iThenticate Blog

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In Taiwan this week, Defense Minister Andrew Yang resigned from his post after allegations of plagiarism began to surface.

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Bundestag President in PhD Plagiarism Probe

First off today, The Local in Germany reports that the President of the German Bundestag, Norbert Lammart, is facing allegations that he plagiarized in his doctoral thesis. Lammart joins a long line of German politicians to have been accused of plagiarism including former ministers of education and defense. The most recent scandal involved German Education Minister Annette Schavan, who was stripped of her doctorate in February due to plagiarism claims despite strong protests of her innocence.  Schavan, however, resigned days after her degree was revoked. Lammart also denies the allegations and is encouraging his alma mater, University of Bochum in North Rhine-Westphalia, to look into the allegations. As for the allegations, they were brought forth by an anonymous blogger writing under the name “Robert Schmidt”, who claims to have evidence that Lammert plagiarized portions of some 42 pages in his doctorate.

A recent survey conducted by the Pew Research Center’s Internet and American Life Project found that teachers felt that, while technology has made writing easier to teach, it’s also made student writing less formal and, even more worrisome, led to an increase in plagiarism.

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Judgment on Plagiarism: It’s for Academics to Judge

First off today, Paul Jump at the Times Higher Education reports that, in the UK, the High Court has ruled that, while the courts or the Office of the Independent Adjudicator (OIA) do have the ability to overturn rulings on plagiarism, they can only do so in rare cases that do not involve or require academic judgment. The judge was looking at the OIA’s refusal to overturn a plagiarism-related ruling originally by Queen Mary, University of London against a former student Hazim Mustafa. Mustafa was attending the school during the 2007-2008 school year and attempting to obtain a master’s degree in project management. However, Mustafa was forced to drop out due in part to the plagiarism allegations. Mustafa petitioned the OIA and the courts to protest both the plagiarism verdict and other treatment he claims to have received from the University. According to Mustafa, while he did copy heavily in the essay in question, square-brackets were enough to show that he did not intend to plagiarize. The University disagreed saying that it was almost impossible to tell what was original text and what was copied in the essay. Both the OIA and the High Court ruled that they had no standing in the case as the matter required “knowledge of academic conventions” and neither the court nor the OIA were in a position to overturn the ruling. This prompted The High Court to dismiss Mustafa’s appeal but did note that this was not a finding of “moral turpitude” against Mustafa as the school did not investigate whether he had intentionally misled anyone.

A recent article on the CBC website talks about a heated political exchange that's ongoing in St. John's in New Brunswick, Canada as it prepares to vote for its mayor.

In 2013, plagiarism might, reasonably, seem to be an act of self-destruction. In an era where words can trivially be tracked and searched for, committing an act of plagiarism could easily be mistaken for an act of career suicide rather than a means to improve one’s reputation.

Blake Pontchartrain was, until recently, one of the best-known names in New Orleans journalism. A columnist for an alternative weekly paper The Gambit, his Q&A column was one of the more popular attractions in the paper. In it, he would answer questions about New Orleans and its history, including detailed ones that left many in awe at the breadth of his knowledge, or at least his research skills.

It’s been four months since Jonah Lehrer’s disastrous “apology” speech at an event hosted by The Knight Foundation and, though Lehrer hasn’t been in the spotlight much, he apparently has not been sitting idle either.

In both the U.S. and elsewhere, there has been a growing trend of plagiarism disputes in academia spilling over to the courtrooms. Whether it’s a student unhappy about about being expelled or a professor unhappy about being put up for termination, more and more are turning to outside adjudicators and even the court system for relief.