Why Do People Plagiarize?

of others and passing them off as their own. They are plagiarists. We spoke with David Reddinger, a professor of psychology at the University of Mary Washington and Fredericksburg, Virginia, and the president of the International Center for Academic Integrity. He said, it's a particular problem in academia because we care so much about the process. I say this to my students all the time. I don't care that you give me a clean paper. I care that you write

a paper. It's like sending someone to the gym for you. It completely defer it's the purpose. But let's take a step back and define plagiarism. Going to the old faithful of American English definitions Miriam Webster. Plagiarism is quote to steal and pass off the ideas or words of another as one's own, to use another's production without crediting the source, or to commit literary theft present a new and original

and idea or product derived from an existing source. For one example, we could simply have copied those definitions, which in fact we did not changed a word ditto, and not credited Miriam Webster. But then, of course we'd be flat out plagiarizing, or at the very least trampling on the line between plagiarism and the safer albeits leazy word cribbing. But since we credited Mariam Webster, it's an attribution, not plagiarism. The article version of this episode even provided a link.

Plagiarism is not always that cut and paste easy, though The legal definition is as legally as often is murky. This is from Cornell Law School's Legal Information Institute. Quote deliberately passing off somebody else's original expression or creative ideas as one's own. Plagiarism can be a violation of law

if copyrighted expression is taken. Often, however, plagiarism does not violate any law, but instead simply marks the plagiarists as an unethical person in the political, academic, or scientific community where the plagiarism occurs. So then, what about taking information from someone else, twisting a few words around, maybe changing a name or two, and passing it off as your own. How much do you have to change to avoid plagiarism? How much borrowing is too much? Where do you draw

the line? Rettinger said, it's always okay to use the ideas or the words of somebody else. That's not the problem. The problem is acknowledging your sources. Different disciplines and different situations have different expectations of what's yours and what's shared. Lawyers, for another example, can use similar wording in legal briefs, maybe even the exact wording. But that may be more generally acceptable it is Reddinger says, shared language in their profession.

But what about scientists or researchers borrowing straight from another paper that was based on original research? Or how about this example from journalism, a big news site, say taking chunks of a story reported and written by another site. If it's a one thousand word article done by site A and site B uses eight hundred words of it. Verbatim is that okay, even if site BE credits site A, is that plagiarism? If we can't decide on a precise definition,

we could probably at least agree it's pretty lame. Though it may be that plagiarizers and the plagiarized aren't seeing eye to eye, which brings us to another question. Who would do such a thing? Students all the time, researchers sometimes, According to one study, close to ten percent of retracted

journal articles were pulled because of plagiarism. Politicians sometimes. For example, former U. S Senator and Vice President Joe Biden famously was accused of it in a speech and years after the fact, admitted to plagiarism he committed as a student, though he said it wasn't malevolent. First ladies have Melania Trump has been dogged by rumors of plagiarism and speeches ever since her opening night address at the Republican National Convention.

In journalists, as we've pointed out, musicians to Johnny Cash has been accused, and poets and writers. A Latin root of the word plagiarism was used all the way back in ancient Roman times to describe poets plundering one another's works. Sometimes we should acknowledge plagiarism is accidental, though. A student borrowing an idea from a website while doing research past some information into a paper they're working on and forgets to attribute it. Obviously, it's a small problem when it's

a sentence or a brief paragraph. It's a bigger problem when several paragraphs or chapters make their way into a paper. But some, of course steal on purpose, never intending to give others credit. But why. One explanation is laziness, or at least an unwillingness to put in the necessary effort due to a lack of drive or a lack of time, or perhaps expediency. Another explanation is a desire for acceptance or a good grade, or maybe a lack of talent,

or at least a perceived lack of talent. Rettinger said, plagiarism begins, I think at the core when a person doesn't see the value in creating the work themselves. The ones that get me are the students that just don't feel like they can do the work. Those are the ones that make me the saddest for those who don't plagiarize accidentally, and of course it was an accident. As the first line of defense for any plagiarist, there are any number of reasons to go rogue. In a plagiarist's mind,

if you're never caught, it's not wrong. It becomes acceptable. A former American journalist Jason Blair, fabricated quotes, dreamed up things that never happened, stole entire passages from published news accounts verbatim, then concocted dozens and dozens of stories, passing them off as fact under his byline in The New York Times, and he got away with it for years.

He tried to explain him off to Duke student reporters in sixteen, saying, once you do something that crosses any ethical line, it is easy to go back and do it over and over. I danced around it and then crossed it and had a real hard time coming back. But with plagiarism's moving definition, it's difficult to pin down exactly how many word and idea thieves are among us.

The biggest battle in the never ending war against plagiarism remains in academia, and it's certainly not limited to high schoolers. One study, for example, found that more than half a four hundred medical students surveyed said they had plagiarized, even in the halls of higher learning, though it's hard to

determine how widespread the problem is. Schools often contract commercial firms to use their software to try to catch plagiarism, and aside from those, there are online plagiarism checkers that compare written papers to a database of published material, sometimes for free. These services can be useful both for people looking to catch plagiarists and for writers looking to avoid it. Rattinger said, it depends on how hard you look and

what subject you teach and to whom. In terms of wholesale plagiarism, probably not that often, but in terms of maybe a paragraph here or sentence here, or paragraph or sentence there, it depends on your definition of common. But my impression is that it's fairly common. It's an arms race, and as long as it's on, we're going to lose because there are more of them and they're very motivated.

Slowing plagiarism, though can be a goal. It's critical for educators, Writtinger says, to teach students the very real worth of researching and writing their own work, and it's important to make students and other would be plagiarists understand that both sides lose when you try to take credit for another person's work, words, or ideas. First of all, you're denying yourself the valuable, affirming experience of creating your own work.

And second of all, it could hurt that credibility you're trying to cheat your way into in the long run. We also spoke with Jonathan Bailey, a writer in businessman who runs the website Plagiarism Today. He said, you might be able to get away with it in the short term, but it's not just getting away with it in the short term. It's about trying to get away with it forever,

and that is a losing battle. It's almost inevitable that you'll get caught in the long term, So be thinking about it, not in just terms of today, but could this ever come back to bite you. Today's episode was written by John Donovan and produced by Tyler Clang. Brain Stuff is a production of I Heeart Radio's How Stuff Works. For more in this and lots of other topics that's cite their sources, visit our home Planet, how Stuff works

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