plagiarism

[jackdawdle]

Plagiarism Is Not a Big Moral Deal - Opinionator Blog - NYTimes.com

an article by stanley fish.

[jackdawdle]

i should add that were i shakespearan scholar i'd stake my scholarship on the speculation that many persons wrote the plays, but rarely if ever two persons on one play.

[lenz]

i should add that were i shakespearan scholar i'd stake my scholarship on the speculation that many persons wrote the plays, but rarely if ever two persons on one play.

Why? I think it's been established that there was collaboration between Shakespeare and fletcher and others.

[jackdawdle]

Why? I think it's been established that there was collaboration between Shakespeare and fletcher and others.

who's fletcher?

the only fletcher i know of is fletcher christian, the man who led the mutiny on the bounty. great film by the way, starring the much maligned mel gibson.

but seriously, really? even on a single play? t.s. eliot does mention an anomaly of diction and syntax in hamlet which suggests the presence of a collaborator, but that's only thing i've come across to make the case for collaborators on a single project.

[lenz]

Two of Shakespeare's Collaborators: Who Helped William Shakespeare Write His Plays?

Brush up your Shakespeare!

[jackdawdle]

Two of Shakespeare's Collaborators: Who Helped William Shakespeare Write His Plays?

Brush up your Shakespeare!

i should've known. but i was never good with names, dates & stuff.

[peter_d]

who's fletcher?

the only fletcher i know of is fletcher christian, the man who led the mutiny on the bounty.

Don't you know Jessica Fletcher?

[jackdawdle]

Don't you know Jessica Fletcher?

googled it.

never was a fan of that show.

[Eric]

Nothing like a bit of plagiarism, especially when committed by the Minister of Defence:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-12489762

http://www.sueddeutsche.de/politik/p...olgs-1.1061236

[Eric]

Plagiarism in his doctoral thesis. This is front-page news in Germany because the German Minister of Defence, no less, has been accused in the press of plagiarising, and large passages have been quoted and compared. People don't only plagiarise novels and poetry, but also theses which lead to their career.

Obviously, the confidence of many Germans is shaken when a man who is supposed to lead the defence of the country is suspected of cheating at university.

[hdw]

Plagiarism in his doctoral thesis. This is front-page news in Germany because the German Minister of Defence, no less, has been accused in the press of plagiarising, and large passages have been quoted and compared. People don't only plagiarise novels and poetry, but also theses which lead to their career.

Obviously, the confidence of many Germans is shaken when a man who is supposed to lead the defence of the country is suspected of cheating at university.

That's funny, because when I attended a training course with other British teachers in Cologne in 1977, before we were sent out to teach English in FE colleges all over Nordrhein-Westfalen, we were told - among other things - don't get all British and schoolmarmy if you catch somebody cheating in class. In Germany, it's not a moral issue, it's taken for granted that you do whatever it takes to get good marks, and if someone's caught in the act they'll just shrug and accept it's a fair cop, and you shouldn't make a big song and dance about it either.

Harry

[Mirabell]

If you're caught plagiarizing at a German university, you'll get failing marks at best, and can get expelled or sued at worst.

[Eric]

I haven't got a PhD either. But I don't work as Minister of Defence:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-12504347

[Mirabell]

you can view the plagiarized pieces here. An interactive wiki where people can submit texts that have been used by Guttenberg and not acknowledged as someone else's work. As of right now, some 20 % of all pages contain that kind of material. After some controls, that number may sink to 10-15% but that is still a whole damn lot.

http://de.guttenplag.wikia.com/wiki/Plagiate

[Eric]

Thanks Mirabell. I did, of course (you know me by now) look at one of the purportedly plagiarised pieces, and from what I saw, it looked as if he'd copied the stuff verbatim. Dutch writer Adriaan van Dis was dumb enough to do that too. Next time Stalin threatens to invade Germany, maybe von und zu Guttenberg should be sent for honesty therapy to Los Angeles for several years, while Murkle sends the troops to the frontier. Then Putin will switch off the gas and we bystanders will watch the fray like we're watching the Maghreb football matches right now.

Joking (?) apart, it is rather embarrassing even if only a small percentage of the whole is stolen from elsewhere. You cannot deny that a Minister of Defence must be a person above suspicion. If he can fiddle his PhD, he can take bribes, betray his country, anything. That may not be the case, but I bet you that a few million Germans are wondering who this guy really is. Maybe he's related to Guillaume...

[Liam]

If you're caught plagiarizing at a German university, you'll get failing marks at best, and can get expelled or sued at worst.

Same as in America, or anywhere else, I guess. The professor immediately submits the plagiarized piece to the Dean for disciplinary action, who then starts an investigation on the extent and gravity of the situation. If it is discovered that you've borrowed an idea without referencing it properly you might get a citation, at best, and a very low grade with the possibility of rewriting your paper. If you lift phrases/sentences from other writers' work without quoting them properly you'll get a failing grade for the class.

Finally, if you "borrow" the entire essay, either from an author, from another student, from the Internet, etc, you could get expelled. Unfortunately, we still get cases of plagiarism almost every semester here at the City University of New York. Most result not from any lack of talent on the part of the student but rather from stress and overload: most of these kids (MA students especially) live on their own, have full-time or part-time jobs, and barely make their ends meet. Sometimes they think it's easier to plagiarize a term paper and get an easy A than to submit a shitty one and get a B+ (or lower) for it.

[Eric]

But if you're a minister of defence and have lived beyond the groves of academe for some while, maybe the Dean has no clout. So it's up to Angular Murkle in this case to decide whether this man can stay in his job of deciding whether it's war, peace, or Afghanistan.

The biggest problem nowadays is that there are too many students and there is pressure on them to succeed. The internet is the perfect tool for the theft of intellectual property. Everyone that wants an audience is prepared to write articles, even whole books and put them on the net. And the temptation to steal is completed by the invention the scanner, so you can lift passages from any book you like and do the "all my own work" trick.

[hdw]

Plagiarism in his doctoral thesis. This is front-page news in Germany because the German Minister of Defence, no less, has been accused in the press of plagiarising, and large passages have been quoted and compared. People don't only plagiarise novels and poetry, but also theses which lead to their career.

Obviously, the confidence of many Germans is shaken when a man who is supposed to lead the defence of the country is suspected of cheating at university.

One thing is for sure - Karl-Theodor Maria Nikolaus Johann Jacob Philipp Franz Joseph Sylvester, Freiherr von und zu Guttenberg, must be the poshest plagiarist of all time.

Harry

[Eric]

Let's call him Von und Zu for short (even though you shouldn't capitalise prepositions). Actually, I realised he was a von und zu when I saw one of the German papers mocking, as Frankie Howerd would have said:



My ideal for the upper classes is that they should at least have so much money and breeding that they don't need to blot their escutcheon with silly things like forged theses (this could be spoonerised, I suppose). But this vulgar chappie went into politics.

I've just bought my copy of Der Spiegel in the paper shop, so I'll have a look at the article there this evening.

[Eric]

Not many people of the younger generation of Europeans will remember Frankie Howerd and his "mocking", but many people will now remember Von und Zu.

I've read half the long Der Spiegel article now and I would say that the journalists have really put the boot in.

Place your bets as to who is going to go first: Mad Colonel Martyr of Tripoli or the Dodgy Minister of and to Defence.