<Somewhere Prof. Joseph Agassi suggested that the requirement of "originality" is rarely demonstrated in any very significant way by a doctoral thesis, at least in philosophy and the humanities. Where nearly everything has been said before...>
If this is the case, then why make people go through the Ph.D. program, at least in these fields? Perhaps to give professors more power over people than they ought to have?
At the school I went to, one of the top ten in the US, there was a professor who assigned a term paper to undergrads in a history class. She taught everyone how to do it, how not to plagiarize and said she would check all sources. She did. She failed 5 of 23 in the class. She was fired. I do not mention her name or the institution, as I can't prove cause and effect, but I heard from a secretary that was the case. I personally believe it. By the way, she was one of the top five profs. I ever had.
Veronica Caley Milford, MI----- Original Message ----- From: "Donal McEvoy" <donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> Sent: Tuesday, March 01, 2011 8:23 PM Subject: [lit-ideas] Re: Top politician toppled by plagiarism Perhaps "plagiarise" it is one of those irregular verbs:- I expand and improve others' ideas You adapt and reformulate others' ideas They plagiarise others' ideasThere is a fundamental if not-always-easily-drawn* distinction between dishonest misrepresentation of other's work as one's own and failure to properly attribute or source material. The latter may be incompetent but not dishonest and it is, as Chris says, the apparent dishonesty of G's plagiarism that made his position untenable; if it were merely incompetence, then the award of a doctorate would surely be better attributed to the error of judgment of the university and its lack of rigour in assessing doctoral theses.
I didn't think of King but of undergraduate tales of faculty members 'appropriating' the work of students, and Richard Dawkins raising this matter directly in the introduction to 'The Selfish Gene' - where, I recall, he suggests there are academics/Professors routinely credited as co-authors of _scientific_ work where their contribution was negligible. To what extent are such tales true? How would one find out?
In the humanities one can imagine that the problem is even more difficult than in the sciences, as it is easier to absorb others' influence without consciously being aware of it as copying [compare musical influence on composition]; especially as a 'thesis' in this arena will likely be a patchwork of mini-theses establishing some overall thesis only to a well-qualified point, rather than a specific theory with a clear class of potential falsifiers. [A history professor, for example, might be unconsciously influenced in his work by an approach taken by a student whose doctoral thesis they are supervising, where that approach is gleaned via discussions where the relative contributions are not always easily agreed upon or established].
Somewhere Prof. Joseph Agassi suggested that the requirement of "originality" is rarely demonstrated in any very significant way by a doctoral thesis, at least in philosophy and the humanities. Where nearly everything has been said before**, in some way or another, there can only generally be cannibalising of previous ideas and the Emperor's Latest Fashion Range***. Without suggesting this applies to excuse King or G, it is possible from a certain learned viewpoint to see nearly everything as some form of old hat, and thus plagiaristic if not acknowledged as such.
What is unacceptable is cutting-and-pasting without sourcing, but King was hardly doing that. The Baron had the ready access to computers and evil countenance to do it, however. It is noteworthy that King's doctorate was in the field of theology and "Baron zu Googleberg, the minister for cut and paste" was very much following others' footsteps, apparently, in the field of comparative constitutional development. There is a facing-deletion article on King's 'plagiarism' at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Luther_King,_Jr._authorship_issues
Donal Claiming originality and depth for *,** and ***, until exposure; whileacknowledging the passing influence of the "re-inventing the wheel" phrase, which used to be wheeled out quite regularly on the list, in the meantime
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