Althouse: "Apparently, guileful students are thesaurusizing cut-and-paste plagiarism to fool both their professors and anti-cheating software such as Turnitin."

August 28, 2014

"Apparently, guileful students are thesaurusizing cut-and-paste plagiarism to fool both their professors and anti-cheating software such as Turnitin."

"But as long as a human is grading those essays, phrases like 'sinister buttocks' (for 'left behind'!) are guaranteed to provoke a professorial head-scratch (and some welcome, albeit dispiriting, entertainment during grading)."

30 comments:

MadisonMan said...: Anything that can be said can be said clearly. Deserves to be re-said.

Or, as a Freshman might write, All manners of things can possibly be ejaculated, but they must be emphasized with clarity and purpose.; 8/28/14, 8:01 AM
FleetUSA said...: Ha. Software smart enough to equate the left with sinister.; 8/28/14, 8:11 AM
Anonymous said...: 'Cat is Out of the Bag, Man' Guy says:

The feline is out of containment, man! People, changing words as if that makes a difference -- it's all lies, man! Lipstick-wearing pigs, all down the line! Just because you say 'feces-dwelling vermin clock' don't mean it's not Shit-house rat time, you hear? The feline is out of containment, man!; 8/28/14, 8:24 AM
John henry said...: When I taught in-class I never had much problem with plagiarism. Or, I probably had problems but may not have realized it.

Teaching online, relying on electronic papers, it is much easier to check for plagiarism.

Plagiarism usually jumps out and smacks me in the head. It is usually a sentence or paragraph that does not match the rest of the paper.

I just take a chunk of suspect text, plop it into search, and Voila! There is the original source.

My school does try to get me to use Turnitin but I have never liked it nor found it as useful as search. I've had Turnitin say a paper was OK and search turn up plagiarized text.

In academia, in my opinion, plagiarism, however slight, is a hanging offense. In any of my classes, it is automatically an F on the paper and I may drop the student from the class as well. I will certainly drop them on a second offense. I am explicit about this policy in my syllabus. I have had people try it on and I have dropped 5-6 people from my classes over the years.

For me, plagiarism is any words that did not come out of the student's brain that are not properly credited.

Any words.

I think professors and teachers (K-12) are to blame for this by saying "Ay, bendito" and giving the offender 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 5th chances.

I have no problem with cut and paste as long as it is credited as to source and is not excessive. I define excessive as more than 5-10% of total word count. That is in my syllabus too. I am not terribly strict on this. If a student had 11%, and added to the paper, I would not even notice. If it was 5% and only there to pad the word count, I would probably take off points.

My classes always have 6-10 written assignments. I think writing well is a critical skill that is only learned with practice.

I teach business classes in an MBA program.

John Henry; 8/28/14, 8:29 AM
m stone said...: The problem with plagiarism like any serial crime is that the perp needs to sustain the image of intelligence or skill and still cover his tracks. One slip and he is revealed to be a dunce. It becomes a mind game.; 8/28/14, 8:40 AM
Birkel said...: Cut and paste into the search function of any major web browser and if it's plagiarism, you'll know.; 8/28/14, 8:54 AM
Unknown said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 8/28/14, 9:01 AM
Watchman said...: I just finished praying for you here in the Holy City, and I wanted to share with you what I prayed and what God laid on my heart. Here is my prayer for you: When you wake up, Heaven will record your good works of compassion toward the house of Israel. Your gift of compassion today will be put to work immediately here in Jerusalem.

I have a word from the Lord for you today: "Whoever is kind to the poor is lending to the LORD--the benefit of his gift will return to him in abundance" (Proverbs 19:17). As I read this verse this morning, the Holy Spirit spoke to me and said, "Do it now. Lend to the Lord and do it now."

WOW! Lend to the Lord--I have never said that before when I gave a gift, nor have I claimed this promise in this way.; 8/28/14, 9:08 AM
Bob Ellison said...: A son of mine was accused of plagiarism in high school. His teacher gave him an F because the teacher did not believe the boy was capable of such writing. (That did not end well for the teacher.)

Plagiarism is an old crime that does not work very well, as an accusation, in the modern era. Teachers should think about this.

How's about students putting a disclaimer at the front of all papers, saying "I may not have originated all of the text or concepts in this paper, but I have tried hard organize them for greatest effect"?

Kinda like lawyers do every day.

Attribution is another case. Students should try to link, footnote, endnote, whatever. But that, too, is a never-ending game.; 8/28/14, 9:09 AM
Birches said...: Isn't it easier to just, you know, actually do the assignment?; 8/28/14, 9:11 AM
David said...: Low expectations. With exceptions (including the hard sciences) we do not expect high levels of effort and accomplishment from college students today. It's too easy, too soft, too bullshitty, too social. Generally you find only what you seek, and we are not seeking excellence.; 8/28/14, 9:18 AM
traditionalguy said...: This problem is a subset of students trying to enjoy a social life at college. There are only so many sober hours in a day.; 8/28/14, 9:20 AM
MadisonMan said...: It is usually a sentence or paragraph that does not match the rest of the paper.

Or my favorite: a change in font!; 8/28/14, 9:26 AM
Just asking questions (Jaq) said...: I once got accused of stealing the idea for my paper from Monarch Notes, as if once they come up with an interpretation for a novel, it is then out of bounds. Professor should have put that in the rules of the course. I then went out and bought the Monarch Notes for the book, and I have to admit, it was pretty darn close.; 8/28/14, 9:38 AM
TomHynes said...: I just came up with a new app "unplagiarize.com".

