The dangers of trying to stamp out plagiarism

"Leeds University has replaced an external examiner after she highlighted extensive copying in a PhD thesis and insisted that it must be failed, The Times Higher has learnt.

Anita Prazmowska, professor of international history at the London School of Economics, said her removal from examining duties set a precedent that undermined the role of external examiners as the sole independent check on academic standards.
"
http://www.thes.co.uk/current_edition/story.aspx?story_id=2031102

This is amazing....

Reply 1

Tarts_n_Vicars

13

Not really. Although you have it beaten into you that plagiarism is not tolerated and you will be shot at dawn bla bla bla it's actually incredibly hard to prove. The article states that Leeds Uni couldn't be sure it was "deliberate plagiarism". Presumably that means there's an accidental kind which is acceptable.

Reply 2

Né Stig

15

^ Accidental kind? - Its up to you to do the check. If you're even guilty of having done it accidentally, you are liable and are presumed to be cheating, which equals a test score of Zero. No quarrels.

I would of thought every university would have asked its students to carry out scrupulous checks prior to the thesis being submitted.

Reply 3

Fleece

15

Hah, I go to Leeds University and at the end of semester they passed round a questionnaire about plagiarism, asking if we understood what it meant etc and should there be better information.

Reply 4

NViasko

Fleece

Hah, I go to Leeds University and at the end of semester they passed round a questionnaire about plagiarism, asking if we understood what it meant etc and should there be better information.

Super.

Reply 5

Fleece

15

wesetters

Was it:
"Have you heard of a website called coursework.info?"

Heh not quite. They've even suggested giving us access to our own plagiarism checking tools that they use (some computer thing, i dunno), which would be useful because plagiarism is something I always worry about doing by accident. I.e. not knowing such a thing had already been proposed so therefore not referencing. I hate referencing :frown:

Reply 6

sesquipedalian

1

What I don't get is, how can there be a question as to whether or not to fail this thesis? Even if it's not technically "deliberate" or whatever, it certainly doesn't sound like it's the sort of original research and thought that a PhD thesis is supposed to contain. Or am I not getting something from the article?

And Fleece, I know what you mean. I'm always worried I've cited wrong or God knows what!

Reply 7

Fluffy

15

There is absolutely no excuse for 'accidental' plagiarism at PhD level, and the fact that Leeds are citing this as just cause makes me seriously wonder about the standard of their PhD courses...

Reply 8

tigger1430

7

I thought PHD's where meant to be along the lines of original research, you know looking into something that hasn't been looked into before or at the very least, expanding on something already done with a new idea...kind of like a child project from a bigger existing project. So I would say even accidental plagiarism (whatever it is) shouldn't be allowed in a PHD as surely you should only use other material to back up what you say and as your project should be original, no one should have said it before?

I could be wrong

Reply 9

sesquipedalian

1

Also... where was this student's advisor? This has to be pretty humiliating for him/her.

Reply 10

Fluffy

15

I would be livid if I had a hard earned doctorate from Leeds - this sort of thing casts massive doubt of the academic standard of Leeds, and by inference to all its students - past, present and maybe future...

Reply 11

nikk

15

I thought that prior to submitting your thesis, you had to submit a draft version of it to your supervisor? If so, surely this should have been picked up then? Very strange!

Reply 12

Tarts_n_Vicars

13

walshie

^ Accidental kind? - Its up to you to do the check. If you're even guilty of having done it accidentally, you are liable and are presumed to be cheating, which equals a test score of Zero. No quarrels.

I would of thought every university would have asked its students to carry out scrupulous checks prior to the thesis being submitted.

I know that and you know that. But the article implies that because it can't be proved the plagiarism was deliberate that suddenly that makes it ok.....

Reply 13

Né Stig

15

Tarts_n_Vicars

I know that and you know that. But the article implies that because it can't be proved the plagiarism was deliberate that suddenly that makes it ok.....

Which leads me to conclude that Leeds University has to be the biggest pile of shi*e. That would anger any other PhD student form another institution.

The fact that the external examiner is from LSE should be considered noteworthy.

"Deliberate plagarism has to be proved"
Leeds university has just proved conclusively it cannot mark undergrads let alone PhD or Masters Students thesis.

A thesis is an independent and fundamental aim of creating an original theory or proposed idea backed up by personal reasearch and referencing. There is no excuse for Leeds Universities contempt.

I'm shocked at that.

Reply 14

fundamentally

OP

15

walshie

Which leads me to conclude that Leeds University has to be the biggest pile of shi*e. That would anger any other PhD student form another institution. The fact that the external examiner is from LSE should be considered noteworthy.

"Deliberate plagarism has to be proved"
Leeds university has just proved conclusively it cannot mark undergrads let alone PhD or Masters Students thesis.

I knew that Leeds is a pretty dodgy university, but had not realised that they had dropped their academic standards so much.

Reply 15

sexysax

14

Accidental plagiarism is interesting. Ok, so it should not be there at a PhD level, but I know a few people in my year at uni this year who got reprimanded for plagiarism. One student had a few lines that were similar to something on a website she had never ever seen or used, and I think most people were inclined to believe her. Another one got in trouble for 5 words! Again, because her 5 words apparantly resembled something else - that panicked a lot of us, because that's quite easy to do without realising. Both of those were accidental, but not something even by reading through that either of them noticed.

Reply 16

Né Stig

15

fundamentally

I knew that Leeds is a pretty dodgy university, but had not realised that they had dropped their academic standards so much.

I know. Unfortunately a Leeds University student on this forum wasn't really inclined to agree with my comment :laugh:

All I keep hearing about Leeds lately is nothing short of shocking. I'm sorry, but its the truth. Just had a load of friends from Leeds graduate, and I was up there for a while - the comments made by most of them were not good.

I'm still shocked at the PhD being made invalid. If I was the external assessor, I'd bring a legal case against Leeds for defemation of character.

Reply 17

ChemistBoy

16

To be fair it looks like Leeds have sought a second opinion and that second opinion recommended judging the PhD thesis on its academic merits. The only way to ensure a fair assessment of that is to have a new team of examiners examine the thesis. I think this is a reasonable course of action in the circumstances and one that most universities would be bound to follow (as they have similar codes of practice in this regard).

I think the issue is one of poor referencing (I have seen many cases of this in academic papers) not deliberate plagiarism. The external examiner has called for the thesis to be failed based on her opinion that there is signifcant plagiarised material in it, not that it does not meet the academic requirements. A reassessment (taking into account the previous work from other researchers, whether explicitly referenced or not) will be able to clearly determine whether the thesis contains enough novel academic material to merit the PhD degree. Presumably the thesis, if accepted for the degree, would have to be significantly corrected to improve the standard of referencing in the work.

Reply 18

shady lane

16

I'm sure the student will fail his/her thesis because of the amount of "borrowed" material, so it doesn't really matter if the person gets booted out for plagiarism anyway.

The dangers of trying to stamp out plagiarism

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