Not if you’re a student. If you’re a professor.

Young, naive Panos Ipeirotis, a business school instructor, discovered that a bunch of his undergraduate business majors
(background on that burnished major here and here) had plagiarized, and he called them on it.

After announcing his intention to report the cheating to the dean unless students turned themselves in, Ipeirotis said, class became contentious and awkward, and his teaching evaluations suffered. His typical evaluation in this class, 6.0 to 6.5 out of 7.0, fell to 5.3. In his blog post, Ipeirotis wrote that Associate Dean Susan Greenbaum and the department chair “‘expressed their appreciation’ for…chasing such cases.” But his “yearly salary increase was the lowest ever, and significantly lower than inflation, as my ‘teaching evaluations took a hit this year,'” he wrote.

Lesson learned:

“I doubt that I will be checking again for cheaters,” he wrote.

… might be a good name for doctorates from Bonn University. Judging by one high-profile PhD of theirs, the degree is a bit on the confectionery side.

Jorgo Chatzimarkakis, a rising German politician, has had the doctorate revoked — more than half of it was plagiarized, which is rather a lot.

Copy, Shake, and Paste, a blog devoted to plagiarism, notes that Chatzimarkakis went on tv, before the revocation, to defend himself:

Chatzimarkakis defended himself with, among other things, the argument that the work was “intertextual” and that he was using “Oxford style” quotations, that he learned when he was at Oxford.

It’s intertextual, man. The self is an illusion. Chill.

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As always, UD thanks Chris for alerting her to the latest naughty German.

Recipe, Article à l’indienne:

Caroline Wallis is only fourteen years old, but she’s already figured out that, above all else, plagiarism is an act of profound contempt for your audience.

She goes to a middle school for promising writers in Manhattan, and her principal gave her class a graduation speech mainly written by David Foster Wallace.

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UD thanks David for the link.

The ex-head of the University of Alberta med school started the fad: When caught plagiarizing, say you did it because you were trying to inspire people.

Now the plagiarizing Wolcott Connecticut superintendent of schools has jumped on the inspirational bandwagon. Like the Alberta guy, he plagiarized a speech he gave to graduating students, sending them off to the future with soaring stolen words. “All I was trying to do was inspire,” he explained.

We live in a truthy, hoaxy, culture – we all know that. Things are seldom what they seem. Things are helpfully cleaned up for us – made nice and simple and just what we want – without our having to notice a thing. It’s twenty-first century efficiency.

So who’s surprised that a busy high-profile journalist seems to interview people, but actually inserts things they’ve already written into his copy and passes them off as statements made during the interview? He even sets the scene for the citation, gives it dramatic urgency: “After saying this, he falls silent, and we stare at each other for a while. Then he says, in a quieter voice…”

Then he says, a quieter voice, “Page 25, footnote 2, My Memoirs…”

The technique has worked well for Hari. He’s very successful. It’s like that old joke with which this essay begins. I guess Hari knows how to tell them.

And the most entertaining form of plagiarism is plagiarism committed by men of the cloth.

Here’s an especially good example.

Tennessee Temple University’s president stole an entire chapter of his book, Jesus is Awesome, from another preacher because, as the guy he plagiarized explains:

“He told me that he had read my book in college, liked it, and was under the impression that I had passed away or that it was no longer in print when he used it.”

Hell, I thought you was dead.

Plus no way that chapter’d be in print anymore – nobody’d recognize it ‘cept you and, hyuk, you’re dead…

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PLUS, as the plagiarist himself explains:

“I didn’t know copyright laws at the time.”

Dean Baker has resigned.

Students were, at first, impressed by the inspirational speech about a doctor’s never ending quest for knowledge. But some knew something was amiss when Dr. Baker referenced the “velluvial matrix,” a term the original author invented and included in his convocation address to students at Stanford University in California last year.

Background here.

The latest Teutonic text-trafficker understands that the best defense is a good offense.

Silvana Koch-Mehrin, forced out of high-profile political jobs by the discovery that she plagiarized her Heidelberg University dissertation, has blamed the university. “The dissertation commission granted me the title in 2000 being fully aware of the considerable weaknesses of my work,” she complained.

Heidelberg is at fault in the matter, in other words, because it enabled Koch-Mehrin’s unfortunate tendency to produce crap. Her hands were tied.

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(UD thanks Chris.)

… low.

Way, way, low.

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(Further thoughts from Philip N. Baker, dean of medicine, University of Alberta.)

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UD thanks Ian.

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Update: Alberta lets its hair hang even lower:

Students have now been asked to not comment publicly as the school tries to limit the fallout of what was supposed to be a celebration.

Uh, let me say a couple of things about this growing-by-the-second story:

1. It’s totally scandalous that a cynical medical school dean would palm off someone else’s words on his students. The contempt it expresses for the students is immense.

