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In Britain we had a government that wholesale plagiarised works to create the so-called "Dodgy Dossier" - the basis of the case for going to war in Iraq in 2003

In Britain we had a government that wholesale plagiarised works to create the so-called "Dodgy Dossier" - the basis of the case for going to war in Iraq in 2003 [1] In academia it's rife. I was alerted by students to a course at a prominent Russell Group London university where the entire course notes were copied verbatim from my website. The only edit was to deliberately remove my name from every page and slide. The only thing more disgraceful than plagiarism is the arms-race and racket around "preventing" it with tools like the dubious "Turnitin" - dubious in its effectiveness, treatment of students work, privacy implications and the fact that students are compelled to use it, in most cases without prior formal agreement [2]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraq_Dossier https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraq_Dossier [2] https://www.timeshighereducation.com/news/anti-turnitin-scholars-call-rethink-tackling-plagiarism https://www.timeshighereducation.com/news/anti-turnitin-scho...

cycomanic 4y ago
I wholeheartedly agree with your assessment in particular of turnitin. I'm somewhat surprised by the copying of course notes though, as in my experience many academics take plagiarism extremely seriously, sometimes overzealously so, i.e. not use the same graph in two distinct works which is completely acceptable IMO. > In academia it's rife. I was alerted by students to a course at a prominent Russell Group London university where the entire course notes were copied verbatim from my website. The only edit was to deliberately remove my name from every page and slide. Did you report it to the university? You should, the academics who do this, should be face consequences and in my experiences plagiarism is one of the few wrongdoings that gets relatively swift action, I suspect because it usually is very clearly unethical conduct.
- zrobotics 4y ago
  Plus, for course notes that is just extremely lazy. The students who are paying for the course are almost certainly being cheated, if the instructor can't even write their own slides then I doubt the quality of instruction is very great either.
- nonrandomstring 4y ago
  > Did you report it to the university? You should, the academics who do this, should be face consequences and in my experiences plagiarism is one of the few wrongdoings that gets Of course. But I have to tell you, they skilfully sidestepped it by blaming an firing a TA, who I happen to know was entirely innocent. The actual culprit is still a senior professor at that university. Things are always more complex in real life, as you know. The professor was also a PhD supervisor to a friend and we had to choose which battles to fight, rocking the boat would have had consequences far beyond my own vanity and sense of injustice. Now I write regular pieces in the Times Higher Education. Having taught at dozens of universities as an international visiting professor I've got a wide and deep view of academia. In a nutshell it's run by gangsters and has a very, very high concentration of psychopaths (much higher than 'industry' I would say because there are ways of being cocooned and cloistered in academia which isolate one from conseqences found in the world of real business)
  - patrec 4y ago
    > Of course. But I have to tell you, they skilfully sidestepped it by blaming an firing a TA, who I happen to know was entirely innocent. The actual culprit is still a senior professor at that university. Would you or your friend still need to fear reprisals if you're naming names now? If not, given that normal channels have failed that all sounds sufficiently bad that at least naming the university and department might be worth considering. > there are ways of being cocooned and cloistered in academia which isolate one from conseqences found in the world of real business Given your experience, I'd be very curious to hear what the main mechanisms your witnessed for side-stepping consequences for psychopathic behavior actually were. Since academia only involves spending other people's money without any direct test against outside reality, it stands to reason that it would be much more vulnerable to capture by colluding bad actors than business, where beyond a certain point of organizational pathology the money stops flowing in. There's of course also at least one mechanism designed specifically to cocoon people, namely tenure. But my guess would be that the main way it encourages the psychopaths is not so much that tenure protects them, but that having veto power over other people's tenure is a very good tool to enforce compliance.
    - 4y ago
bambax 4y ago
> the so-called "Dodgy Dossier" One of my favorite movies of all time, In The Loop [1] deals with exactly that. It's extremely funny, and dark. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_the_Loop https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_the_Loop
tomw2005 4y ago
We had a maths lecturer who got us to buy their text book. Turns out the text book was just copy pasted sections from other maths textbooks in one book. Cost 30 quid, had the old page numbers and was therefore a confusing mess throughout. My tutor then pointed me to a better maths textbook which was actually worth the money, shame I didn't know about that before!

cycomanic 4y ago

I wholeheartedly agree with your assessment in particular of turnitin. I'm somewhat surprised by the copying of course notes though, as in my experience many academics take plagiarism extremely seriously, sometimes overzealously so, i.e. not use the same graph in two distinct works which is completely acceptable IMO. > In academia it's rife. I was alerted by students to a course at a prominent Russell Group London university where the entire course notes were copied verbatim from my website. The only edit was to deliberately remove my name from every page and slide. Did you report it to the university? You should, the academics who do this, should be face consequences and in my experiences plagiarism is one of the few wrongdoings that gets relatively swift action, I suspect because it usually is very clearly unethical conduct.

zrobotics 4y ago
Plus, for course notes that is just extremely lazy. The students who are paying for the course are almost certainly being cheated, if the instructor can't even write their own slides then I doubt the quality of instruction is very great either.
nonrandomstring 4y ago
> Did you report it to the university? You should, the academics who do this, should be face consequences and in my experiences plagiarism is one of the few wrongdoings that gets Of course. But I have to tell you, they skilfully sidestepped it by blaming an firing a TA, who I happen to know was entirely innocent. The actual culprit is still a senior professor at that university. Things are always more complex in real life, as you know. The professor was also a PhD supervisor to a friend and we had to choose which battles to fight, rocking the boat would have had consequences far beyond my own vanity and sense of injustice. Now I write regular pieces in the Times Higher Education. Having taught at dozens of universities as an international visiting professor I've got a wide and deep view of academia. In a nutshell it's run by gangsters and has a very, very high concentration of psychopaths (much higher than 'industry' I would say because there are ways of being cocooned and cloistered in academia which isolate one from conseqences found in the world of real business)
- patrec 4y ago
  > Of course. But I have to tell you, they skilfully sidestepped it by blaming an firing a TA, who I happen to know was entirely innocent. The actual culprit is still a senior professor at that university. Would you or your friend still need to fear reprisals if you're naming names now? If not, given that normal channels have failed that all sounds sufficiently bad that at least naming the university and department might be worth considering. > there are ways of being cocooned and cloistered in academia which isolate one from conseqences found in the world of real business Given your experience, I'd be very curious to hear what the main mechanisms your witnessed for side-stepping consequences for psychopathic behavior actually were. Since academia only involves spending other people's money without any direct test against outside reality, it stands to reason that it would be much more vulnerable to capture by colluding bad actors than business, where beyond a certain point of organizational pathology the money stops flowing in. There's of course also at least one mechanism designed specifically to cocoon people, namely tenure. But my guess would be that the main way it encourages the psychopaths is not so much that tenure protects them, but that having veto power over other people's tenure is a very good tool to enforce compliance.
  - 4y ago

bambax 4y ago

> the so-called "Dodgy Dossier" One of my favorite movies of all time, In The Loop [1] deals with exactly that. It's extremely funny, and dark. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_the_Loop https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_the_Loop

tomw2005 4y ago

We had a maths lecturer who got us to buy their text book. Turns out the text book was just copy pasted sections from other maths textbooks in one book. Cost 30 quid, had the old page numbers and was therefore a confusing mess throughout. My tutor then pointed me to a better maths textbook which was actually worth the money, shame I didn't know about that before!