Plagiarism

[slyvermont]

A Harvard student got a book contract and wrote a novel about a high school student who is trying to figure out how to be accepted into Harvard. It turns out she plagiarized numerous sections from other books. She claims it was “unintentional plagiarism” because she has a photographic memory. Her publisher has withdrawn the book from stores.

As a

Comments

[jedishampoo]

I don’t have a photographic memory, and can’t regurgitate anything word-for-word (even my own writing - if my computer crashes in the middle of something I’ve written, I have to start from scratch). So it’s hard for me to understand the situation she claims, although I suppose it’s feasible. Certainly if scenario one is the case she deserves the worst.Scenario one: Definitely worth the punishment

[slyvermont]

Accepting praise for something you've stolen is definitely the bottom of the bottom. I'm sure they have some rationalization for what they've done, although I can't imagine what.

I think a lot of plagiarism happens by people who are cutting corners, in a time crunch, panicked about getting a good grade.

Now in this case, while the sections are clearly copied, she also changed one or two words -- which to me is suspicious. In one example, instead of Psych class it became Human Evolution class. That shows some thinking going on.

[hlynn]

My gut reaction after seeing the examples side by side is that it was intentional. A photographic memory would mean the passages would be verbatim, not altered. And I find it hard to believe that someone with such a memory couldn't tell the difference between their work and someone else's. I personally think she read the books, liked the passages in question, then decided to mildly reword it for her own story. It's the same sort of thing that happens with students writing term papers--take a source and rewrite it so it's not an exact copy.

As for fan fiction, it can be a pretty big problem in big fandoms. The most common infraction is when someone takes an entire story and puts their name on it--because the fandom is so large, it might go undetected for weeks or months. Other times, people will lift entire pages or paragraphs into a story. I've seen the same thing happen in fanart, too.

[slyvermont]

I shouldn't be surprised that plagiarism happens in fan fic -- why should it be any different than any other part of life. I'd just never heard anyone talk about it. Is there vetting that happens on some of the larger sites where someone tries to catch plagiarized stories? Google is a wonderful resource to catch plagiarists. I would also imagine that some writers lift things from commercial fiction as well.

[archerrat]

Okay. According to her story, she has a photograhic memory that caused here to unknowingly and unintentionally plagiarize other work for her novel.

She's a Harvard student. I'm assuming, simply based on statistical probability, that she wasn't home-educated for twelve years. In those years, particularly in the last three or four, she has probably written scores of essays. So I ask:

Did her photographic unconscious plagiarism never occur with those assignments? If not, why not?

Does her photographic memory only work with fiction? Seems unlikely... Or did it occur during her high school years, and she somehow never got caught?

If she got into Harvard, I'm assuming that she didn't spend her entire high school career with bottom-of-the-barrel teachers, and a majority of teachers I've spoken to over the years (on the subject of plagiarism), especially those with AP classes, themselves use the internet to search for catch phrases that might point to plagiarism on the part of their students.

My conclusion is that either she didn't

[slyvermont]

While she was in HS, she was an intern for the Bergen Record newspaper. They are now going to check all her stories for plagiarism.

I agree that someone who cuts corners like this most likely does not do it just once. It wouldn't surprise me at all to learn that she cheated as a student in HS, even on her college applications. What intrigued me about her case was her argument for it being unintentional. I agree it is fishy that she wouldn't have encountered this problem before and figured out how to prevent her photographic memory from causing her to plagiarize every assignment she does.

And as it turns out, there's actually a scientific name for unconscious plagiarism -- cryptomnesia -- and here's an article that talks about it -- www.apa.org/monitor/feb02/glitch.html.