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What Counts as Plagiarism? Harvard President's Resignation Sparks Debate 119

Harvard University President Claudine Gay resigned earlier this month over plagiarism claims, sparking an online debate over academic copying. While many say original writing remains essential, some researchers argue for more flexibility, as long as sources are clear. The affair has prompted vows of plagiarism reviews targeting faculty, including from billionaire Bill Ackman, whose wife faced similar allegations at MIT. Nature: Few would argue with the US government's definition, which calls plagiarism "the appropriation of another person's ideas, processes, results or words without giving appropriate credit." But that seems to be where the agreement ends. Some plagiarism scholars say that Gay clearly copied text without proper attribution. She agreed to issue several corrections to her dissertation and other papers before resigning last week. For some, this was necessary to preserve public trust in science. "We all make the occasional mistake, but once it was shown that there were more than a few problems with her research, I think it was essential that president Gay stepped down," says Naomi Oreskes, a science historian at Harvard.

Others argue that the alleged violations are at most minor omissions. They say that Gay, a political scientist, merely summarized the scientific literature in line with the norms of her field, with no bearing on her own scholarship. "The day the plagiarism allegations broke, the response in the hallway was kind of like, 'Well, I guess we're all plagiarists,'" says Alvin Tillery, a political scientist at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, who knew Gay during their time as graduate researchers. These disputes highlight a singular challenge in evaluating plagiarism allegations: the official definition does not differentiate between what some consider the innocuous borrowing of phrases and wholesale theft of ideas and prose. Some academics are now calling for rules to provide clarity.

[...] What happened to Gay has prompted some scientists to question the value of requiring scholars to freshly summarize known facts in the introduction and methods sections of each new paper. In one approach, dubbed 'modular writing,' researchers could sample more liberally from the work of their peers to describe the broader scientific literature, provided that they cite the source. This could particularly benefit those whose first language is not English, theoretical physicist and author Sabine Hossenfelder wrote on the social-media platform X after Gay resigned. "It is entirely unnecessary that we ask more or less everyone to summarize the state of the art of their research area in their own words, over and over again, if minor updates on someone else's text would do," Hossenfelder wrote.
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What Counts as Plagiarism? Harvard President's Resignation Sparks Debate

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  • by Anonymous Coward

    "You miss all of the shots you don't take."
    -Wayne Gretsky
    -Michael Scott
    -Claudine Gay

  • There are only so many words with so many meanings. Will it not eventually happen by simple chance that two people choose to describe the same topic with the same words, without ever knowing what the other said?

    • Re:Inevitability (Score:4, Informative)

      by kamapuaa ( 555446 ) on Friday January 12, 2024 @02:30PM (#64153749) Homepage

      No. For more than a trivial amount of words, there is no chance of this happening.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      Calculus is a great example of what you questioned us on. We know the two men had similar conclusion with similar math proofs. But even then it is clear that the ideas were derived(pun intended) separately, because while the result was the same, how they got there was not exactly the same.

      Such advances are RARE.

      The chances two people create the exact same paragraph, EXACTLY is VERY unlikely.

      That being said, my daughter, when she was in 7th grade was accused of plagiarism by one of her teachers because her

      • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

        by quonset ( 4839537 )

        So, I take a careful look before accusing one of illicit copying. Gay is not ignorant and therefore it is unreasonable that it was repeatedly made mistake. If it was reasonable excuse, she is incompetent. Those two choices are the real problem here. She did it on purpose or she is incompetent. Either way is a big problem. I don't care which was it falls, as I have not claimed that she plagiarized, only that is a reasonable version. The alternative is not a better choice, but still is viable.

        What would you c

        • Gay is not ignorant and therefore it is unreasonable that it was repeatedly made mistake. If it was reasonable excuse, she is incompetent.

          I don't care if it was deliberate or not. The result should be the same however.

          We ought to stop allowing incompetence as an excuse, when the results are the same.

          Either outcome results are similar or the same, she isn't the excellence that school deserves.

