Application 1: Plagiarism

What is plagiarism exactly? Is it a matter of changing around words or substituting some words for others? The rules related to plagiarism actually are quite complex, and there are instances in which people who have unwittingly plagiarized have ended up in court. The concept of academic integrity includes the avoidance of plagiarism. To avoid plagiarism, it helps to first recognize it. In this assignment, you will analyze a passage that includes plagiarism and make suggestions for how to revise parts of the passage so that it avoids plagiarism.

To prepare for this assignment:

- Review the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (6th ed.), Section 1.10, "Plagiarism and Self-Plagiarism" (pp. 15-16).

- Think about what you have learned about academic integrity from the university website.

- Read the original passage below, which was excerpted from the following source: Crossen, C. (1994). Tainted: The manipulation of fact in America. New York: Touchstone, pp. 166-167. "Doctors, whose first allegiance is supposed to be to their patients, have traditionally stood between drug company researchers and trusting consumers. Yet unless there is evidence of misconduct (the deliberate misrepresentation of something as fact by someone who knows it is not), it is very difficult to discover and virtually impossible to prove that a piece of biomedical research has been tainted by conflict of interest. No study is perfect, and problems arise in the labs of even the most  conscientious and honest researchers. Although biomedical research incorporates rigorous scientific rules and is often critically scrutinized by peers, the information can nevertheless be warped- by ending a study because the results are disappointing; changing rules mid-study; not trying to publish negative results; publicizing preliminary results even with final and less positive results in hand; skimming over or even not acknowledging drawbacks; and, especially, casting the results in the best light or, as scientists say, buffing them."

- Next, read the following passage, which was written by a student who wants to use this source in a paper and is trying not to plagiarize.

Analyze the student's work for plagiarism:

Consumers must trust that the research that has gone into the manufacture of new drugs is safe. But it is hard to know if a conflict of interest between doctors, researchers, and the drug company stockholders has tainted the results. Biomedical researchers incorporate strict rules of science into their work, which is examined by peers. Yet the resulting information can be warped for five reasons: ending a study too soon, not publishing negative results, publishing results too early, skimming over or ignoring drawbacks, and "buffing" the results by showing them in the best light (Crossen, 1994, p. 167).

The assignment: Identify and be prepared to discuss the following

- Decide and describe the extent to which the student has plagiarized the original source. (Hint: The student has plagiarized.)

- Choose two sentences from the passage that you think are clearly plagiarized, and either rephrase them in your own words or use quotation marks and a standard APA in-text citation to show that you're quoting the original sentences word for word.

- Explain how you can recognize plagiarism.

- Explain ways in which you can avoid plagiarism in your own writing.

Application 2: Paraphrasing

Paraphrasing is an essential skill you will use throughout your Argosy program and professional career.

Paraphrasing, and correctly citing the original author for his or her ideas, allows you to take the ideas of others, summarize them, and incorporate them into your own thinking. When summarizing the ideas of others, it is important to paraphrase and to not plagiarize (copy the words and ideas of others as though they were your own); sometimes the difference is subtle.

To prepare for this assignment:

• Think about the sometimes subtle difference between plagiarizing and paraphrasing.

• Read the following paragraphs, which were written by Patricia O'Conner:

"A good writer is one you can read without breaking a sweat. If you want a workout, you don't lift a book-you lift weights. Yet we're brainwashed to believe that the more brilliant the writer, the tougher the going."

"The truth is that the reader is always right. Chances are, if something you're reading doesn't make sense, it's not your fault-it's the writer's. And if something you write doesn't get your point across, it's probably not the reader's fault-it's yours. Too many readers are intimidated and humbled by what they can't understand, and in some cases that's precisely the effect the writer is after. But confusion is not complexity; it's just confusion. A venerable tradition, dating back to the ancient Greek orators, teaches that if you don't know what you're talking about, just ratchet up the level of difficulty and no one will ever know."

"Don't confuse simplicity, though, with simplemindedness. A good writer can express an extremely complicated idea clearly and make the job look effortless. But such simplicity is a difficult thing to achieve because to be clear in your writing you have to be clear in your thinking.

This is why the simplest and clearest writing has the greatest power to delight, surprise, inform, and move the reader. You can't have this kind of shared understanding if writer and reader are in an adversary relationship." (pp. 195-196)

Source: O'Conner, P. (2003). Woe is I: The grammarphobe's guide to better English in plain English. New York: Riverhead Books.

The assignment:

• Paraphrase O'Conner's passages using no more than 75-100 words. Remember that paraphrasing means summarizing the essence of an original short text. It does not mean creating a thesaurus-like revision of the author's original words or copying the piece, or any part of it, word for word. For this assignment, do not use any direct quotes.