an integrated masters in engineering at uni and it never once occurred to me to copy sections from prior academic work. Even in the intro to my dissertation where I was summarising my lit review, I never considered copying the papers I was citing. My Uni used Turnitin and I have no idea how effective that was (graduated 2019) because I was never asked to explain something I submitted. This isn't to say I'm a great academic but like if a masters student can take the trivial time to summarise the material they're reading, why can't a PhD student?
Subodh Kafle
2024-01-19 22:40:51 +0000 UTCI like your guys take on this issue. As a former academic I often notice people who are overly critical of these issies forget that sometimes researchers are people and sometimes make innocent mistakes.
Justin F
2024-01-18 21:11:22 +0000 UTCMy personal take is that issues of plagiarism or use of ChatGPT are most important to deal with at the early academic level because the student at that point has far less understanding of the material and/or they have can have issues with basic comprehension. I’ve had students use ChatGPT to write their whole essays, and subsequent writing shows me they cannot write a coherent sentence. Another reason citations are necessary for me is I want to know where they got their ideas from in case they are being influenced by a Jordan Peterson, Graham Hancock, or some other misinformed individual I’ve never heard of. Since my twin is teaching freshman composition her whole job is to teach them how to write, use evidence, cite it properly and so forth, in which case plagiarism and academic dishonesty are “sins” because they go against the whole purpose of the course. She doesn’t want students who engage in these bad behaviors to advance to higher levels.
Linda Sears
2024-01-18 13:35:07 +0000 UTCI shouldn’t be as it’s a single glass but might just have a tired brain (or the side effects of Neutonic)! 🧠
Christopher Kavanagh
2024-01-18 13:01:01 +0000 UTCLove the intro, but Chris possibly under the influence a little? As he seems to circle round the same point about 5 times, unlistenable after about 26mins. 😸
Pobskill
2024-01-18 12:57:17 +0000 UTCThat's the whole point!
Christopher Kavanagh
2024-01-18 12:22:12 +0000 UTCCan we do away with the fancy intro? It adds nothing.
Duncan
2024-01-18 12:19:01 +0000 UTC