        • by XXongo ( 3986865 )

          So, I take a careful look before accusing one of illicit copying. Gay is not ignorant and therefore it is unreasonable that it was repeatedly made mistake. If it was reasonable excuse, she is incompetent. Those two choices are the real problem here. She did it on purpose or she is incompetent. Either way is a big problem. I don't care which was it falls, as I have not claimed that she plagiarized, only that is a reasonable version. The alternative is not a better choice, but still is viable.

          What would you call it when entire paragraphs are lifted [businessinsider.com] from one source and used in your own without attribution?

          Just a quick note that the article we're discussing is about Claudine Gay, but the link you give is about accusations against Neri Oxman.

          The link does mention Gay, but the "plagiarism" charge there was for failing to use quotation marks, not for failing to cite the authors ("Gay was found to have lifted passages from other academics' work without using quotation marks while citing the authors.")

          • Re:Inevitability (Score:5, Informative)

            by Thoth Ptolemy ( 110353 ) on Friday January 12, 2024 @04:07PM (#64154099)

            ("Gay was found to have lifted passages from other academics' work without using quotation marks while citing the authors.")

            That's the tell that it was a political hitjob or revenge for offending his wife and not about good faith academic rigor or anything.

            • Sure the motives are obviously to counter attack Ackman but the motives are meaningless if its true. It being revenge doesn't excuse plagiarism and threatening a review of MIT as a counter attack was a weird distraction in response.
            • by sfcat ( 872532 )
              Um, she had citations. The problem is that there were also entire paragraphs almost entirely lifted from other papers in the field which she did not cite. The pattern of citation in the paper was intentionally deceptive. That being said, she was fired for her profound lack of political ability which is the main thing a university president has to have. This was just icing on the cake since she and Harvard corp were trying to wiggle out of responsibility for their failings as university administrators.
        • Interesting. I looked it over myself and it looks like she gave proper attribution as is required, but didn't surround the excerpts with quotation marks as is required. But more importantly, how specifically does this atone for Claudine Gay's missteps? Or is this just whataboutism?

          • Considering Bill Ackman's role in this whole fiasco to me it's just funny. Honestly, I am looking forward to the cultural shitshow this is gonna turn up, it's the Spiderman pointing at himself meme, everybody's been plagiarizing everyone else the entire time. .

            I personally don't care if Gay got sacked, she probably deserved it for her testimony alone (there's a way you can make the argument she's making but she did a more than piss poor job at expressing it though and that's a big stage to flub on).

            Gay des

            • by sfcat ( 872532 )
              Yes, because people go to Harvard for the lawn. Riiiiight. They go to Harvard to get jobs at firms like Ackman's. Pissing off a respected Billionaire like him is very very foolish. Making it personal by going after his family is beyond stupid. I expect there will be house cleaning at Harvard in response to this and anyone involved in going after his wife won't be at Harvard next year. You do realize that he has said he isn't hiring anyone from Harvard next year. Other financial firms have said the sa
              • Harvard isn't anything special beyond name recognition. Been that way for a very long time. Employers have gotten wise to that over the last decade.

                https://www.inc.com/larry-kim/... [inc.com]

                Shit, I myself make a LOT more than the typical Harvard grad with not much more than community college education.

              • Thanks for confirming this whole thing is totally about integrity and definitely certainly not about some sort of academic vengeance fantasy.

                This post has confirmed my original point, it's funny. It's funnier that people are this worked up on both sides of it.

                Won't somebody pleeeeeease think of the billionaires and Harvard grads

        • Stackoverflow

          I'd call it stack overflow.

        • Given MIT policy on wiki use for definitions, or rather lack thereof in 2009, not plagiarism. As for the actual stuff that was cited without quotation marks but had attribution in line, it was entirely in line with MIT citation formatting circa 2009. Had the complete retards at BI taken two seconds to do their own research on the matter, they would have known this.

          • by sfcat ( 872532 )
            1st) She was at Harvard, not MIT and she never worked at MIT at any point. 2nd) She didn't cite the sources she plagiarized. That's just a lie. She lifted blocks of text from other papers she didn't cite at all. Then included internal citations that the original work included as well. It is a very intentional and deliberate way to make it hard to catch plagiarism because the sources she lifted from weren't cited but she also cited sources she did quote. It is so specific, that's its hard to think it w
            • Wow you're almost, but not quite, as retarded as the people at BI. The comment I was responding to was regarding the poorly researched Business Insider hatchet job on Oxman, Ackman's wife who most definitely went to MIT.

