Is That Legal?

I'd tell you and let you worry about it.

Okay, that was flip. But I'm not an academic, I'm a computer nerd, and it'd be unseemly for me to proclaim what academic ethics should be. (And I've scarcely heard about the Chronicle, and didn't know that it was an arbiter of academic conflicts.) So, if I were to see two apparently identical speeches, I'd point it out to someone in the field (that'd be you), and say, "Whaddya think?"

Happens more than you know.

A friend of mine was unablet o graduate with his class, despite being an excellent student, because his major advisor failed him on his senior thesis at the end of his last semester. He had to rework it and graduate a semester later. He was from a foreign country and was quite upset that his mother had come to see him graduate but did not get to do so.

Imagine his surprise when the professor later published a paper based on the work in his original thesis.

I think after contacting the Chronicle it would be appropriate to do both options 2 and 4 concurrently. At least giving a 'heads-up' to the provost would make them well aware of the issue rather than having to glean that from the blogosphere. At the same time, letting them know that you plan to blog about it would give them an impetus to act on that information.

So, is this speech plagiarism ethical code limited to academics? I ask because political speech, if the politician (or speechwriter) is the slightest bit well-read, is a series of crib notes from appropriate literary, philosophical and historical sources. Only rarely is there a footnote of any sort, or even a verbal nod. In fact, Joe Average would probably be completely turned off by references to the philosophers and historians and journalists who make the grist for an interesting speech. "As Hegel said about welfare reform..."

Thoughts?

Eric, thank you very, very much for your advice and support. The question you've raised here is important; I just wish the answer were clearer. The American Historical Association has strong and sensible guidelines for both what plagiarism is (hint: "intent") and what should be done when you find it. But alas, as to the latter it is short on details. I'm disappointed to read in your post that the AHA has, itself, given up on investigating allegations of plagiarism. It isn't the only professional society to have thrown in the towel, according to the article you cite, which is well worth reading in full.

None of the five seem like very good options. #3 seems particularly bad. It would have left West with the choice of ignoring it or making an issue of it and probably looking petty and egotistical for doing so. (I don't imagine Baker would have cared. I bet if he had a nickel for every time someone stole one of his bits, there'd be enough buy him a house in the Hamptons.)

I think Rob's got the best answer, though if it had been me, I probably would have gone with David's approach. I'm not even sure that putting my small addendum to Sally's discovery in a comment was the best thing to do. I don't think it was terrible, but maybe putting it in an e-mail to you would have been more appropriate.

Al,
I think it's certainly a more serious issue for academics. Research standards are a necessity for an honest scholar, but not so important for an honest politician (even assuming that's not an oxymoron).

I think that the solution choosen was the right one, and alternatively a combination of 1, 3, 4 and perhaps 2. Giving the suspected plagiarists and the people who seems to be the victims of the plagiation a chance to look at the charges, and in the case of the suspected plagiarists to defend themselves.

A couple of years ago my wife was asked to write a book review for the main journal in her field on a (then) new book in her area of expertise.

It sat on her desk for a few weeks until she had some time to spare. When she started reading it her first thought was that much of the first chapter was really quite well-written, particularly the part that was taken word-for-word from an article she had published a few years earlier (in that same journal). It took her two paragraphs to recognize that it sounded familiar, so she got up and pulled her article down from the shelf, opened it up, and started comparing the text. Paragraph after paragraph after paragraph, they just kept coming. Pause for a moment, put yourself in her shoes, and think about that. Like pulling a big boa constrictor out of the toilet, she had no idea when the horror was going to end. The entire introductory chapter was only eight or nine pages long, and four pages of it was hers.

Boy was that guy busted.

Or maybe not. His excuse? Not his fault: although the chapter carried his name, it was actually written by his student, and his student had plagiarized my wife's article, not he. He, as much as my wife, was an innocent victim. When it was pointed out that he had appropriated his student's work without attribution he claimed that this was entirely ethical for dissertation advisers to do. The journal decided not to pursue either plagiarism or copyright infringement.

I do so wish that she had completed her book review.

I didn't think about bloggers, but I did think about google-bombing him: I figured if I worked it right, whenever someone googled up his name I could get a page on plagiarism to pop up.

Rashid Khalidi, another case of plagiarism?

