4 ms·

Plagiarists- which Claudine Gay is- should lose their tenure, because their tenure was predicated on them being legitimate scholars, and plagiarists are not leg

by dekhn 3y ago

Plagiarists- which Claudine Gay is- should lose their tenure, because their tenure was predicated on them being legitimate scholars, and plagiarists are not legitimate scholars. It was established that she has a skimpy record, and nearly every one of those contains near-duplication of text without attribution. How could you ever trust an academic after it was exposed that they did that (intentionally)? It's hard to be an academic but not plagiarizing is rule #1 or #2.

matthewdgreen 3y ago
Picking one allegation from the top of the list here [1] (number "6"), it appears that she used similar phrasing to another reference, in order to describe a chart in her own work. But as best I can tell, the charts being described are completely different and based off of different datasets. [2, 3] So what I see in this instance is what looks like similar text matching, not theft of ideas or original research. If I'm wrong about this, I'll happily eat my words. Most of this stuff looks like that, or issues where she cited a reference but didn't include proper citations every time she summarized some fact (which should be fixed, but isn't a catastrophe.) [1] https://freebeacon.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/Complaint2.pdf https://freebeacon.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/Complaint2... [2] https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1078087415620053#fn19-1078087415620053 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/10780874156200... [3] https://www.jstor.org/stable/4121593?seq=12 https://www.jstor.org/stable/4121593?seq=12
- dekhn 3y ago
  I absolutely agree that in some situations, text that looks like an exact copy isn't plagiarism. Intent matters! But don't pick one allegation- consider all of them. When considered in whole, it's seems fairly clear her modus operandi is to 'copy-paste' entire sections of text and then change small numbers of words. And I suspect she had the intent- to do less work to create text that would get published. But I'm not 100% certain and I don't know what mechanism the plagiarism occurred by. I dojn't think arguing that identical/similar text describing a different analysis is a good line of argument, either- wouldn't text describing charts that were completely different be.... much more different?
  - matthewdgreen 3y ago
    You can look at the charts themselves to determine whether they're different. And then if you determine they are, then talking about the slopes (or coefficients) of variables doesn't seem like plagiarism to me. More generally, "the large numbers of incidents" here is exactly what I'd expect if someone ran a text detector, but didn't do any quality control to see if the result actually represented theft of original research.
    - dekhn 3y ago
      I honestly think you are either intentionally or mistakenly ignoring the large swaths of direct copied text, as in entire sentences/paragraphs. False positives in plagiarism detection is a problem but my inspection of the examples found roughly 3-4 examples of directly copied sentences, usually with just one word changed, from a paper that she explicitly cites elsewhere in the document. Under my understanding (I'm an ex-academic with published papers) this counts as real plagiarism, and since it's repeated throughout multiple works, I think it's safe to conclude she did this intentionally and just thought she wouldn't get caught. I could be wrong.
  - JumpCrisscross 3y ago
    One of the people she plagiarised concludes that she did, and believes Gay's "work wouldn’t normally have earned tenure in the Ivy League" [1]. [1] https://www.wsj.com/articles/claudine-gay-and-my-scholarship-plagiarism-elite-system-unearned-position-24e4a1b1 https://www.wsj.com/articles/claudine-gay-and-my-scholarship...
    - dekhn 3y ago
      I think the author of that WSJ article has a political motive that is greater than her academic discontent. Many of the people she plagiarized thought it was "OK" that she did so (not sure why).
      - deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]

by dekhn 3y ago

matthewdgreen 3y ago

Picking one allegation from the top of the list here [1] (number "6"), it appears that she used similar phrasing to another reference, in order to describe a chart in her own work. But as best I can tell, the charts being described are completely different and based off of different datasets. [2, 3] So what I see in this instance is what looks like similar text matching, not theft of ideas or original research. If I'm wrong about this, I'll happily eat my words. Most of this stuff looks like that, or issues where she cited a reference but didn't include proper citations every time she summarized some fact (which should be fixed, but isn't a catastrophe.) [1] https://freebeacon.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/Complaint2.pdf https://freebeacon.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/Complaint2... [2] https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1078087415620053#fn19-1078087415620053 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/10780874156200... [3] https://www.jstor.org/stable/4121593?seq=12 https://www.jstor.org/stable/4121593?seq=12

dekhn 3y ago
I absolutely agree that in some situations, text that looks like an exact copy isn't plagiarism. Intent matters! But don't pick one allegation- consider all of them. When considered in whole, it's seems fairly clear her modus operandi is to 'copy-paste' entire sections of text and then change small numbers of words. And I suspect she had the intent- to do less work to create text that would get published. But I'm not 100% certain and I don't know what mechanism the plagiarism occurred by. I dojn't think arguing that identical/similar text describing a different analysis is a good line of argument, either- wouldn't text describing charts that were completely different be.... much more different?
- matthewdgreen 3y ago
  You can look at the charts themselves to determine whether they're different. And then if you determine they are, then talking about the slopes (or coefficients) of variables doesn't seem like plagiarism to me. More generally, "the large numbers of incidents" here is exactly what I'd expect if someone ran a text detector, but didn't do any quality control to see if the result actually represented theft of original research.
  - dekhn 3y ago
    I honestly think you are either intentionally or mistakenly ignoring the large swaths of direct copied text, as in entire sentences/paragraphs. False positives in plagiarism detection is a problem but my inspection of the examples found roughly 3-4 examples of directly copied sentences, usually with just one word changed, from a paper that she explicitly cites elsewhere in the document. Under my understanding (I'm an ex-academic with published papers) this counts as real plagiarism, and since it's repeated throughout multiple works, I think it's safe to conclude she did this intentionally and just thought she wouldn't get caught. I could be wrong.
- JumpCrisscross 3y ago
  One of the people she plagiarised concludes that she did, and believes Gay's "work wouldn’t normally have earned tenure in the Ivy League" [1]. [1] https://www.wsj.com/articles/claudine-gay-and-my-scholarship-plagiarism-elite-system-unearned-position-24e4a1b1 https://www.wsj.com/articles/claudine-gay-and-my-scholarship...
  - dekhn 3y ago
    I think the author of that WSJ article has a political motive that is greater than her academic discontent. Many of the people she plagiarized thought it was "OK" that she did so (not sure why).
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]