Why Plagiarism Matters
Universities and colleges must stop covering up cases of academic dishonesty committed by current and former P.h.D. candidates.
How do we know what we think we know? Where do facts come from? How do fact-checkers determine what facts are facts? For almost a thousand years civilization has relied on Doctors of Philosophy to produce scholarship on every imaginable topic.1 Given the fact that our laws and public policies are often based on their scholarship it is vital that these experts be held to the highest academic standards. In the event that an institution of higher learning determines that a current or past P.h.D. candidate is guilty of ‘material plagerism’2 or fabrication of evidence, that finding should be made available to the public. Policymakers, journalists, and the general public have a vested interest in their past, current, and future scholarship.
For example, in the early 1900s, John Augustine Ryan wrote his dissertation about a concept he called a ‘living wage’ and his scholarship resulted in the adoption of the minimum wage in America.3 Alan Turing’s dissertation formed the basis for modern computing and was instrumental in the defeat of Nazi Germany in the 40s. Rebecca Mercuri’s dissertation revolutionized ballot security and the method she proposed for voter-verified paper ballots has been adopted globally.4 The credibility of these scholars was vital to the acceptance and implementation of their scholarship.
Each year American universities award +/- 55,000 new P.h.Ds to scholars who dedicate six to eight years of rigorous, extensive, and original research to become an ‘expert’ in a particular field. Upon completion of their full-time multi-year research effort, these scholars must complete a written dissertation or thesis ranging from 200 pages for quantitative research papers to 400 pages for qualitative papers and represent the capstone of their scholarly efforts. Before their university will recognize their efforts the scholar must defend their thesis in front of a panel of examiners and only after successfully doing so will they confer a Doctor of Philosophy or Ph.D.5
With the advent of ProQuest6 and other digital repositories for dissertations more and more cases of plagiarism and academic dishonesty are coming to light. Almost fifty years after Martin Luther King Jr. was awarded his P.h.D. Boston University determined that he had relied on plagiarism throughout his academic career including most shockingly in his dissertation. For example, Dr. King’s introduction was copied verbatim from an article by Walter Marshall Horton. Ultimately the school decided to include a note in Dr. King’s dissertation detailing his academic dishonesty but took no further action against the civil rights leader who has died years earlier.7
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