If you feed it text it will change words and phrasing enough to make it pass turnitin.

For an extra 50 cents per page, someone in India will read it and see if it makes sense.; 8/28/14, 10:11 AM
John henry said...: Bob Ellison said

How's about students putting a disclaimer at the front of all papers, saying "I may not have originated all of the text or concepts in this paper, but I have tried hard organize them for greatest effect"?

Kinda like lawyers do every day.

Attribution is another case. Students should try to link, footnote, endnote, whatever. But that, too, is a never-ending game.

Nope. Unless they tell me which words they contributed and which ones they didn't, it is plagiarism and an automatic F.

I'm not that picky about how they attribute, since I emphasize business not scientific, writing.

If they say something like: As Peter Drucker said "The effective executive can't tell the difference between work and play." That is fine with me. I don't necessarily need footnotes and sources. Though sometimes I do.

What I will not stand for is their using that phrase as if they invented it.

If they didn't say it, they need to tell me that somehow.

I do take off points for sloppy or improper attribution but that is not plagiarism. Just sloppy writing

John Henry; 8/28/14, 10:16 AM
John henry said...: Madison Man says his favorite is a change in font.

My favorite, or least favorite, example was in my Packaging Technology course. As a term project each student had to design a packaging line and document the process.

One student submitted a copy-pasted article on robots from Packaging Digest magazine, where I am a contributing writer. Other than typing his name and the class#, not a single word was his.

Even if he had written it, I would have given an F because it was completely irrelevant to the assignment.

These aren't freshmen. This was a class in the MSIE program.

I recommended to the dean that the student be expelled from the school. His defense was that he had not understood the assignment, not withstanding detailed instructions I had given on the process I expected them to follow.

He got an F for the class and but was allowed to retake it, with me, the next semester. Grrrrr.

John Henry; 8/28/14, 10:23 AM
Kirk Parker said...: Sinister Buttocks.

I think I have just found my next band name...; 8/28/14, 10:25 AM
holdfast said...: "Or my favorite: a change in font!"

Seriously? You should expel them for failing to even cheat well.; 8/28/14, 11:16 AM
Mountain Maven said...: Wow, an article in slate worth reading.; 8/28/14, 1:51 PM
Rae said...: Negative offspring sinister buttocks.; 8/28/14, 3:02 PM
Dr Weevil said...: A friend of mine (and of YoungHegelian) was once teaching Philosophy 101 at a well-known Catholic university, and had a student turn in a paper that began "All men by nature desire understanding" and continued in a similar style. He sat the student down in his office and said "You know, your paper looks an awful lot like the first two chapters of Aristotle's Metaphysics" and the student said "But I thought of it, too!" I don't recall now what happened to the student, but how dumb do you have to be to try something like that?; 8/28/14, 3:28 PM
Anonymous said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 8/28/14, 3:52 PM
From Inwood said...: True story.

I was engaged in arguing, really heatedly arguing, with a former HS, non-lawyer classmate, let's call, him "X", about politics(too much time on our hands :-)). A third party said "thanks, that [e-mail] was great [Inwood]".

X wrote back snarkly "If so,[Inwood] must've plagiarized it".

I challenged X to feed some of what I'd written into GOOGLE & see what he got.

He did & he came back, triumphantly, with "this is word for word with something in a Constitutional lawyer's blog".

Indeed it was since I had simply copied in my e-mail what I'd written on this very blog sometime before. (I didn't think that GOOGLE would have blog comments by some guy like me on "file".)

Luckily, everybody on the thread, most originally from North Manhattan or the Bronx, seemed to accept the fact that I was the "From Inwood" in your blog!

Altho, as some have noted here, there wasn't much if anything, that was unique in what I argued.; 8/28/14, 4:00 PM
From Inwood said...: BTW, one of my daughters, a college prof, got a report about "Martian" Luther.

She marked it in red.

The student whined about how he'd "done a spellcheck".; 8/28/14, 4:06 PM
The Godfather said...: Isn't "changing the font" what got Dan Rather in trouble? Or was it not changing the font?; 8/28/14, 5:03 PM
From Inwood said...: Godfather, it was that & the use of a smaller size type for "th" after numbers, the way it's automatically done in Word, which was not, of course, around in the '60s.

Also, military forms invariably had a strike over somewhere, which was the way these things were done in the 60s.

So, to anyone born before 1970, Bush's AWOL letter didn't look like it was typed in the 1960s.

When someone retyped the alleged letter on a 2004 version of Word & held it up to the light with Rather's letter behind, only slobbering Dem supporters continued to argue that Rather's was from 2004.; 8/28/14, 5:18 PM
Zach said...: I'm not that worried. Plagiarists are nothing if not lazy.

Plagiarism mostly shows itself as very polished writing which is not quite on topic. Professional writers don't sound very much like student papers, and someone with very polished prose usually tries to fit the assigned topic.

I used Turnitin for one class, but its real value was as a deterrent. In practice, detecting plagiarism isn't that hard.; 8/28/14, 7:09 PM
Ambrose said...: At some point isn't it easier just to write the paper?; 8/28/14, 7:22 PM
Poppop said...: To those with a history of certain painful medical issues, "sinister buttocks" actually is a familiar concept.; 8/29/14, 3:48 AM