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Ohio U students getting a pass on plagiarism?

By Lawrence B. Ebert, Esq.

On Feb. 7, the Athens Post had an editorial titled: Easy way out; Students who plagiarized theses need to rewrite reports, receive penalties with the first full paragraph noting:

Recently, two former mechanical engineering students who were accused of plagiarism in their graduate theses were allowed to eliminate ? not revise ? massive sections from their reports and resubmit the edited theses with no penalty whatsoever. One of the edited theses still contained material that was almost identical to a master thesis submitted in the past, and the other was not even subject to literature review, a standard practice for all masters? theses.

Students found guilty of plagiarism should be punished, not accommodated by the very system they wronged. While the actions of the students were unethical, the actions of those in charge at the Russ College of Engineering were even more distasteful. Rather than ordering these students to rewrite their theses ? rewrite them, not cut and resubmit them ? the college essentially gave them a free pass by allowing them to submit incomplete reports. It seems that the college is more concerned with burying this controversy than it is with doing what is ethical. The professor in charge of the investigation even said that the academic integrity of the work is more important than its quality ? while that may, in some ways, be true, it?s no excuse to throw quality out the window.

IPBiz notes that it is difficult to argue for "strong" penalties against the backdrop of the Poshard matter at SIU.

See also:

http://ipbiz.blogspot.com/2008/01/how-ohio-u-dealt-with-plagiarized.html

Full post as published by IPBiz on February 07, 2008 (boomark / email).