The president of Southern Illinois University is being accused of plagiarism on his 1984 doctoral thesis. [I suppose one word related question would be the difference between dissertation and thesis. Where I've been, the dissertation is written for doctoral study, while the thesis is written for master's study.]

However, the question I have is whether it's considered plagiarism if it's unintended. I think so. However, he seems not to. Here is his defense: "There was absolutely no intention here whatsoever, whatsoever, to deceive anybody or take credit for anybody's work," he said. "In my entire career, I have made it a point to be honest with people."

Thoughts?

BTW, I thought it interesting that plagiarism orginated from the Latin word plagiarius, meaning kidnapper.

Looking for info on the rather famous My Sweet Lord/He's So Fine case I ran into this quite interesting article.

Cryptomnesia

plagiarius

From Latin plaga 'net' from PIE *plāk- 'to be flat' whence many words in English.

My thoughts:

(1)Ignorance of the law is no excuse last time I checked.

(2)It would appear the president is being hoisted by his own petard (as regards the perhaps overly-strict interpretation of plagiarism being held against him).

(3)He'd probably be faring better had he been carrying out his duties in the manner of a steward of the institution rather than as a "popular and powerful Democrat in southern Illinois." That's the fault of the trustees, though. A politician is apparently what they wanted, so they are stuck with the attendant power-plays and scandals.

bethree, you seem to have him pegged perfectly. I've always thought of him as a bit of a sleaseball. The university is investigating the charges now.

Bob, I have never heard of Cryptomnesia. It seems like a big excuse to me.

z, in your link about the etymology, I saw nothing about kidnapping. My source was here.

quote:

Originally posted by Kalleh:
bethree, you seem to have him pegged perfectly. I've always thought of him as a bit of a sleaseball. The university is investigating the charges now.

Bob, I have never heard of Cryptomnesia. It seems like a big excuse to me.

Yes, it can be an excuse. It can also be legitimate. People on this board sometimes say they've never hear of a particular word or idea before, but a search of the archives reveals it was discussed earlier. The person professing ignorance may even have participated in the discussion. The person could be lying, but more likely he just forgot. I've seen jokes posted on this forum that were posted earlier by someone else. Is this plagiarism or cryptomnesia?

Here're a few articles I found interesting:

• "A Legal Remedy for Plagiarism?," by Julie Hilden on FindLaw.com, Feb. 07, 2002
  

  quote:

  After all, the Ambrose and Goodwin books (except for The Wild Blue, which was published only recently) had long been on the market before the scandal broke without readers noticing the attribution problems. When readers cannot tell the difference between the author's own words and those of others, one might be tempted to remark, "No harm, no foul."
  
  It is also worth remembering that with nonfiction books often ghostwritten, or written in part by subordinates who receive little or no credit for their contributions, any reader who believes in the first place that every word he or she is reading came from his or her beloved author's pen is naive. (Fiction is a different matter but, again, fiction is not what is at issue in the Ambrose and Goodwin scandals.)

  
  
  
• "How I Caused That Story," by Doris Kearns Goodwin, Jan. 27, 2002
  
  
• Online NewsHour: Writing History, January 28, 2002
  
  
• "Avoiding Plagiarism," by A. L. Trupe Sept. 2, 2003
  
  

  quote:

  It should go without saying that handing in someone else's paper as though it were one's own is plagiarism. It is also important to remember that copying and pasting someone else's writing on a Webpage or in a print source (book or periodical) or in an electronic database and presenting that writing as though it were one's own is plagiarism. It is plagiarism even if the student who copies and pastes the information lists the URL or other information about the source in a bibliography.

  
  
  
• "Keeping plagiarism at bay in the Internet age," by Bridget Murray
  

  quote:

  What is plagiarism?
  
  When it comes to specifics, definitions of plagiarism vary, even over something as simple as how many sequential words must be lifted from an original text before being considered plagiarism.
  
  For some people, it is as few as three words. For others, such as Frostburg State University psychology professor Chrismarie Baxter, PhD, it is five.

  
  
  
• plagiar-
  

  quote:

  If you steal from one author, it's plagiarism; if you steal from many it's research.
  —Wilson Mizner, American sportsman and wit.

  
  

  quote:

  Adam was the only man who, when he said a good thing, knew that nobody had said it before him.
  —Mark Twain

Tinman

This message has been edited. Last edited by: tinman,

I can give an example of "just forgetting".

Check on the OEDILF and you will find two near identicle limericks on atheist/agnostic. They are both by me. I submitted one in Jan 05 and the other in Dec 05. When I wrote the second one I was convinced that I was writing it for the first time. It was only when someone started to debate whether my somewhat jokey definition was appropriate that we realised I'd written and submitted it already.

It had either plagiarised myself or simply forgotten ever writing it but unconsciously recalled and reproduced it. And I know I hadn't plagiarised myself although I am considering suing myself for some damages.