      • Calculus was similar ideas that were expressed differently. The odds of two mathematicians arriving at similar frameworks to solve the same problem at the same time falls in line with expectations. They were both advancing the same field math is both discovery and invention it makes complete sense a they would converge on the same discovery while their inventions varied. That just proves the point that the odds of the wording being the exact same even when the concepts being communicated are nearly identi
        • It's happened a few times in physics too.

          The original quantum theory was first written down by Hiesenburg, and very shortly after and independently by Schrondinger. They both solve the same problem and give the same results, but they each go about it very differently (matrix mechanics vs. wave mechanics).

          The nobel prize for quantum electrodynamics was split three ways because three people pretty much came up with it independently. They all expressed their ideas differently, but they we're all basically equi

      • She had something like 8-10 academic papers and zero books, with at least 5 plagiarized passages.

        That's not an accident. The DEI based excuse making is amazing and shameful.

    • She plagiarized the Acknowledgement section of her thesis. The only thing she changed was the names.
  • aren't rules about plagiarism.

    Absolutely copying chunks that aren't your actual research and just describe the current state should be copyable with attribution.

    And I don't know what English as a first language has to do with this -- you don't need to speak English well to know you can't copy without attribution.

    And obviously you should be allowed to have a ghost grammar corrector for your papers - this isn't about the scientist's writing style, it's about communication of science.

    • by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

      No. Just attribute them. It's not that hard. We have quotation marks and various other means of identifying copied text for exactly that reason.

      I don't know what standards are like in polical science, but I was taught starting in elementary school and consistently right through grad school that if you're going to use someone else's words verbatim you quote it, otherwise it's plagiarism.

      • Okay, but technical plagiarism is a lower level of moral outage than "real" plagiarism (trying to pass someone else's work off as your own). One's professionally sloppy and the other is an academic "crime".
        • by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

          Not including quotation marks is trying to pass someone else's work off as your own. You take someone's words that you like and you include them, verbatim, in your work. Yeah maybe you stick in a reference but the reader understands a non-quoted passage with a reference as being *your words* supported by someone else. You then get quoted, with the quote attributed to you, etc.

          Some of the examples of what the ex-Harvard president is accused of are sloppy paraphrasing. That is less of a problem, although stil

    • Where matters too. The Literature Review is by definition what other people think. The important thing is attribution.

      Sneaking in other people's thoughts as your own in the methods and conclusions is much more serious.

    • ...a ghost grammar corrector...

      The correct term for what you're trying to say is copy editor [wikipedia.org] One of a copy editor's jobs is to correct awkward or imprecise usages such as that.
  • Legal vs. Ethics (Score:4, Insightful)

    by The Cat ( 19816 ) on Friday January 12, 2024 @02:29PM (#64153743)

    Plagiarism is publishing someone else's work as if it were your own.

    It is a well understood principle writers and academics have lived by for centuries. It does not need to be redefined or re-examined.

    • Re: (Score:1, Flamebait)

      by BitterOak ( 537666 )

      Plagiarism is publishing someone else's work as if it were your own.

      It is a well understood principle writers and academics have lived by for centuries. It does not need to be redefined or re-examined.

      It certainly does need to be redefined, or at least more clearly defined if the current definition is as you say it is. "Plagiarism is publishing someone else's work as if it were your own." What does "work" mean in that sentence? Does it mean exact words? The results of research studies? Ideas? And what exactly constitutes an "idea"? What is the exact test to determine if two ideas are the same or not? If two people independently come up with the same idea (and this happens all the time) is this pl

      • Any academic paper will be filled with citations, it's basically a big shout-out to your colleagues and any linking to any previous seminal works gives legitimacy that you're researching the existing literature and building on decades of knowledge and not simply making stuff up.

        Professors love that shit.

        The insinuation here is that Ms Gay didn't follow the conventions of attribution or worse... If that were the case then her supervisor or the university staff did a 'peer review' ought to have been severely

    • Indeed it is a matter of legal vs. ethics. Leave legalese to lawyers ... and let ethical people stay far away from it.

