Cyber Threat & Vulnerability: Part 5: Forced Plagiarism

"Drawing Hands"   

by M. C. Escher:"ESCHER on ESCHER Exploring the Infinite", 

p. 59 Published in 1989 by HARRY N. ABRAMS, INC., New York

Academia has a quandary. How does it effectively discourage plagiarism without discouraging effective inquiry and original thought? Are students frightened into believing that their professors are working against them when it comes to the efforts employed in regulating scholarly writing? Anti-plagiarism websites have grown in popularity and usage in recent years, from ‘college-bound’ high school curriculum to universities – the hopeful breeding ground of new ideas and concepts. But is the practice of intellectual scrutiny inhibiting intellectual exploration?

“Because of this program, the vast majority of you who do your own work and cite your sources of information properly will not have to compete with students who commit undetected plagiarism.” –Tom Fleming, University of Arizona coordinator for TurnItIn 

There are two inherent flaws with the approach above. First, there is the implication of competition within a system of accepting original thought. Secondly, Mr. Fleming fails to warn students that all creative works submitted to Turnitin will be placed in a database that will ultimately strip them of their copyright protection of their original creative work.

There is a third major flaw within Mr. Fleming's message to the University of Arizona faculty, one that implicates them in abdicating their proper authority to encourage student growth. He instructs the faculty to include the following statement in their syllabus:

"If you decide to take and continue in this course, you are agreeing to submit your papers online, when so instructed, to a plagiarism-prevention program called TurnItIn.com." - Tom Fleming

This one statement is an implied threat to every student who is required to take certain courses to finalize their degree. Instead of giving a student the option to use said software, they are demanding it as if it were the quintessential programs to stop plagiarism. The veiled threats and underhanded collection of intellectual assets must be stopped. 

Academia should encourage students to explore and expand their own horizons of learning, not worry about what the next student is producing. Colleges and universities should be sowing seeds of individual perspective on multiple streams of inquiry. The implication of competition assumes that all will eventually realize the same stream or pattern of thinking, that which is already fully realized by the professor and detailed in the course syllabus. A syllabus that guides areas of thought, cited resources, and supposed length will ultimately breed conformity of thought, which will ultimately be picked up by the algorithmic software as a plagiarism flag. The professor no longer encourages individual thought, but a group consensus on the handling of a particular issue. However, when the ultimate goal is consensus, the patterned thought of selecting some perspectives and rejecting others breeds unilateral agreement, or the same conclusion given by multiple hosts – which by definition is plagiarism. So the patterned syllabi encourage plagiarism of thought but hope to somehow sift and select those who plagiarize in words? Why is this celebrated in academia? It appears that science has infiltrated the humanities. The goal of the professor is to replicate the patterned thought to validate his perspective. When the syllabus is organized in such a way as to encourage specific steps of learning and limit perspectives, it becomes a self-fulfilling paradox of unoriginal thought.

“However, it is respectfully submitted that the operative fact is not whether the Turnitin system is foolproof, but whether it is contrary to the public interest because it actually encourages plagiarism.” –Appellants Petition for Rehearing, Robert Vanderhye, Esquire 

David E Harrington, in an article for the Economist, thinks the use of such software deters teachers from looking for plagiarism, thinking it will naturally be picked up by other sources. For the student who lacks literary skills, the professor has already determined to abandon them to an unfeeling, unwavering courtroom of computer opinion – one where the student is guilty until proven innocent. Just as Mike Smit objects to the presumption of guilt, the under skilled student has no recourse for their own lack, even though the public university is the very place that should be designed to help that student improve in all intellectual areas. Instead, that student is hung out to dry, left as collateral damage along the pathway to better academic conformity. Since when did the university become all about universal thinking?

Why is it so important that the professor not abdicate his role as reviewer? Look to another cultural example: How well has spell-check increased grammatical accuracy in the vernacular? Writers and bloggers no longer review their own work for error – that’s the job of the computer program (in this case, spell-check). It’s a way of using unproven science to shirk responsibility and lighten our workload. And it produces the very opposite of what it is intended to grow: an absence of original thought.

What is wrong with the use of the scientific method here? There is no ‘control’.  There is no group of students who examine the same coursework and subject matter within a world where only the teacher is the ultimate judge of plagiarism. The honor code could be doing more to instill academic integrity and discourage plagiarism, but the college that enforces all students to submit work to TurnItIn has eliminated the control of that variable. When you eliminate the possibility of a control group coming to similar conclusions from varied sources, you undermine the scientific method. This undermining is seen as desirable, for what humanities professor wants to guide the patterns of student thought based on science? Yet the use of data driven solutions to a very real problem means that science has already forced its way in. Therefore, science in its entirety should be enforced to protect the rationality of the experiment.

The idea that we should be of one thought and one mind is not a synthesis of ideas, but a guided meditation on ideas already constructed. This is not freedom of thought, this is tyranny in the mental sphere. If students who offer varied perspective to the discussion are not welcomed, the result is a shared mind not unlike zombies. The professor is doing the thinking for you. The point you need to arrive at has already been scripted out. And the plagiarism software is a way of hiding the overall goal of patterned thinking by masking the universal thought with uncommon phrasing. All must arrive at the same point, but with different styles and approaches.

