Tuesday, September 11, 2007

Playing by the rules means just saying "no" to plagiarism, doesn't it?

I’m always amused when people who “play by the rules” aren’t able to follow them.

Yes, it’s time to revisit Vicki Ann Denschak’s bilious Freedom to Screech blog and read “Professor Erik’s” original thoughts about … wait … it now seems that they’re not exactly original.

As the noted noted linguist Gomer Pyle once observed, "Surprise, Surprise, Surprise."

09. 11. 01

The imaginary lecturer’s first two paragraphs are cribbed in their entirety (sans attribution, which is the faux academic’s longstanding, loathsome habit) from an essay by John Peters.

Poignantly, Ms. Denschak inserts her own leadoff sentence into the second paragraph. Not only is it grammatically incorrect, but she misspells singer Shania Twain’s name.

Further along, there’s another whole paragraph stolen from an article by Stacey Colino published in 2002.

And, the sentence following the paragraph originally written by Colino can be found here.

What was that about rules? Consider this random definition from the Northwestern University website:

Northwestern's "Principles Regarding Academic Integrity" defines plagiarism as "submitting material that in part or whole is not entirely one's own work without attributing those same portions to their correct source."

Gee, you’d think a college professor would know that.

(thanks RS)

2 comments:

Iamhoosier said...

A liar and a thief. Next thing you know "VAD" will be running for office.

Oops, they already did. and lost.

John Manzo said...

This is the Ann Coulter school of writing. Steal from someone else and claim it to be your's. Quoting people who said something better than you is fine and good. I think most of us do it. As long as we give them credit and remind people that this is not our writing but someone else's, it's a good thing.

But claiming other's work as your own. Ugh.