Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff, production of I Heart Radio. Hey
Speaker 1: brain Stuff. Lauren Vogelbaum here, a reporter at The New
Speaker 1: York Times, a U S senator running for president, a
Speaker 1: first lady, a revered country music star, a civil rights icon,
Speaker 1: each of them, along with thousands of students every year,
Speaker 1: uncounted scientists and doctors, titans of business and speakers at
Speaker 1: the local rotary club, filmmakers and musicians and dancers and architects.
Speaker 1: They're all virtual thieves, swiping the work words and ideas
Speaker 1: of others and passing them off as their own. They
Speaker 1: are plagiarists. We spoke with David Reddinger, a professor of
Speaker 1: psychology at the University of Mary Washington and Fredericksburg, Virginia,
Speaker 1: and the president of the International Center for Academic Integrity.
Speaker 1: He said, it's a particular problem in academia because we
Speaker 1: care so much about the process. I say this to
Speaker 1: my students all the time. I don't care that you
Speaker 1: give me a clean paper. I care that you write
Speaker 1: a paper. It's like sending someone to the gym for you.
Speaker 1: It completely defer it's the purpose. But let's take a
Speaker 1: step back and define plagiarism. Going to the old faithful
Speaker 1: of American English definitions Miriam Webster. Plagiarism is quote to
Speaker 1: steal and pass off the ideas or words of another
Speaker 1: as one's own, to use another's production without crediting the source,
Speaker 1: or to commit literary theft present a new and original
Speaker 1: and idea or product derived from an existing source. For
Speaker 1: one example, we could simply have copied those definitions, which
Speaker 1: in fact we did not changed a word ditto, and
Speaker 1: not credited Miriam Webster. But then, of course we'd be
Speaker 1: flat out plagiarizing, or at the very least trampling on
Speaker 1: the line between plagiarism and the safer albeits leazy word cribbing.
Speaker 1: But since we credited Mariam Webster, it's an attribution, not plagiarism.
Speaker 1: The article version of this episode even provided a link.
Speaker 1: Plagiarism is not always that cut and paste easy, though
Speaker 1: The legal definition is as legally as often is murky.
Speaker 1: This is from Cornell Law School's Legal Information Institute. Quote
Speaker 1: deliberately passing off somebody else's original expression or creative ideas
Speaker 1: as one's own. Plagiarism can be a violation of law
Speaker 1: if copyrighted expression is taken. Often, however, plagiarism does not
Speaker 1: violate any law, but instead simply marks the plagiarists as
Speaker 1: an unethical person in the political, academic, or scientific community
Speaker 1: where the plagiarism occurs. So then, what about taking information
Speaker 1: from someone else, twisting a few words around, maybe changing
Speaker 1: a name or two, and passing it off as your own.
Speaker 1: How much do you have to change to avoid plagiarism?
Speaker 1: How much borrowing is too much? Where do you draw
Speaker 1: the line? Rettinger said, it's always okay to use the
Speaker 1: ideas or the words of somebody else. That's not the problem.
Speaker 1: The problem is acknowledging your sources. Different disciplines and different
Speaker 1: situations have different expectations of what's yours and what's shared. Lawyers,
Speaker 1: for another example, can use similar wording in legal briefs,
Speaker 1: maybe even the exact wording. But that may be more
Speaker 1: generally acceptable it is Reddinger says, shared language in their profession.
Speaker 1: But what about scientists or researchers borrowing straight from another
Speaker 1: paper that was based on original research? Or how about
Speaker 1: this example from journalism, a big news site, say taking
Speaker 1: chunks of a story reported and written by another site.
Speaker 1: If it's a one thousand word article done by site
Speaker 1: A and site B uses eight hundred words of it.
Speaker 1: Verbatim is that okay, even if site BE credits site A,
Speaker 1: is that plagiarism? If we can't decide on a precise definition,
Speaker 1: we could probably at least agree it's pretty lame. Though
Speaker 1: it may be that plagiarizers and the plagiarized aren't seeing
Speaker 1: eye to eye, which brings us to another question. Who
Speaker 1: would do such a thing? Students all the time, researchers sometimes,
Speaker 1: According to one study, close to ten percent of retracted
Speaker 1: journal articles were pulled because of plagiarism. Politicians sometimes. For example,
Speaker 1: former U. S Senator and Vice President Joe Biden famously
Speaker 1: was accused of it in a speech and years after
Speaker 1: the fact, admitted to plagiarism he committed as a student,
Speaker 1: though he said it wasn't malevolent. First ladies have Melania
Speaker 1: Trump has been dogged by rumors of plagiarism and speeches
Speaker 1: ever since her opening night address at the Republican National Convention.
Speaker 1: In journalists, as we've pointed out, musicians to Johnny Cash
Speaker 1: has been accused, and poets and writers. A Latin root
Speaker 1: of the word plagiarism was used all the way back
Speaker 1: in ancient Roman times to describe poets plundering one another's works.
