05 December 2005

Plagarism

A friend who is an academic just had some of his work plagarised by a student from the University of Sydney.

He had resources and instructions on LaTeX put up and the work had been used and presented to various groups. Now, this doctoral student in Australia came and ripped his work off wholesale. Quoting my friend, it was a computer scientist ripping off a political scientist. Ironic! Needless to say, my poor friend was aghast.

He sent an email to the person in question to remove the offending copied work and he 'cc:ed' them to the person's advisor and other academics. And guess how the thief reacted? He restricted my friend from accessing the page! What blatant and shameless audacity!

Somehow, I think this thief may get away with it. Who really enforces and policies these things? Such are the times.


"Today he has no means, he's alone and anonymous
But written in his cells he has got the marks of a genius
I'm looking for this man to sell him to other men
To sell him to other men at ten times the price at least
I'm looking for this man who knows the rules of the game
Who's able to forget them to realize my aim
I'm looking for this man to make us rich and famous"
'Headhunter' Front 242

5 comments:

Alicia said...

it always happen.. i even heard alot of stories about professors stealing students' ideas..

Chuang Shyue Chou said...

This Ph.D student is now blocking access. Hiding his stuff from various domains apparently!

Back when I was in school, I recalled some people doing wholesale copying. I remembered people copying my program. As soon as I found a solution, one of those people would take it from me, and 'change all the variable names, parameters, etc'. Pretty soon, half the class were using my solution.

You have encountered this?

Anonymous said...

There is always plagiarism but NIE does check very stringently. They require us to hand in a softcopy for all assignments that do not require handicraft. In addition to that, some of my seniors plagiarised and were found out and flunked.

Not all plagiarism is deliberate though, students aren't very good at telling what that is but i think in your friend's case, the "copier" was way too much. That's blatant plagiarism. Which is silly, because it also casts doubt on whether he really did deserve his degree and masters and whether he is actually capable enough to deserve a shot at his doctorate.

Xylandra

Chuang Shyue Chou said...

Liz, you are right. There is always plagiarism. It is a common occurence. I do think it is important to inculate a culture of honesty.

Yes, that's true, some students aren't very good at attribution and are lazy.

Well, like you said, it does cast doubt on the viability of him continuing with his Ph.D and his previous work.

Incidentally, the plagariser is a mainland Chinese and from another mainland Chinese perspective, it is very common and you shouldn't expect otherwise!

BlackRX said...

going back to our earlier private discussion: as I stated, this incident serves to raise several questions about cultural and societal norms, practices, adaptation to the marketplace (of ideas and information), etc.

you are right in noting that there is a lot of heterogeneity within the labels and identities we have thrown around. but this has only served to make me wonder what I myself mean when I tell people that I am "Chinese".