Plagiarism Assignment

The Epistemology of Plagiarism Here’s an ‘official’ handout for the exercise – because it’s a bit complicated. The general idea: we’re going to produce a set of typical research papers, some honest, some plagiarized, to explore how difficult it is to know what’s plagiarized, and if philosophers’ ideas about epistemology can help at all. Just to be clear from the start: this isn’t plagiarism or academic misconduct at all. First: it’s not for grades. Second: you’re not going to be truly misrepresenting someone else’s work as your own, as you will be properly citing and crediting others’ work (in one version of your paper.) Third: if that doesn’t reassure you, you can definitely opt out of this exercise – just don’t hand anything in. (You can participate in the rest, or not, as you wish.) The exercise is going to have 3 major ‘phases’. (Told you it was complicated – lots of paper-shuffling, etc.)

Phase 1: Becoming a plagiarist, perhaps... Your first job is to write a 4-5 page paper on the topic of TRUTH. The paper is to be a “research & reflection” paper – reflect on and pursue a theory of truth (coherence, pragmatic, correspondence – or another one you find), using scholarly and web sources to help you explore the area further. You are expected to use at least 3 sources, with a minor penalty to the paper’s grade if that quota isn’t reached. (That’s a typical ‘research paper’ requirement.) Other than that, I will be assessing this paper ‘as usual’, based on how well it demonstrates your understanding of the material. I will use the ‘course goals’ chart for feedback, to let you know how I think your paper demonstrates your progress in the course. The due date is October 28th (so, you have about 3 weeks – the usual for this length of paper, right?) (We can push this back if we need to – but let’s try to stick to it!) Usually, writing the paper is the primary task – but in this case, it’s kind of secondary. What we’re really trying to explore here is plagiarism, right? So, as you’re trying to get that job done, you will also be ‘acting’ as a certain kind of writer. In class, we chose a role for you, from the 7 possibilities listed here: (If you weren’t in class, contact me about which roles you aren’t allowed to pick.) •

The Fraudster: Have someone else write your paper for you. (Not someone in this class. If you want to pay someone – try out an essay mill, ask a phil major – I’ll chip in, within reason. But you pay the upfront costs, so your surprise isn’t ruined.)

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The Evil Slacker: write a paper that is 100% word-for-word plagiarized from a single source. Maximum allowed original content: 4 sentences. You can only fiddle with formatting and ordering sections – no rewrites or edits other than cutting things out.

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Dr. Frankenstein, plagiarist: write a paper that is nearly all word-for-word plagiarized, from at least 3 sources. Maximum allowed original content: ~20% (one page total) for intro, conclusion, transitions between copied sections.

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The Wordsniper: write a paper with at least 5 unattributed quotes from at least 3 sources (totalling between 20-40% of the word count), embedded in original work. (Those sources can be the same ones you cited as your 3 research sources, or other ones.)

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Igor, plagiarist: write a “Frankensteined” paper (see above), but use paraphrasing to obscure the source of the plagiarism. You can do a liberal re-write, entirely re-phrasing each sentence, or just use a thesaurus to replace key words. At least 3 sources, maximum 20% (one page total) truly original content for intro, conclusion and transitions.

The Wordninja: write a paper like the Wordsniper, but paraphrase or patchwrite to cover your tracks. • The Sucker: write an honestly cited paper with at least 3 sources, properly quoted and referenced. (I.e., just be

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honest about the assignment.)

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The Conscientious Slacker: write an honestly cited paper with 2 or fewer sources, properly quoted and referenced.

As you write the paper, make sure you keep track of what you’re plagiarizing!!! Why? Because you will submit two versions of your paper: the ‘submitted’ version, and the ‘confession’ version. I will set up 2 dropboxes on a file-sharing website (locations TBA) to keep them separate. I pledge not to look in the ‘confession’ dropbox, except to verify that papers were submitted there too (so I can remind you to CYA.) Do not put your name on either version – use a pseudonym instead. Please name your Word document with your pseudonym, too, so we can keep them straight! (E.g., “Coherence is incoherent, by Sue Donim”, in the file SueDonim.docx.) The ‘confession’ version should have all your sources properly cited: quotation marks & references for word-for-word quotes, references for paraphrases.

Phase 2: Investigating... After the deadline for submissions has passed, I will post all ‘submitted’ versions on BB for everyone to read. I’ll post a worksheet for you to use to help you vote on each paper, and space for some reasons why you believe each paper is honest or plagiarized. After you do that, try to write 2-3 pages discussing some of the papers: how you actually did apply epistemology to help you figure these out, or how epistemological concepts (like, say, inference to the best explanation or Bayesian confirmation theory) relate to the issues this exercise raises. You can also talk about how you tried to evade detection in your own paper, either using ‘common sense’ or by applying formal epistemology. That is: try out your understanding of some course concepts by applying them to the exercise as a whole or – better – to particular parts of papers. (This material can form part of your portfolio, too.) You’ll have about 3 weeks (sometime mid-November) to read all the papers, complete the worksheet and write up some reflections. Whenever we decide on the due date, bring your completed worksheet and writeup to class. (That’s where we’ll start Phase 3.) I will do 2 things with these papers: I’ll evaluate them “as usual” and give them a grade based on how well I think you’ve grasped the material you tried to tackle, and I’ll try to figure out who plagiarized. (We can see if plagiarizing actually helps your grade, or hurts it.) I’ll explain more about my view on grading (what I believe is) plagiarized material in class.

Phase 3: Confessions and post-mortem discussions! When we’ve all read & evaluated the papers, we’ll start revealing who did what, and whether anyone was fooled. We’ll go ‘slow’, and reveal the truth about papers one at a time, discussing anything of note, and whether anyone had anything in their writeup on that paper. By the end of all this, we should have had a good laugh or two, found new angles on epistemology and how it relates to real life, ethics, and other issues. We’ll also pay out any bets we made at the start of the exercise... including these: Bet #1: I’ll find 80% of all word-for-word plagiarists, and 40% of all paraphrasing plagiarists, with no false accusations. If I lose: I will bring treats to class. Bet #2: Plagiarizing, if successful (i.e., undetected by me) won’t result in more than 1 grade point improvement over what I would have given the ‘confession’ version. (Though this bet will be hard to verify...)