Tom Lehrer made a telling comment: http://www.lyricsdir.com/tom-lehrer-lobachevsky-lyrics.html

Hee, Hee, this is a riot RE. It must be very difficult to prosecute a case of plagiarism under the law!! Of course, in the cases at Southern Illinois, as in the case Lehrer describes, it seems to be less about breaking the law, and more about smearing each others' reputations with unprovable accusations. Politics, in other words.

quote:

People on this board sometimes say they've never hear of a particular word or idea before, but a search of the archives reveals it was discussed earlier.

Tinman, you are correct about this board. While we all post on this board for intellectual stimulation, we also post here for fun. Perhaps we were out of town at the time of the discussion and just didn't see it. Or maybe we were intricately involved in the discussion and just forgot about it. That happens to me a lot (as z has recently pointed out) about linguistic information. In order for me to understand all the "fricatives," or whatever, in a medium like this, I will need to read it a few times in order to understand it. This is not a board which systematically presents linguistic content, as a book or course would do.

However, your example is like comparing apples and oranges. When I am (or anyone) writing a scholarly paper, you'd better be sure that I check things out nine ways from Sunday. I would have searched all of Wordcraft, all of AWAD, all of Language Log, all of OEDILF, etc., if it was regarding one of our discussions. And I'd try a number of key words and authors and dates until I was certain the concept hadn't been addressed. Then I'd write in my paper just what I had done in that search so that others could replicate it. Would I do that here? Of course not.

Bob, I have done the same thing. I can't tell you how many times I have rhymed "nurses" with "curses" with "hearses" (think of the possibilities!). I've had to change a couple of them after I realized it. There probably are a few that remain. However, Bob's example (or mine) could be a problem if he (or I) hadn't been the original author. There have been some heated discussions over there just about that. Someone will workshop a limerick, keep part of it in his/her mind (presumably because of "cryptomnesia" and not actual plagiarism) and then write a very similar one. I've had that happen to my limericks, and I have always asked the person to change his/hers. I abhor plagiarism...or cryptomnesia...or whatever we call it.

I agree with bethree, though, about this case being more about politics than plagiarism.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Kalleh,

In the situation posed at the beginninig of this thread, there were some key facts about the alleged plagiarism in the Chicago Tribune today. In the university president's 111-page doctoral thesis, they found 30 examples of verbatim or near-verbatim text. Sixteen times he neglected to put quotation marks around quoted material, though he says it believed it was okay because he had cited the sources in footnotes, which had admits he had forgotten to do "a few times" (14 in fact). The Tribune has called for the administration to fire the president, and I agree with that, given that these facts are accurate.

I thought you might enjoy seeing how this all ended with SIU (Southern Illinois University) President Glen Poshard. The "committee" that met to make the decision about what to do called it "infelicities in attribution," instead of "plagiarism" and said he could keep his job if he "cleans up" his paper. Apparently, back in the dark ages of the 1980s standards for doctoral dissertations were inconsistent, definitions were unclear, and style manuals weren't mandatory.

That is the biggest dose of balderdash that I've ever seen! Yet, it does give us a new euphemism for plagiarism. At least something good came out of all of this.

I guess I am talking to myself here, but I find plagiarism a fascinating subject. The Chicago Tribune and I are on the same page with this controversy.

I found the panel's definitions of plagiarism interesting.

1) Inadvertent plagiarism - Carelessness in citing sources.

2) Uneducated plagiarism - The writer doesn't know better.

3) Intentional plagiarism - Stealing one's ideas and/or work.

As the editorial says, it pays to be smart enough to use the "'inadvertent' loophole."

Oh, and I learned another definition, too. Patchwriting is when you want to imitate the lingo of the writer, so you lift too much verbatim writing. It's not plagiarism, but it's patchwriting. Um hmmm.

I never thought plagiarism was so complicated!

quote:

"infelicities in attribution,"

What a lovely way to get around the facts.

Ah well . . . sometimes administrators will promote/keep someone even if they don't deserve to be kept.

Reviving a thread...

Here's another take on plagiarism.

quote:

We cannot start crediting every word we write or speak, because our entire culture is based upon recycling and plagiarism, and it's not just a function of the Internet.

And I also found this interesting:

quote:

Shakespeare reworked the story of "Romeo and Juliet" just as John Coltrane remade "My Favorite Things." Paul Miller, a.k.a. DJ Spooky that Subliminal Kid, produces cutups on a grand scale, including the fantastic "Rebirth of a Nation," a remix with a new soundtrack to D.W. Griffith's cinematically influential pro-Ku Klux Klan epic, "Birth of a Nation" (1915). Spooky's work exposes the ideological underpinnings of Griffith's film using a most powerful demonstration: the material of the film itself.

This is not a new concept. In Laurence Sterne's "Tristram Shandy" (1759-1767), Volume 5 begins with a tongue-in-cheek screed against plagiarism, proclaiming, "Shall we for ever make new books, as apothecaries make new mixtures, by pouring . . . out of one vessel into another?" In Sterne's case, yes, for without the direct influence of Francois Rabelais, John Locke and Miguel de Cervantes, there would have been no "Shandy."

He asserts that our opposition to plagiarism dates back to 1710 at the start of the modern copyright law.