Perils of Plagiarism

By: Anne Jacobs

The Internet is great for research. Now you can download articles, cut and paste paragraphs, and put together a 10-page research paper without any effort at all. It's a lot of work to use your own words, so why bother? Download the text, maybe slap on some graphics, and it's a done deal, right?

Not necessarily. The reality is, you can cheat, and you may often get away with it. Then again, you may not.

Plagiarism is stealing someone's ideas. It's using someone's words without giving any credit. The practice is pathetically common. Back in 1969 about 58 percent of high school students said they let others copy their work. By 1989, 97 percent were sharing school work.¹ And that was before the Internet was widely available.

But while computers make cheating easier, they're also catching cheaters. At the University of Virginia, a physics professor ran 1,500 papers through a computer program to see if any had matching passages.² Forty-eight students were expelled from the university as a result. Three of these were graduates who had their degrees revoked.³ Imagine opening your mail and finding out that you are no longer a university graduate. Imagine paying off loans for a degree you don't have.

Stealing someone else's words and ideas is often rewarded with public humiliation and ruined opportunities.

Blair Hornstine, valedictorian of her 2003 high-school class, had her offer to attend Harvard rescinded after she was accused of plagiarizing passages in a newspaper column.⁴

Historian Doris Kearns Goodwin left her job as a contributor on "The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer"⁵ and resigned her position on the Pulitzer Prize Board amid allegations that she had included passages from other books in her acclaimed work without crediting the sources.⁶

Jayson Blair, the infamous former New York Times reporter,⁷ shook the credibility of one of the most reputable newspapers in the United States amid allegations of plagiarism in the articles he wrote.

The solution is to put quotation marks around exact words when you're quoting someone. Always tell the source of your information -- each time you use the information -- whether you are using a direct quote or paraphrasing. If you are paraphrasing, or expressing someone's idea using your own words, you still need to list the source.

A little effort could save you a lot of grief later. And you might even learn something in the process.