When I was in high school, in an English class unit on journalism, I learned how the United Press caught a competing news organization (Hearst, as I recall) fak

When I was in high school, in an English class unit on journalism, I learned how the United Press caught a competing news organization (Hearst, as I recall) faking stories about the eastern front in World War I. The United Press reporters inserted details about a Russian government official named Nelotsky in their news stories, and watched the statements about Nelotsky get copied into reports from the competing wire service. There was just one problem with Hearst's journalistic procedure: there wasn't any such Russian official. The name "Nelotsky" came from reversing the spelling of the English word "stolen" and adding a Russian-looking "ky" ending. http://www.law.uchicago.edu/files/files/246-dgb-uneasy-legacy.pdf http://www.law.uchicago.edu/files/files/246-dgb-uneasy-legac... http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F30D16FF3B5B11738DDDAC0A94D9405B888DF1D3 http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F30D16FF3B5B1... Similarly, in the 1990s I noticed that a popular page on my personal website was being copied diligently by a college student for his personal website. I inserted a fake entry, based on the Greek word for "steal." I also put a link at that entry leading to the copyright notice page on my personal website, which has a distinctive filename unique to my site. When the student copied the page again, I was able to show the site administrator of his site that the student had plainly violated the site user agreement at that academic institution, which specifically required students not to plagiarize for their postings on the university site. I didn't do a lot of public outing of that student--but you had better believe I still remember who he was. Teachers do well to teach students early and often to use their own noggins and to do their own writing, giving proper credit with correct citation form to sources they rely on. That's a better education than just letting students copy whatever they happen to see, without any analysis or thought at all.