2. The behavior totally plays into the already ethically-challenged realm of academic writing in medicine, with its guest authors and ghost authors and all the rest. Great message to send to your graduates – Go out there and download other people’s work.

3. Not comment publicly? Exsqueeze me? I mean, they’ve graduated anyway – they can do what they like, having been sent out into the world by Dean Download. And even if they were still students — What sort of university tries to keep its students from speaking?

4. Answer: An embarrassed university. Fine, yes, it’s embarrassing. The response is not to hush it up but to admit that it happened, that you’re embarrassed, and that you’re looking into sanctions. At the very least it seems obvious to UD that a person who can’t write and deliver a short graduation address should not be a dean. Let’s not even talk about the moral sleaze here.

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Calls for his resignation have begun. This seems to me a very good idea.

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All together now:

One attendee said his brother located the speech on The New Yorker website and was following along on his iPhone as Baker was reciting it.

Talk about the gotcha media! Plagiarist Alert: Soon your audience will be reciting your speech along with you in real time, reading it off their phones.

…plagiarism.

In Germany, it’s raining plagiarists.

Veronica Sass, daughter of a former premier of Bavaria, has just had her University of Konstanz doctorate taken away.

Karl-Theodor Guttenberg – now he’s blaming his family, and his dissertation chair – Veronica Sass, and pretty soon Silvana Koch-Mehrin.

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Keeping in mind that Guttenberg was Defense Minister, consider his explanation:

Another problem [he said] was with the expectations of his family to master his existing commitments successfully. It had been made clear to him that it would not have been acceptable if the quality of any of his various commitments suffered and that a work once started had to be completed. Furthermore, Guttenberg wrote that he did not want to disappoint his advisor Peter Häberle.

Big strong head of German military! Capitulates to family, dissertation advisor…

He’s now known in the German press as the Self-Defense Minister.

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UD thanks Chris.

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UPDATE: Koch-Mehrin folds ’em.

… some people have complained that although when you check in at Lufthansa online “you can choose between Herr/Frau, Dr, Prof, Prof Dr,” you cannot choose Prof Dr Dr.

Prof Dr Dr! A country that loves titles that much is gonna get itself into plagiarism trouble, with everyone scrambling for more Prof Drs. Indeed we’ve already followed Baron Googleberg’s story (it’s still going on). Now another prominent politician, Silvana Koch-Mehrin, is in trouble. Rumor has it the University of Heidelberg is close to taking away her PhD.

This is all moving much faster than Guttenberg’s case did; institutions realize that the people behind this website are finding cases left and right. But the targets of the website’s dissertation-analyses aren’t themselves up to speed. Koch-Mehrin has still made no comment (the story’s been out there for a couple of weeks); like Guttenberg, she’s hoping arrogance and disdain will make it all go away.

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Chris expands on German titles:

Germany is full of politicians who are Prof Dr Dr (sometimes even Prof Dr Dr h.c. mult., to signify that the person holds various honorary doctorates). Another common case is someone who is a medical researcher, as they are often Dr. med. and Dr. rer. nat.). Or people with bi-national degrees. The most prominent, in terms of TV exposure, is Prof. Dr. Dr. Karl Lauterbach, who holds a Dr. med. from the University of Düsseldorf and a D.Sc. from Harvard.

If you like titles, the United States is real shit. We don’t seem to have the same respect for them. I don’t see Donald Trump running off to get a PhD so we’ll call him Prof Dr Dr Trump. And he’s our next president.

We do have Major Major Major Major.

But only Germany has Johann Gambolputty.

… graduate students and secretaries?

… when someone running a secondary school or a university turns out to be a plagiarist. These people spend a lot of time pontificating to their students about honesty, academic integrity and hard work, and when they are found out, it makes their students – and their students’ families – look like dupes.

As Karen Francisco reports in the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette:

Gwendolyn Griffith Adell is a member of the Indiana State Board of Education and administrator of a Gary charter school singled out for distinction by Gov. Mitch Daniels. She also stands accused of plagiarizing her doctoral dissertation.

Purdue University officials have confirmed they are reviewing the allegations.

Adell’s response so far is the classic I’ve just been hit with this response: Bullshit! I’m getting me a lawyer!

Once she calms down and realizes she’s been caught, she will probably go through many of the same stages most people – from the high and mighty German defense minister on down – go through:

She’ll admit there might have been one or two inadvertent lapses on her part.

She’ll ask her university for permission to correct the dissertation. This will be denied.

She’ll say she was busy having five children, running for political office, caring for her sick aunt.

She’ll say there’s a political conspiracy to get rid of her because she’s an outspoken critic of the establishment.

She’ll say her plagiarism occurred long ago and has nothing to do with what a great job she does. Judge her by her current work.

In her resignation speech, she will portray herself as a religious martyr.