      When someone is accused of plagiarism in public without clarification, it will be assumed to be plagiarism with intent and not just sloppy academics. It should be an academic principle to always mention intent or lack of it when making an accusation of plagiarism.

  • makeing an tagging error on attribution should NOT count

  • by JoeDuncan ( 874519 ) on Friday January 12, 2024 @02:34PM (#64153765)

    They say that Gay, a political scientist , merely summarized the scientific literature in line with the norms of her field, with no bearing on her own scholarship. "The day the plagiarism allegations broke, the response in the hallway was kind of like, 'Well, I guess we're all plagiarists,'" says Alvin Tillery, a political scientist ...

    (emphasis mine)

    Colour me shocked.

    • They say that Gay, a political scientist, merely summarized the scientific literature in line with the norms of her field, with no bearing on her own scholarship. "The day the plagiarism allegations broke, the response in the hallway was kind of like, 'Well, I guess we're all plagiarists,'" says Alvin Tillery, a political scientist ...

      (emphasis mine)

      Colour me shocked.

      He just literally told you not to be, Dr. Awareness.

      • He just literally told you not to be, Dr. Awareness.

        And apparently sarcasm is lost on you, Dr. Oblivious.

  • In the past I worked with academia and have published papers. One time I got into mild trouble when citing pseudo code from my own paper in a follow up paper. While it was referenced, it was the same code and was written the same way in both papers. One of my co-authors, who was a career academia researcher, pointed that it is very dangerous to do this as I can be accused of plagiarism. So I had to rework pseudo code to make sure it is clearly different.

    If that was a concern, lifting entire paragraph in *
  • If it was a mistake then admit it. Apologize because you missed a citation. Everyone makes mistakes, no one is perfect or should expected to be. That being said 4 times is a lot more than a mistake however and it is well understood that copying and pasting needs a citation.
  • by balaam's ass ( 678743 ) on Friday January 12, 2024 @02:52PM (#64153831) Journal

    Like the examples from Claudine Gay's work that are unattributed carbon copies from other's work.
    Image examples here: https://freebeacon.com/campus/... [freebeacon.com]

    This case does not merit major academic institutional soul-searching* or legal hairsplitting. A student getting caught doing these things would at least get an F, probably get sent to the Honor Court, and who knows, maybe even expelled.

    *Well, maybe soul-searching could be merited if it takes forms like "how did we ever put a person like this in charge?", "are many of our disciplines complete jokes lacking any form of rigor or integrity?", etc?

  • Have you heard of this? When I was doing it, everybody was really paranoid about it. I have heard about people who was accused of "self-pagiarism", it is when you publish a paper and then put pieces of it in your thesis. In my opinion it is total BS. But... if you take something from from somebody else, I would not think that you actually have to put it in quotes, but providing a reference is essential. Many students had issues because of this. With Gay, they were clearly trying to swipe it under the rug. I
  • by Baron_Yam ( 643147 ) on Friday January 12, 2024 @03:02PM (#64153897)

    She was fired because she embarrassed the institution by getting caught protecting people calling for genocide against Jews.

    The accusation of plagiarism is just one of the things thrown at her to force her to leave quietly, and an excuse she can use to avoid mention of the antisemitism. She had enemies waiting to oust her and no friends to protect her.

    It's all internal political bullshit.

    In the end, the racist got the boot. It may or may not lead to policy changes, or she may be used as a convenient scapegoat with no actual changes made. If you think it was actually about plagiarism, I have a bridge to sell you.

    • by farble1670 ( 803356 ) on Friday January 12, 2024 @03:45PM (#64154035)

      She had enemies waiting to oust her and no friends to protect her.

      The board of Harvard unanimously voted support for her after the initial allegations.
      https://www.cnn.com/2023/12/12... [cnn.com]

      She's still a tenured professor, and she's going to make millions writing a book and giving talks about she was ousted from her position because of racism. She's a celebrity to the academic elite.

      In the end, the racist got the boot.

      One did. All of the Harvard board of directors that supported her statements are just fine.

    • by Rujiel ( 1632063 )

      "She was fired because she embarrassed the institution by getting caught protecting people calling for genocide against Jews."