Speaker 1: Sometimes we should acknowledge plagiarism is accidental, though. A student
Speaker 1: borrowing an idea from a website while doing research past
Speaker 1: some information into a paper they're working on and forgets
Speaker 1: to attribute it. Obviously, it's a small problem when it's
Speaker 1: a sentence or a brief paragraph. It's a bigger problem
Speaker 1: when several paragraphs or chapters make their way into a paper.
Speaker 1: But some, of course steal on purpose, never intending to
Speaker 1: give others credit. But why. One explanation is laziness, or
Speaker 1: at least an unwillingness to put in the necessary effort
Speaker 1: due to a lack of drive or a lack of time,
Speaker 1: or perhaps expediency. Another explanation is a desire for acceptance
Speaker 1: or a good grade, or maybe a lack of talent,
Speaker 1: or at least a perceived lack of talent. Rettinger said,
Speaker 1: plagiarism begins, I think at the core when a person
Speaker 1: doesn't see the value in creating the work themselves. The
Speaker 1: ones that get me are the students that just don't
Speaker 1: feel like they can do the work. Those are the
Speaker 1: ones that make me the saddest for those who don't
Speaker 1: plagiarize accidentally, and of course it was an accident. As
Speaker 1: the first line of defense for any plagiarist, there are
Speaker 1: any number of reasons to go rogue. In a plagiarist's mind,
Speaker 1: if you're never caught, it's not wrong. It becomes acceptable.
Speaker 1: A former American journalist Jason Blair, fabricated quotes, dreamed up
Speaker 1: things that never happened, stole entire passages from published news
Speaker 1: accounts verbatim, then concocted dozens and dozens of stories, passing
Speaker 1: them off as fact under his byline in The New
Speaker 1: York Times, and he got away with it for years.
Speaker 1: He tried to explain him off to Duke student reporters
Speaker 1: in sixteen, saying, once you do something that crosses any
Speaker 1: ethical line, it is easy to go back and do
Speaker 1: it over and over. I danced around it and then
Speaker 1: crossed it and had a real hard time coming back.
Speaker 1: But with plagiarism's moving definition, it's difficult to pin down
Speaker 1: exactly how many word and idea thieves are among us.
Speaker 1: The biggest battle in the never ending war against plagiarism
Speaker 1: remains in academia, and it's certainly not limited to high schoolers.
Speaker 1: One study, for example, found that more than half a
Speaker 1: four hundred medical students surveyed said they had plagiarized, even
Speaker 1: in the halls of higher learning, though it's hard to
Speaker 1: determine how widespread the problem is. Schools often contract commercial
Speaker 1: firms to use their software to try to catch plagiarism,
Speaker 1: and aside from those, there are online plagiarism checkers that
Speaker 1: compare written papers to a database of published material, sometimes
Speaker 1: for free. These services can be useful both for people
Speaker 1: looking to catch plagiarists and for writers looking to avoid it.
Speaker 1: Rattinger said, it depends on how hard you look and
Speaker 1: what subject you teach and to whom. In terms of
Speaker 1: wholesale plagiarism, probably not that often, but in terms of
Speaker 1: maybe a paragraph here or sentence here, or paragraph or
Speaker 1: sentence there, it depends on your definition of common. But
Speaker 1: my impression is that it's fairly common. It's an arms race,
Speaker 1: and as long as it's on, we're going to lose
Speaker 1: because there are more of them and they're very motivated.
Speaker 1: Slowing plagiarism, though can be a goal. It's critical for educators,
Speaker 1: Writtinger says, to teach students the very real worth of
Speaker 1: researching and writing their own work, and it's important to
Speaker 1: make students and other would be plagiarists understand that both
Speaker 1: sides lose when you try to take credit for another
Speaker 1: person's work, words, or ideas. First of all, you're denying
Speaker 1: yourself the valuable, affirming experience of creating your own work.
Speaker 1: And second of all, it could hurt that credibility you're
Speaker 1: trying to cheat your way into in the long run.
Speaker 1: We also spoke with Jonathan Bailey, a writer in businessman
Speaker 1: who runs the website Plagiarism Today. He said, you might
Speaker 1: be able to get away with it in the short term,
Speaker 1: but it's not just getting away with it in the
Speaker 1: short term. It's about trying to get away with it forever,
Speaker 1: and that is a losing battle. It's almost inevitable that
Speaker 1: you'll get caught in the long term, So be thinking
Speaker 1: about it, not in just terms of today, but could
Speaker 1: this ever come back to bite you. Today's episode was
Speaker 1: written by John Donovan and produced by Tyler Clang. Brain
Speaker 1: Stuff is a production of I Heeart Radio's How Stuff Works.
Speaker 1: For more in this and lots of other topics that's
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