Answer to Plagiarist

in steemstem •  6 years ago  (edited)

The post will be boring so let's spin a song. "From Sasha, with Love". Sorry, "From Russia, with Love".
In Russia, Alex is Sasha.

Anyway, people can change, right?


If you are asking me - wrong, they can't.
Their brain is more or less the same, their moral values are the same, their logic is the same...

Explain to me then, how the same person, with the same logic and mindset, can draw a completely different conclusion?

What am I talking about?


Here is the case study of a spammer, who changed (haha, changed... After 5 plagiarized posts of the last 5)

In your recent 2-Part masterpiece (after you got busted and after you changed) you wrote:

https://steemit.com/stemng/@eurogee/the-science-behind-beautifully-coloured-feathers-in-birds-why-do-birds-have-coloured-feathers-and-how-did-they-acquire-it-0ccdd7ae6189d

and

https://steemit.com/steemstem/@eurogee/the-science-behind-beautifully-coloured-feathers-in-birds-why-do-birds-have-coloured-feathers-and-how-did-they-acquire-it-part-2-66a29cb85b9bc

And you didn't plagiarise it at all

What have you changed?

Seriously, what? Brackets [2, 3, 4]?

And this was your only real source

https://academy.allaboutbirds.org/how-birds-make-colorful-feathers/


And you spammed me with DM that you have changed?!


Don't DM me or you will read Part II


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It was my duty, Sir!

I mostly agree with the statement that plagiarist don't change, but want to recognize that there are cases where plagiarists are simply ignorant of the culture or common practices and in this case they will conform once they are taught. (I'm thinking first year graduate students...)

Yes, there are the obvious, "I copied word by word from your manuscript without attribution, I hope you don't mind." and these people don't change because they, apparently, lack the ability to think independently and want something for free. (The Steemian you describe above is clearly in this camp.)

The cases where a figure is used in a slide and the student didn't think it critical to mention its origin, maybe instead instances of cultural differences.

In part this cultural issue is about geography/philosophy, comparing the western cultures to others. In the west we have a high value on the contribution of the individual and a long history of private property. This influences our values regarding plagiarism and intellectual property.

The second cultural origin is generational. When I was young information was expensive, and it required extensive work to find content, but now content and information is so cheap that it isn't valued the same. Students growing up emerged in online culture often seem to view digital content as free for the taking, since it shows up for free on their screen.

Both in the case of geographical/philosophical and generational cultural misunderstanding, I receive a reasonable response from students when I correct them.

In my lab, I am very clear from the beginning that the two transgressions that are capital offenses, resulting in immediate dismissal, are plagiarism and data falsification. Other faculty are not always as upfront, or aggressive, about making this statement.

For me, it's a sort of insult, when people don't want to make any effort to make their post informative.

Ok, you found the source. Add at least 1 original sentence. Explain something in more detail, put some "human intelligence" into it. Paraphrasing can be done by AI, no problem.

Also, don't make 10 posts using the same website, it's such a lazy approach.

And the most annoying thing, don't cut already short text in 2 or 3 posts.
It's a madness to expect 1-day salary of a scientist/ surgeon/ engineer for a 15 min job.

There are several authors here who are not scientists, but they put a lot of energy to make their posts. Their formatting is incredible, their originality is high, their storytelling is nice and they use multiple sources.

What he has done is the purest form of disrespect.

  • He found a website, howstuffwork or similar, and he started rephrasing webpage after webpage.
  • He became so lazy that he was splitting those poor pages into 2 posts
  • When he got busted he kept writing in the same manner (and got busted again, but not informed).
  • Now he is spamming all of us that he became a new man :)

When exactly?

When he got busted? Busted again? This morning? A minute ago?

What I've seen on Steemit is worse than anything I've seen elsewhere. It makes me somewhat appreciate reading student reports at the end of the semester. :)

Sadly, SteemSTEM has plenty of awful posts. I mean, posts where someone so poorly summarized a an already watered-down website such that their document is on the brink of being wrong. Yet they persist against all reason and sense of self-respect, and put it up.

I tell myself that someday that after the human population has done itself in, the machines that replace us will sort through all this data refining the content.

<3 AI <3

You're just saying that because you know one day our robot overlords will check blockchains to determine who dies last. ;)

1st year graduate students? You mean undergraduate? ... People who are working in a lab should be well familiar by now about plagiarism and data falsification, and needn't be re-told.

In most US graduate programs domestic students make up only a small fraction. There are many countries where English composition largely involves cut-and-paste operations. I'm sorry to say, but we still put a great deal of time training (and retraining) new students what is and is not allowed.

In addition, US students may understand that copying word-for-word content is plagiarism, but they think nothing of "sampling" anything and everything that splashes on their screen. We have to explicitly state that they can't simply steal figures from Google image search and put this in their presentations and reports without attribution.

My point was simply that there can be "one-time accidental plagiarism" is due to ignorance, that can be either cultural or generational. These aren't bad people, they just were raised in a culture where intellectual property and copyright were less important than they are in western academic cultures. With a little training they become well behaved members of society.

Thanks, that explains a few things.