{"id":644,"date":"2022-10-25T23:31:54","date_gmt":"2022-10-25T22:31:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jimclarke.net\/?p=644"},"modified":"2022-10-25T23:31:56","modified_gmt":"2022-10-25T22:31:56","slug":"plagiarism-kills","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jimclarke.net\/index.php\/2022\/10\/25\/plagiarism-kills\/","title":{"rendered":"Plagiarism kills"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Plagiarism isn’t illegal, says this article<\/a>. No, it isn’t, anywhere, but it ought to be. Because plagiarism kills.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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I heard a decade ago of someone making six figures a year from writing papers for cash. That’s a big temptation for people struggling to get by as a postgrad or post-doc. And indeed, those who provide this service to cheats do get the tiny violins out to justify their decisions in the article linked above.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The bottom line is that everyone knows this is going on and is wrong. But universities simply don’t care, in their marketised, stack-students-high, sell-degrees-expensively model. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Academics are actively discouraged from challenging cases of plagiarism. It’s a ton of extra work, and often the students simply get a slap on the wrist anyway. Given the choice of reporting a suspected case, providing the evidence to a faculty committee, engaging in a formal investigation and then watching the student be told “don’t be naughty again” is sufficient discouragement for most lecturers, whose time is already at a premium.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But this approach isn’t good enough. Plagiarists devalue the degrees and credentials of their honest peers, and the vast market which has sprung up like foul toadstools to service those who’d rather pay than study is not simply ethically dubious but actively threatens the integrity of the entire educational system.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And it is a real issue for society. Do you want to drive over a bridge designed by an engineer who handed in other people’s essays to get their degree? Or would you like your child to be delivered by a midwife who did likewise? I am aware of cases of students who obtained degrees in both disciplines, and in many others, via consistent and continuous cheating in this manner. We must assume those graduates are in jobs now, in critical positions for which they are not actually qualified.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is why you should care. It’s time to put the paper mills out of business for good, by making them illegal, and by properly punishing students who engage in plagiarism. Expulsion and a ban from higher education should be the minimum response.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Plagiarism has ramifications in many other areas too. Once uncovered, it generally leads to a significant loss of commercial, institutional or individual credibility and reputation. It’s hard to come back from. And of course, where authors have their work stolen (rather than sold), it’s literally beggaring people and thieving unearned benefits from the work of others.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But to create a truly anti-plagiarism culture, we need to start with education. Perhaps it may even be too late in the cycle to do so at university level, since reports of students plagiarising work in secondary schools is also rife in very many nations. But we badly need to start somewhere.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And if higher education don’t address their plagiarism problem, they will soon find their expensive degrees becoming more and more worthless, as more and more people simply purchase rather than earn those credentials.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Plagiarism isn’t illegal, says this article. No, it isn’t, anywhere, but it ought to be. Because plagiarism kills. I heard a decade ago of someone making six figures a year from writing papers for cash. That’s a big temptation for people struggling to get by as a postgrad or post-doc. And indeed, those who provide … <\/p>\n

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