Guilt Determined by Robots

A student found guilty of plagiarism by a school’s review board is left with feelings of frustration, stress and dissatisfaction. Even if computer forensic evidence shows they never went to the alleged site they are accused of plagiarizing from, they are still found guilty by incompetent individuals who suffer from incompetency.

This past week, the University of Phoenix found a student guilty of plagiarism based on a false result from TurnItIn software. The student was not allowed a fair trial with adequate legal representation, which is a direct violation of the United States Constitution. The accused student was allowed to speak for five minutes before three people – an IT person representing the school, a student advisor representing the school and a moderator – compensated for their time by the school (either financially or with experience on their resumes). These three highly biased individuals essentially represented judge and jury and rendered a decision based on the result of a computer software product over the word of the student. Despite computer forensic evidence to the contrary, the false positive data result compared to their own database holdings was enough to condemn the student. These three representatives of the school didn't even consider that the software, itself, could have had a glitch in the system; instead they just sided with the software and found the student guilty as charged by an incompetent instructor. Remember these holdings were obtained and retained within the TurnItIn database without the full permission or consent of the originator of the original work, when you consider that the program circumvents copyright law by stripping the author name for the company’s own financial gain and use.

The charge is upheld and these actions were found to be in violation of the Student Code of

Academic Integrity Article(s):

a. Plagiarism - Intentional or unintentional representation of another's words or ideas as one's

own in an academic exercise.

The definition of plagiarism is as follows:

1. stealing somebody's work or idea: the process of copying another person's idea or written work and claiming it as original 

2. something plagiarized: a piece of written work or an idea that somebody has copied and claimed as his or her own

Plagiarism, for those who don't know or understand the definition of the word is simple - utilizing another person's published work without disregard to the other persons work. To claim that the English Language is owned by one person and can only be used by that same person is absolutely absurd. To accuse someone who comes to the same conclusion as another based on the same material, text and syllabus used and read by over 10,000 schools, each having a minimum of 1000 students in their school is preposterous. Lazy teachers and school administrators are branding their valued students with the proverbial flaming "P" way too often. And, for what purpose? To help a private company exceed in their efforts of branding more and more people with plagiarism based on their faulty software conclusion of stolen information contained within their own database. 

When a student is working on an assignment and in their final conclusion regurgitates the essence of the body of their work into a short summary of three or four sentences to bring the paper to a close, should they be flagged as a plagiarist for coming to the same conclusion as someone else before them?  It is absurd to assume the person flagrantly went out, found the same passage and said to themselves, "I'm going to use this line or that line" in my final paper.  Would they subject themselves to all sorts of frustration, stress and dishonor over a 200 word assignment? We hardly think they would be so stupid.

How can someone be accused of plagiarism when they never read another person's work? How could they have stolen an idea or written work, when they've never reviewed it, visited a site to which it is listed, or knew about said work?  In a case where computer forensic evidence proves the person being charged has never been to the alleged site, they are still found guilty based on the opinions of a biased panel unwilling to weigh the evidence properly.  Students beware! You may be found guilty no matter what you say, or whatever expense you lay out to have your computer checked out by a computer forensic expert. You will not be allowed legal representation – you must play by the rules of a corrupt power system who has already determined to take the word of their client’s software program over the testimony of the students they are supposed to be serving.

In this day in age of technology, schools such as University of Phoenix claim "These programs are designed to give honest students an opportunity to check their work prior to submission and before incidentally risking reprimands from higher-education officials."  So when a student uses the software and it produces a ‘Zero’ result, that student feels confident the paper is cleared to submit to their instructor. But when their instructor receives a different result using additional elements of the same system, where is the flaw? Not on the part of the student, because they received a zero percent on their so called 'originality report' produced by said software.

"Published reports show iParadigm LLC’s Turnitin.com software series is a favorite among many universities—from Harvard University to University of Phoenix." University of Phoenix writer Marissa Yaremich, (UOPX Writer Network) didn't do her homework properly before writing her article in 2010. The truth of the matter is, according to Harvard University, "In 2006, the FAS Instructional Computing Group conducted a pilot of Turnitin for one course.  Subsequently, the university decided not to subscribe."  What does that tell you Ms. Yaremich? Yaremich didn't do her investigation properly to verify her claims. Harvard University, the highest Ivy League College in America, neither uses this software nor would come close to consider it their ‘favorite.’ Yaremich didn't do her homework properly. The reports she quotes from claims TurnItIn is the cream of the crop in plagiarism software – was she not aware that most major colleges refused their software because of copyright infringements, and alleged theft of intellectual property? Was this journalistic negligence on her part? Or manipulative propaganda perpetuated by academia to substantiate their use of the software by helping this company to better advertise their services? The legal ramifications associated with this software far outweigh a student not understanding how to cite a source. Instructors need to learn to teach their courses and stop being lazy by using software to determine a person's credibility or honesty over their own relationships with their students.