      In order for this to be true, there would need to have been actual cases of American college students calling for "death to Jews", which there never was. "From the river to the sea" and the word "intifada" do not mean genocide. Zionists have to manufacture crises to distract from their favorite ethnostate's murder spree of over 10,000 children in the last three months.

      • by sfcat ( 872532 )
        Enjoy being unemployed.
      • > "From the river to the sea" and the word "intifada" do not mean genocide.

        Intifada means 'uprising' if I recall correctly, though it is usually used in support of terrorist acts rather than political action or protest.

        But "from the river to the sea" is absolutely code for "make sure every Jew in the area is dead". It is explicitly a call for conquering Israel and killing all the Jews within its borders.

        • by Rujiel ( 1632063 )

          It has been a common protest phrase for decades without that meaning, and its detractors typically frame all criticism of Israel as antisemitic. But let's pretend it actually did actually mean genocide: what is more impactful, the studenrs chanting it, or the defense ministers and PM of Israel who have consistently stated the intent (now being carried out) to exterminate all Palestinians, even comparing them to Amalek? Or the American MIC who will enable them indefinitely?

          The primary claims of harassment pu

          • by jabuzz ( 182671 )

            The problem is not what the students might or might not have been saying. The problem is that under questioning on whether calling for genocide of the Jews would break a code of conduct for the students her reply was it would depend on the context. That flabbergasted people, because I can't think of any context that calling for genocide, could be OK.
            I am quite sure if she had been asked if calling for the genocide of Blacks, or Trans or was acceptable she would have immediately replied no. However, she is

    • She was fired because she embarrassed the institution by getting caught protecting people calling for genocide against Jews.

      For flexible definitions of calling for genocide against Jews. Using the same bar, this is what Trump did with Charlottesville's Unite the Right rally. A sitting U.S. President.

      Protecting actual neo-Nazis, not students upset with Israel. People on the right seem to have a loose definition of antisemitism all of a sudden, funny huh?

      Frankly I'm a little tired of right wingers arguing one side of the tolerance paradox with neonazis chanting Jews will not replace us, for example, and another end when Harvard st

  • by RobinH ( 124750 ) on Friday January 12, 2024 @03:03PM (#64153903) Homepage
    This entire story was only incidentally about plagiarism. The argument is over whether DEI is logically consistent and has value. The testimony showed that it's not logically consistent because they wouldn't say that someone on campus calling for genocide of Jewish people violated the rules of the university, but it was pointed out that a student can get pulled in to have a chat with the DEI office if a black student complained about a microaggression. As to whether or not it has value, it's widely reported that Gay was hired to fill a diversity quota, and the plagiarism complaint was a way to show that narrowing your search to someone with a visual characteristic instead of looking for the most qualified candidate means you'll hire someone who's less qualified for the job, and that the issues around plagiarism in Gay's past were well known and should have disqualified her for the position if they were hiring from the full field of applicants. Whether those arguments are convincing or not is left as an exercise for the voters, but certainly the plagiarism isn't the main point that was being made. This article is an attempt to deflect.
    • This entire story was only incidentally about plagiarism. The argument is over whether DEI is logically consistent and has value. The testimony showed that it's not logically consistent because they wouldn't say that someone on campus calling for genocide of Jewish people violated the rules of the university, but it was pointed out that a student can get pulled in to have a chat with the DEI office if a black student complained about a microaggression.

      The genocide thing was more an issue of framing. Genocide isn't just mass killing, it's forced deportation, kidnapping children, forced cultural assimilation. Imagine a couple of students talking about the conflict and one of them saying "well why not just deport all the Israeli's to some empty Islands in the South Pacific?" It's a dumb idea, but the kind of dumb idea that can lead to an exchange when they learn something. It's not really something you want someone disciplined over and it's one reason you'

      • by sfcat ( 872532 )
        Fundraising at Harvard dropped off 75% after her testimony. So I think we can confidently say she was bad at that very important part of her job.
    • by elcor ( 4519045 )
      The entire board is made of DEI agents so they "retired" her to continue their malfeasance, continuation of her large paycheck is proof.
  • by michaelmalak ( 91262 ) <michael@michaelmalak.com> on Friday January 12, 2024 @03:15PM (#64153949) Homepage

    First, what counts as plagiarism is whatever the institution decides and the employee agreed to.

