The punishable perils of plagiarism - Melissa Huseman D'Annunzio

693,271 views ・ 2013-06-14

TED-Ed


Please double-click on the English subtitles below to play the video.

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Transcriber: Andrea McDonough Reviewer: Jessica Ruby
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Welcome to the Department of Plagiarism Investigation.
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The D.P.I. has dealt with numerous complex cases
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in their effort to bring plagiarists to justice
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and to rescue purloined texts.
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The first form of plagiarism
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that the D.P.I. regularly encounters
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is known as brain child snatching,
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in honor of the Latin word, plagiarius,
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from which plagiarism originates.
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Brain child snatchers sneak up on innocent papers
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and copy and paste them
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without citing any sources,
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putting quotation marks around direct quotes
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or changing a word.
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They've also been known to steal and hold
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particularly eloquent essays for ransom.
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When brain child snatchers get together,
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they form a kidnapping ring,
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which involves brain child snatching
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from multiple sources.
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Some perpetrators have even been known
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to commit self-plagiarism,
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one of the laziest crimes in the annals of the D.P.I.
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Also known as one-sided collaborators,
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these odd balls snatch up entire texts
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or small passages that they've written before
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and present them as brand-new material.
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Brain child snatchers and kidnapping rings
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are easy for the D.P.I. to catch.
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Just paste a few passages into a search engine,
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and BAM!
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They're caught red-handed.
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The more covert forms of plagiarism
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include the wild goose chase technique,
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in which plagiarists create fake authors,
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book titles,
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page numbers,
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or other information
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in order to cover up plagiarism.
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And the old synonym switcheroo
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in which plagiarists utilize a thesaurus
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as their main weapon.
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By substituting a synonym
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for nearly every word in the document
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and leaving the sentence structure
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and order of the ideas the same,
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plagiarists give legitimate paraphrasing
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a very bad name.
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Shoddy paraphrasing is also a key part
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of variations on a smokescreen,
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a technique in which multiple passages
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are paraphrased,
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then pasted together into one.
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The thorniest issue that the D.P.I. deals with
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is the misconception
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that you can never be accused of plagiarism
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if you use quotes and cite your sources.
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This is most certainly not the case
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because a paper that is made up
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of passage upon passage of other people's ideas
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is known as a wholly quotable document.
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This is considered plagiarism
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since there are no original thoughts in the work.
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Similarly, passage after passage
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of too closely paraphrased text from multiple cited sources
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is also plagiarism of the pervasively paraphrased kind
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because the ideas still aren't one's own.
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And lastly, the technique of revealing while concealing
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is plagiarism because it involves selective amnesia
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regarding one's sources
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in an attempt to cover up wholly quotable
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and pervasively paraphrased issues in a text.
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Some passages are meticulously documented,
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quoted,
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or paraphrased,
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while others are presented entirely as one's own.
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As you can see, the D.P.I. has its hands full,
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tackling all sorts of academic mischief and mayhem,
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ranging from the petty to the outrageous.
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Given the gravity of these transgressions,
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you might be wondering why you've never heard
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of the Department of Plagiarism Investigation's victories.
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That's because it doesn't technically exist.
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But people, like you and me, can be our own D.P.I. agents
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to fight plagiarism
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and uphold the values of original thinking.
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We know that the best defense against plagiarism
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consists of writers who save themselves
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time, worry, and effort
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by taking the far easier road
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of just doing the work themselves.
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