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(Tenured Radical)

Wednesday, March 14, 2007

A Rare Case of
Congenital Plagiarism

The New York Times is covering a case in which plagiarism appears to have been handed down from father to daughter.

Jacqueline R. Griffith seemed to be flourishing as a tenured assistant professor in economics and finance at Kean University in New Jersey — that is, until another member of her department accused her of having plagiarized sizable portions of her doctoral dissertation.


Her father also apparently plagiarized his academic work, but his university didn't care, and he's still teaching. The daughter's had to resign:

... Nova Southeastern University, an independent institution in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., which granted her a doctorate in business administration, [is] investigating the plagiarism accusation.


...Asked in a telephone interview whether she had copied her dissertation, Ms. Griffith said, “I don’t believe so,” adding, “But let me call you back.” Fifteen minutes later, her lawyer, Corinne Mullen, called, saying she would look into the matter.


I don't believe so... Let me check...

Ms. Griffith’s troubles, somewhat like her father’s, began with a disgruntled colleague — in her case, Bruce M. Skoorka, also an assistant professor of economics and finance. ... Mr. Skoorka said in an interview that he began criticizing the quality of professors being hired, promoted and given tenure in his department — including Ms. Griffith — nine years ago. In 2001, he filed a lawsuit against the university, charging that he was being discriminated against and harassed in part because of his complaints.


UD always thinks it's classy -- Auburn did this with the guy who broke the Thomas Petee story involving bogus independent studies for athletes -- when universities persecute people who uncover academic fraud.

In the litigation, he included one memo from a senior professor, Carol M. Condon, saying Ms. Griffith should not be retained because she lacked the required qualifications and because of inaccuracies in her file. One important inaccuracy, the memo said, was her claim to be co-author of two books that were written by her father.

The memo noted that the title page of the actual publications showed the single author to be Mr. Jonnard. Ms. Griffith was only thanked for her assistance in the acknowledgments.


Griffith really goes all out.

Looking for more, Mr. Skoorka examined Ms. Griffith’s doctoral dissertation, approved in 2001, and found another that seemed very similar, written at Louisiana Tech University in 1995. He said in an interview that he was “determined to do something about this.” He hired a detective to find the author, whose name, Helen B. Mason, had since changed to Helen Sikes because of remarriage.

Now a professor at Centenary College of Louisiana, Ms. Sikes said recently that when the detective called her last summer, “I thought it was a joke, a sick joke.”

But after examining Ms. Griffith’s dissertation, she said, she concluded that “90 percent of the narrative” was a copy of her own. She joined Mr. Skoorka in sending letters to Kean and Nova in December, charging plagiarism. The professors asked that Nova revoke Ms. Griffith’s doctorate and that Kean dismiss her.


Both institutes are currently dithering about it.


... Universities differ in their handling of plagiarism. “Reported cases reveal ad hoc responses at best, and indifference or denial at worst,” said Timothy M. Dodd, executive director of the Center for Academic Integrity at Duke University, which counts more than 350 colleges and universities, not including Kean or Nova, among its members.

... Before she resigned at Kean, Ms. Griffith appeared to be trying to set things right. Her lawyer, Ms. Mullen, said she was rewriting some pages of the dissertation. Ms. Griffith called her former faculty adviser at Nova to ask if he would read the new pages. She contacted UMI, which maintains a database of doctoral dissertations, to see if she could substitute a new version of her work for the one filed earlier.

Her former faculty adviser, Alan Gart, who left Nova about six years ago and moved to Pennsylvania, confirmed that he had received a call from Ms. Griffith in January or early February, saying, “I did something bad; I copied,” and asking him to read some redone pages.

He said that he barely recalled her — “I only remember one thing, that she was in a hurry” — but that he agreed to read the pages, even though he no longer had any ties to Nova and no authority.

“I tried to be a nice guy,” he said.

Mr. DePiano, Nova’s academic vice president, said, “I don’t know of a situation where after the formal dissertation process was completed, revisions were later accepted.”


I wouldn't want to take on that job. You'd have to spend a lot of time tracking down the source of the second plagiarized dissertation.
Posted at: 3/14/2007 03:39:00 AM