The Wednesday Letter #202 - 1/10/2024

THIS WEEK: Plagiarism; Boeing Muddle; Oil, China, Geopolitics; Israel Borders.

PLAGIARISM

Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, but that is not a good defense for someone caught in the act of plagiarism. The Claudine Gay controversy at Harvard has brought to the fore the issue of plagiarism and has made us realize that it is in fact more widespread than anyone thought.

The site plagiarism.org reports that “a survey of over 63,700 US undergraduate and 9,250 graduate students over the course of three years (2002-2005)--conducted by Donald McCabe, Rutgers University--revealed the following:

• 36% of undergraduates admit to “paraphrasing/copying few sentences from Internet source without footnoting it.” 24% of graduate students self report doing the same.

• 38% admit to “paraphrasing/copying few sentences from written source without footnoting it.” 25% of graduate students self report doing the same.”

It would not be surprising if these percentages have increased since the survey period (2002-2005) and if they are closer to 50% for undergraduates today. In general, th…