http://hnn.us/articles/12508.html

6-17-05: Historians/History
The Complaint Against Rashid Khalidi
By Elizabeth O'Neill
Ms.
An historian who remains anonymous has alleged in an email picked up by HNN (see below) that an online piece that for four years carried the byline of Rashid Khalidi, Edward Said Professor of Arab Studies at Columbia University and former President of the American Committee for Jerusalem, contained plagiarized material. The article, "Jerusalem, A Concise History," was posted on February 27, 2001 at the website of the American Committee for Jerusalem, an organization that has since become the American Task Force on Palestine. Key phrases and sentences in the article appear to have been taken from a 1994 article by the late Kamil Jamil el Asali of the University of Jordan.
Khalidi denies responsibility for the piece. "I did not write the item in question, and have never claimed it as my own work. It was a compilation that was mistakenly attributed to me by the defunct website of a defunct organization," he wrote in an email.
The allegations are complicated by disputes over what constitutes plagiarism on the Internet and by ideological tensions over the article’s content, which deals with the origins of the Palestinian people. In an email sent to HNN, the anonymous historian says that a search for "silly statements about national continuity between the ancient Philistines, Jebusites, or Canaanites and modern Palestinian Arabs" led her to the article in question. Khalidi, for his part, sees the anonymous historian’s accusations as "part of a systematic, organized campaign of smears and harassment against faculty in the Middle East field." Columbia University recently completed an investigation into student complaints of anti-Israel bias against several faculty in the Middle Eastern and Asian Languages and Cultures department. Khalidi was not one of the professors under investigation.
Upon discovering the article, the anonymous historian " phoned a colleague on the Columbia faculty with the suggestion that she take it to Dean Quigley, the ordinary procedure in cases of plagiarism." But the colleague referred her to Appendix E of the Columbia University Faculty Handbook, which states, "In the event that the committee should find that an individual or individuals have made charges against a researcher for malicious reasons, or were otherwise not acting in good faith in making such charge, the dean will take appropriate action." This worried her. She reports that she felt intimidated.
The anonymous historian’s email conveys her reaction: "Suppose a scholar not only believes in the right of Israel to exist––Khalidi denies the Jewish nation this right––but further believes, as many scholars do, that Khalidi’s work is replete with half-truths and the selective use of evidence to make a political case against the Jewish State. Such a scholar might prefer to see an opponent of the existence of Israel take a fall. Is that malicious?"
She turned next to what she referred to as a "a major metropolitan daily," which Khalidi identified as the New York Sun––and which he derided as "a paper which prints perhaps 5000 copies and sells practically none, and which cannot be called ‘major,’ by any sense of the word." He added, "I would doubt the judgement of any ‘historian’ who describes it as such." The reporter at the Sun began researching the story by contacting a plagiarism expert, who, says the anonymous historian, called the article "a clear case of plagiarism." He also attempted unsuccessfully to contact Khalidi and the American Committee for Jerusalem. Before he could do more, however, his editor called off the story because of questions about whether the article, as "merely an occasional piece on a web site," according to the anonymous historian, should have to follow the same standards as those that appear in printed journals or periodicals. Khalidi characterized the Sun’s decision not to run the story as a move made in a "rare fit of sanity," but he wrote that he shared their view that the online article fell into an area that did not necessarily follow the rules of printed works: "it was never ‘published’ in any real sense of the word," Khalidi wrote.
By the time the anonymous historian brought her allegations to another journalist, Khalidi’s byline had been removed from the ACJ website. In its place is a note reading, "Compiled by ACJ from a variety of sources." Lee Kaplan of Frontpagemag.com, who refers to the anonymous historian as "a friend," wrote a story on the allegations in which he suggested that the removal of the byline was a cover-up. Solomnia.com said such a change, which occurred without explanation, is "considered bad form on the internet" but made no further judgement.
That the plagiarism allegations have attracted attention at all concerns Khalidi. He wrote, "I am distressed that anyone is taking this canard seriously."

The problem, in general, in deciding what to do is related to what in particular the offense is. As an author of a set of rules for footnoting, I can state that academic dishonesty runs a gamut from out and out fraud to gross negligence to negligence to appearance of impropriety. Therefore it's hard to come up with a simple solution to the question, what do do when ac. dishonesty is spotted on the part of an academic.

Plagiarism extends far beyond the written word. In research / biological - life sciences, it is the obligation of the academic community to see to it that each doctoral candidate has completed a dissertation based on his/her OWN ideas, research and work prior to graduating. Sadly there are pockets where this standard is not upheld. I have seen a handful of PHDs graduate by merely repeating a series of steps or methods, by carefully coping the same ideas, hypotheses, designs, concepts and protocols off of one or two students who actually did their own work. The only difference being technically small - such as they either change the cell line in which the experiments were conducted - or kept the same model or cell line, and then changed the test chemical. In either case, there is no independent thought process involved with this - other than the objective and goal to copy another students work, alter it slightly and then represent it as ones own work.

To those of us who do things honestly, there is no roadmap for a dissertation and it is a difficult task. We must read the prior literature in order to establish a hypothesis, design and validate proper methodologies and means to carry out a proper investigation. The doctoral degree is of the highest degrees awarded and its merit is not based on how well you can copy someone elses work.

It is wrong when a student can get a PHD without 1) ever researching the literature on the topic of their dissertation [they fill in hundreds of pages of dissertation text - after the copying to defend their work] 2) never design an experiment based on literature or a hypothesis [the hypothesis and goal is to copy exactly what someone else did] and then present this as ones own work. All in all, what you end up with is a number of students who claim to have a range of diverse "topics" yet they all use the same experimental methods and model - taken from one or two individuals work. It is a shortcut, it is dishonest and unethical. Plagiarism is theft and a violation of ethical and academic standards.

For victims of plagiarism seeking support, there is a great article at
http://www.aisnet.org/Conduct/Plagiarism_Guidelines.htm