    But I think Harvard's rule is so strict, when it comes to non-fiction, that I think it slows down science. A fact should be allowed to be repeated verbatim, because attempts to paraphrase said fact inevitably change its meaning.

    • If repeated verbatim, stick quotes around it and add a citation. In this case, it's not that hard. Really. Microsoft even has a tool for that.
  • Why are we having this discussion when Harvard already has clear and concise standards on plagiarism?

    There is only one reason this question is being asked. The guilty party and their ilk are going to try and "redefine" what plagiarism is to make themselves not guilty.
    • by sfcat ( 872532 )

      There is only one reason this question is being asked. The guilty party and their ilk are going to try and "redefine" what plagiarism is to make themselves not guilty.

      They did try. They failed. That's why she resigned. That they even tried shows there is a lot more firings that need to happen before Harvard can be considered to be an elite university again.

  • It's really obvious they got rid of her because of her political views not because of her plagiarism. The plagiarism was just a convenient excuse. I think it's pretty clear borrowing some phrases isn't really plagiarism.

  • She had already been convicted in the court of public opinion because she refused to kick a bunch of people out of school that a bunch of very powerful people wanted kicked out of school.

    It's like that old line about give me six lines from anyone and I can hang them. It's always funny to watch when the Free speech warriors use that tactic.

    I mean be honest did you even know who this woman was or give a rats ass about anything she'd ever written until you were told to care about it? It's like how 11 peo
    • You say ,,, "told to be" ... actually  squaring the circle. When BUD decided to fagotize their brew straights  chose to withdraw their beer-nutz. Fair exchange. 
  • so we are absolutely clear on Bill Ackman's beliefs.
  • There's a big difference between presenting something as if it were a new original idea that you came up with and presenting something as background material without citing who did come up with it. The former is academic fraud. The latter is at worst sloppy work.

    Would people in the target audience believe you were saying you came up with it? That being other academics in the same field reading the journal or attending the conference? If so, you're in big trouble if it turns out it wasn't original, but o

  • She copied some verbiage for describing graphs and things like that. Going by the examples I saw online, she didn’t copy any ideas or the main body of work. It’s a nothing burger. If you set the bar for plagiarism at that, a large percent of dissertations would be guilty of it. Notice when they examined the dissertation of her biggest critic, Bill Ackman, here too had similar issues. When you keep reading scientific articles your own way of writing changes too btw.

    Note: I agree with her being fi

    • by sfcat ( 872532 )
      None of that is correct in any way. She lifted her introduction and several other paragraphs that in no way were about what you describe. They went after Ackman's wife, not him. He isn't an academic. The only accurate thing you said is why she was demoted. And then that's only the case because Harvard decided that her testimony wasn't enough to have her fired. Now the donors think that their entire board should go before they resume donating. Hopefully they go far enough to fix the school.
  • There is a basic concept here, you can copyright the exact wording of something, but you can't copyright a concept. Now, when it comes to academics, just copying the work of others does not show that an individual has learned anything, or is contributing anything new to the field. The big contribution is combining different things together, and by doing that, coming up with something new and hopefully original(even if others have come up with the same result from independent work). So, when you are pla
  • She didn't suck Israel's dick hard enough so AIPAC gave her the boot.
  • Plagiarism entails appropriating someone else's visual or linguistic elements without giving them proper credit.
  • Plagiarism has been more than well defined and understood For decades if not centuries. Let us not pretend ANYONE would care if Claudine was not who she is in this strange political landscape of today.
    Not a single soul would defend her if she was someone else.

  • Just 10 papers, 50+ plagiarized excerpts, and ZERO books. That's 5 plagiarized sections on average, per paper. Can we stop making excuses for this bullshit? She's an anti-Semitic diversity hire with no academic qualifications being paid nearly a million dollars a year to

    And from what I've heard from other professors (even black ones), her doctoral dissertation is 'pedestrian' at best, no academic value, certainly nothing that would get any white person a professorship anywhere, much less at Harvard.

    But s

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