Instructors would rather you believe information sponsored by a university who claims to be a legitimate accredited college, quoting from a report produced by the very program we have been exposing as commercial fraud for the last two weeks. It is as if the very nature of academia is to keep people in the dark, rather than expose bias reporting and claims that are only disseminated to help a for-profit company gain more clients. We have lost the mere notion of what is truth.

In order to help protect the copyright of your original creative work, now and in the future, if you are a student who attends any school, whether it be high school or college, especially if its University of Phoenix, make sure you have the following disclaimer on your paper before submitting it to your teacher:

Copyright (C) 2012, YOUR NAME.  Unlawful submission of this, or any paper produced, written and submitted by this author to the YOUR SCHOOL NAME, its instructors or representatives to the TurnItIn.com system will be subjected to legal action for copyright infringement.  It is by direction of legal counsel that I place this statement on all papers written by this author.

Invited co-author of this article, Sean McGowan is published author, a teacher of Civics and American History, as well as a Chaplain.

NEXT:  Zombie's With A Pen - Journalistic Integrity Lost

Tricks and Illusions - False Advertising To Produce Sales (Part 3)

‘Have I got a deal for you. You don’t want to be left out in the cold. If you miss the boat on this, who would want to go to your school? You would be a laughingstock. Everybody’s doing it. Ok, maybe not everybody, but a whole heap of people. Thousands have tried it. Most have stuck with it. And many are unaware of the dangers to themselves or their students. But let’s not worry about danger now. This is education! What could possibly go wrong? Who would want to try to hurt you or your students?’

Best in False Advertising

More than 3,500 higher education institutions use Turnitin, including 69 percent of the top 100 colleges and universities in the U.S. News and World Report Best Colleges list. -TurnItIn.com

Don’t you want to be part of the top 69%? At least, the above statistic leads you to assume that the top 31% did not blatantly reject the greatest anti-plagiarism web service known to man. Or did they? What about the Ivy League schools? Would you imagine Harvard and Princeton to be among the top 10% of the “best colleges”? In many years, they make up #1 and #2. So wouldn’t it be a great way to sell your service if one or both used and publicized your product?

“As far as we know, there is no current subscription to any plagiarism detection software at Harvard.  In 2006, the FAS Instructional Computing Group conducted a pilot of Turnitin for one course.  Subsequently, the university decided not to subscribe.” –Harvard Library, Ask a Librarian website

The truth remains: Harvard did a pilot of anti-plagiarism software, and decided not to sign a contract. Princeton, Yale and Stanford also have chosen their internal honor codes over an external database run by a private company. However, TurnItIn has grown to a meteoric rise in educational partnership thanks to standing on the shoulders of the integrity of past clients. The most famous example is the use of Harvard University in marketing slogans, either formally or informally. “Used by Harvard” is often the only explanation given over multiple years of promotional material, despite the truth of the limited test sample. And even Duke University, which is mentioned in many articles regarding the software, seems to have spent more time studying the effects of anti-plagiarism websites than subjecting their students to them. But the desired effects are astronomical. Even if Harvard were to refute the inclusion claims, 1000's of contracts have already been signed on their supposed endorsement:

Close to 6,500 secondary institutions worldwide now use Turnitin, including 56 percent of the top 100 high schools listed on U.S. News and World Report's America's Best High Schools. –TurnItIn.com

(Each Ivy League University realized the legal implications and recognized the red flags surrounding the use of such a software. How easy the database stripped a student of their intellectual property by stripping them of their copyright under the U.S. Constitution. Potential for their school to be placed in unwanted litigation. How easily the system could be breached, whereby putting their students at risk for identity theft, and cyber-stalking.)

