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Further in the Pangilinan matter

By Lawrence B. Ebert, Esq.

Filomeno S. Sta. Ana III writes of the Pangilinan matter, and additionally brings up a student plagiarism matter involving applied physics students at the University of the Philippines, which students submitted a technical paper as part of the course requirement titled "Observation of biometric properties of leg movement and gait analysis using a geniometer."

The paper was a multi-student effort, and two of the students plagiarized their contributions to the paper. The non-plagiarizing students did suffer.

Returning to the Pangilinan matter, the plagiarism concerned a graduation speech given by Pangilinan. The speech was apparently ghost-written, so that Pangilinan himself may have been unaware of the plagiarism (so-called inadvertent or unintentional plagiarism). Nevertheless, Pangilinan resigned and, even in the face of a refusal to accept the resignation, Pangilinan persisted. Pangilinan did the honorable thing, even though these circumstances were murky as to "knowing bad acts" by Pangilinan. It may separately be the case that the university needed Pangilinan more than Pangilinan needed the university.

An irony here is that Pangilinan, a businessman, is not within the realm of academics, from where most of the taboos of plagiarism arise. Nevertheless, Pangilinan dealt promptly and concisely with the problem, unlike the situation with academics such as Laurence Tribe, Doris Kearns-Goodwin, Glenn Poshard or Professor Sticklen of Michigan State, all of whom committed acts far worse than what Pangilinan did. Go figure.

See previous IPBiz posts:

Manuel Pangilinan offers to resign over plagiarism

Ateneo de Manila University does NOT accept Pangilinan resignation

Full post as published by IPBiz on April 26, 2010 (boomark / email).