So, another week in the books, and another abstract assignment which really allowed me to explore some things that I haven't had the opportunity to previously. For my plagiarism assignment, I chose to write about the lack of science and engineering graduates in the United States. It was a lot tougher than I expected.
My first plan was to find a paper that I previously wrote and touch it up by taking out a number of the citations, taking quotes out of passages, etc. However, I quickly found this to be impossible and unproductive. It was impossible because my voice and the voice of my quoted material were completely different. It would have been a dead giveaway.
Disgruntled, I decided to take a bunch of articles, and a passage from the book The World is Flat by Tom Friedman, and incorporate them into one. What was interesting about this was the effort it took to make my voice similar to theirs. My writing, because it largely citing statistics and making conclusions, was rather void of personality and flair. It blended it with theirs quite nicely. But it was harder to make my style fit theirs than if I would have written the paper on my own to begin with! Cheating should never make anything HARDER. :)
What I could have risked though, if I wrote it in my own voice, was unintentional plagiarism. Because I am not an expert on the topic, and because the research isn't my own, I would basically have to paraphrase any type of study I quoted. I don't know how much of that would equal plagiarism.
The other interesting aspect during my hunt for Courtney's work and vice versa was the plagiarism we found online. For example, Courtney took some of her work from MLB.com. However, when I found the material, it was at collegetickets.com, or something similar to that. It was a cheap knockoff of a website and they failed to quote MLB.com.
There was also specific phrase which Courtney googled from my paper, which led her an exact match in an National Science Board study. However, this exact sentence from the study also showed up word for word in Tom Friedman's book! Although it was one phrase, there was a hint of plagiarism, too. Now, perhaps it is hard to paraphrase the ENTIRE study, but he's a professional and a New York Times bestseller, and he did it.
So I guess we're all guilty, to an extent. This was difficult, more so than ghostwriting, because I had to find a different voice. And it was very interesting to see other's work in the act.
Have a great weekend guys.
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3 comments:
I have read other postings from our classmates and they all agree that plagiarizing, and executing it well actually proved to be more difficult that not-plagiarizing and being totally original. Apparently, we all would rather write our own ideas than plagiarize, which I guess is good news for Scot when he reads this, he should be very proud of his work because he showed us just how dumb it is to plagiarize:
1. you could get caught, and the consequences for that could destroy a student's life
2. you don't learn anything, and you are paying this university for nothing, essentially you are cheating yourself
3. IT'S MORE DIFFICULT
Good job Scot!
Has your opinion of Friedman in any been altered after your discovery of possible plagiarism on his part? Has he lost any merit in your mind? I ask this because I wonder what kind of consequences plagiarism has outside of the legal world.
I still think you did a really good job on your ghostwriting experience. For example, I don't know how many students actually used written texts as a source. Of course, we found the book online, but still, it took quite a bit more searching. And I think it's interesting that you struggled with the voice of your paper, because although I'm no English teacher, I couldn't find any disjunct between your sections, and Friedman's.
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