tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10721624.post3393633151292403592..comments2023-10-30T12:26:15.822+01:00Comments on Research as a Second Language: The Epistemology of PlagiarismThomashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04858865501469168339noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10721624.post-1673723707892229432012-12-04T12:50:01.403+01:002012-12-04T12:50:01.403+01:00We think very alike about this. I suppose we diffe...We think very alike about this. I suppose we differ only on what we think the intention of the original expose is: correction or punishment. It's seems to me that at least as often as not (and probably more often), the person who discovers plagiarism presents it not as a "gotcha" and "let's get the bad guy" but as a concerned peer. This was true in both the Lehrer and Fischer cases, for example; they were both first confronted with the charge of wrongdoing "behind the scenes" and therefore had an opportunity to acknowledge the mistake publicly first, before someone else did so. It's only because their initial reactions were dismissive that a standard of "public decency",if you will, had to be invoked. In those cases, then, I think the push for punishment really was a second step, taken only after the first step failed.Thomashttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04858865501469168339noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10721624.post-18885329633974462572012-12-04T02:54:25.349+01:002012-12-04T02:54:25.349+01:00I think we agree on most of this, excepting perhap...I think we agree on most of this, excepting perhaps our views on how this plays out in public discourse.<br /><br />I agree completely that the primary emphasis should be on intellectual integrity in the scholarly, institutional/community sense. In that context, intent is secondary and identifying, correcting, and containing plagiarism is of the utmost importance.<br /><br />But, as your post indicates, we disagree about what I think is the self-evident primary emphasis of discussions in general public discourse. It is moralistic and punitive. It involves notions of property and theft, ethics, and your utilitarian scholarly concerns are, at most, afterthoughts.<br /><br />I agree that distinguishing these things is useful and necessary and that, to the degree to which it is done, both our concerns would be better addressed. But I think that in order for this to be done, it requires that because intent and ethics dominates the public discussion, it is insufficient to simply assert that they oughtn't. The message should be twofold: that insofar as intent and ethics are involved, intent is more difficult to ascertain than people intuit (on the mere basis of identical text that seem unlikely to occur outside deliberation) and that assuming deliberate intent, and therefore explicitly moving the argument into a provocative ethics territory, interferes with what should be the primary consideration: protecting intellectual integrity.<br /><br />If people didn't assume that deliberate intent was self-evident, and then bring out the pitchforks (as, again, I think they almost always do), then when plagiarism is identified the claim would be less likely to be contested and more likely to be acknowledged and simply corrected. That's not to say that I don't think that there's no need to attempt to identity deliberate plagiarism and punish it, but that this should be the second step, not the first, and it shouldn't be presumed to be the primary goal.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com