Principals, board members, deans, academic facilitators – all strive to be the best educational institution around. Even when not in direct competition, the struggle to get ahead and stay ahead breeds interest in all types of pilot programs and new methodology. But the use of TurnItIn also breeds exposure of an undesired kind, as everyone wants to be known for curtailing cheating, but no one wants to be known as a hotbed for cheaters. Increased reliance on TurnItIn could garner unwanted media attention as more false positives are acquired as students lean more and more on internet access and ease of copying than relying on writing and researching skills that are currently disappearing from the daily lexicon. Schools may be breeding distrust in their students, and in turn the students may be finding better ways to beat the system. And education suffers. When honor is removed for convenience and human investigation replaced with cyber-policing, the gap widens between the teachers and students in the areas of trust and greater educational accountability. After all, the teachers are no longer detecting incorrect assignments – they have a computer do the dirty work for them.

The ‘Harvard Guide to Using sources’ warns of two types of plagiarism: intentional and unintentional. As evidenced above, there will always be students trying to beat the system, and the inclusion of anti-plagiarism software only means there are different tricks to try in avoiding detection. Just as the experienced cat burglar will find away to avoid the invisible laser security system, the experienced cheaters will find ways to thwart the database protocols. In this scenario, there is little that a computer system can do to completely eliminate all instances of cheating. Instilling honor among all students seems the best way to encourage discipline and discourage abuse.

But what about ‘unintended plagiarism’?

You know the scenario: You’ve been working on your paper all semester. You seemingly have a thousand sticky notes littering your desk from the multitude of books, essays, and internet sites you have read in preparation for your work. You are frantically searching for that one thought to end all thoughts – the final quote to drive the whole paper home. And there it is, right in the middle of your desk, staring at you this whole time incredulously like the star athlete that somehow gets picked last in the neighborhood game. You plug that glorious sentence in and submit the paper, satisfied that you have reached the conclusion of a long process. But then the unthinkable happens. That wasn’t an original thought, but something you pulled from your library musings. You forgot to cite the source in your notes, and passed off someone else’s thought as your own. Albeit in a fit of nervous fatigue, but still you are guilty of the crime. How could you? Don’t you care about the honor code? What will your parents think? Your friends? You can kiss that academic internship goodbye. And good luck moving on with your education, or cashing in on those business contacts that your professor had promised to deliver your way.

How does TurnItIn distinguish between the above two scenarios? Quite simply, it doesn’t. It doesn’t care if the student was malicious or messy, underhanded or exhausted. As long as the algorithm tripped a positive result, the job here is done and they move on, happy to have thwarted yet another miscreant on the road to academic perfection. There is no suspicion of innocence, no benefit of the doubt given to the student. The almighty program has spoken, and another career bites the dust. And the positive example of cheaters caught substantiates future use by future clients, who equally wish to lay a heavy hand on those who cheat for the sake of the masses who just want to learn. But what do we really learn through this exercise?

Beware of the Optical Illusion of false advertising

Harvard and Princeton have their own methods of curtailing cheating: honor and knowledge. First, students are encouraged to embrace the honor code. Students should think of themselves as higher entities that represent their families, communities and university well. Second, they are encouraged to know how to avoid common pitfalls that lead many to plagiarize. Avoid procrastination. Cite all sources at every step of the research project. Cite thoughts that are paraphrased and synthesized into your own work. In order to produce the best work, you must examine multiple sources of information and consider many perspectives that came before you. Do so honorably. Turn in knowledgeable, well constructed work. Be careful and consistent in your research. Allow your integrity to guide the note-taking process, and it will naturally shine through in the end product. For many universities, holding students to a higher standard is a more effective measure of combating cheating than any distant database could ever hope to instill.

The ultimate problem is that the use of false advertising by TurnItIn is just the sort of thing its website claims to rid the world of. Whether intentionally or unintentionally, TurnItIn supports the narrative that the best educational institutions employ its services, no matter how minor or short lived their involvement. The numbers touted on the website are instantly suspect. Do former clients count? Are schools included only if more than 50% of teachers mandate usage? Or is 1% enough to warrant inclusion in marketing schemes? iParadigms seems to be on a crusade against faulty submission of written work. But false or misleading claims for the sake of advertising are acceptable and promoted, if it helps spread the use of a program that only desires to save the world from evil. It’s time for TurnItIn to turn itself in to the moral standards it claims to uphold. And that scrutiny of a moral standard can begin by examining the processes used to determine a positive case of plagiarism.

Invited co-author of this article, Sean McGowan is published author, a teacher of Civics and American History, as well as a Chaplain.

Part 4: Dummy Science and FuzzyLogic