We quickly embrace what we can do that we don’t stop to think of what we should do. The response by the University of Arizona was to add a legal disclaimer to classes, rather than to examine the implications of whether they want to be tied to the controversial software and copyright infringement implications. Does an institute of higher education wish to purport the ideal that all student work is an extension of the university’s intellectual property? This is different from the private sector, or is it? Patents in the private sector fall back on the company that provided the research space, collaborative environment, and raw data that support the creative thought. Should every university, as part of admission requirements, stipulate that no intellectual property is totally belonging to the student? What about doctoral theses? A doctoral student has full rights to the usage of their intellectual property, as long as the doctoral board does not cut corners and hire a software algorithm to do the hard work for them? And would this policy attract the best and brightest? Or repel them?

“Ultimately, I want a policy that respects students, respects our intellectual copyright, and respects that many of us work hard at university.” – Mike Smit 

Students should be reassured that they will retain rights to the original and creative work. But could they also benefit from the future use of their work within a database created to catch plagiarists? How would it work to give money to those authors who submit to TurnItIn for copyrights? Each time a plagiarized work gets flagged, a few pennies go to the original author as a sort of ‘thank you’ for giving their work to TurnItIn? What about the pure coincidence factor? Where a work is not actually plagiarized, but closely correlates to a newly submitted work? And then there is potential for manipulation, where authors wishing to make a profit turn in multiple sources of work, only so future writings will be flagged and the author compensated for contributing to catching a plagiarizer – even the very same author himself? The software has not proven to be free from manipulation, either from the real plagiarists who wish to skirt the system (and will find ways how), and the self-interest of the user who simply wants another forum for their budding body of work. What about those who have already breached the system, and access previously submitted work to the database and submit it to various cheat sites for money? Isn't that considered as theft and plagiarism within a system that makes no promises to protect original work? TurnItIn is not encouraging original thought within the system it has devised. So it begs the question, are schools who use TurnItIn getting what they pay for?

The Dummy Science of TurnItIn – (Part 4)

The Dummy Science of TurnItIn – (Part 4)

Every day a student, the aspiring writer, creates a piece of prose, a short story or even a simple poem, and turns it in for a grade to a teacher. Unfortunately, in many schools around the world, they are forced to first submit their copyrighted work to a system that is supposed to ensure they did not steal it from another student. Teachers who utilize TurnItIn software do so at the peril of their students’ intellectual property rights. Yes, plagiarism is a problem in our world, but whose fault is it anyway, the writer or the educational environment?

In today's world we have advanced technology that is supposed to be more sophisticated and more advanced than the 1970s and 80s technology that we once used. TurnItIn software claims to be using advanced technology to show if a student has plagiarized another writer's work. Unfortunately, this software is not using advanced technology in their algorithm – instead, they are using old technology called "Fuzzy Logic".

What is "Fuzzy Logic" technology and how does it work?  Fuzzy Logic derives from

the Possibility theory which is an uncertainty theory devoted to the handling of incomplete information.  As such, it complements probability theory. It differs from the latter by the use of a pair of dual set-functions (possibility and necessity measures) instead of only one. This feature makes it easier to capture partial ignorance"(Dubois, Nguyen and Prade, 2000). 

For example, type in any word in Google, Bing, Yahoo, or any other internet search engine and hit enter: your internet provider will produce millions of like-minded documents with that one word contained in those documents. Every search engine uses "Fuzzy Logic" technology to return like-minded words. This is the same archaic technology being used by TurnItIn software, with one exception: they are comparing a student's work with the entire Internet and returning a false positive result. This in turn creates confusion on the student’s part because they know they just created their prose, yet TurnItIn claims they stole a majority of it from another student. What is the end result? A talented and creative student is charged with plagiarism – even by a once favorite teacher.

When we allow old technology to rule the classroom and destroy the creative juices of our students, we have failed those students. The caring teacher who is actively engaged in the improvement of his or her students has just lost their student to depression, isolation and a potentially time-consuming scandal. Teachers are often overwhelmed with workloads meant for three or four teachers, so they use programs like TurnItIn in order to reduce their exposure. But in abdicating their oversight, those who really suffer are the students.

To use such a software at the expense of a child's creativity, is a slap in the face of the educational system that exists to encourage a child to rise above their circumstances, improve beyond their means, and truly reach for the highest heights through realization of their academic skill. These imposing tools are a simple shortcut that neither helps the individual student, nor the classroom environment at large. It merely represents an area defined by a few self-interested cowards who have damaged the integrity of student work for the majority of responsible scholars. We all know that plagiarism hurts effective teaching and learning, and ultimately destroys aspiring students from trying in a system that has burned them in the past.

But it begs the question: Just how big of a problem is plagiarism? Is it something that everybody does to some degree – some just more skilled and deliberate than others? Are we talking of a disease of pandemic proportions, a veritable academic plague that everyone suffers from at least partial symptoms? Or is it just a secret sin that affects only a small percentage of students?

Of 56,611 undergraduates surveyed in a 2005 study by Duke University's Center for Academic Integrity, 37 percent admitted copying Internet material without attribution, compared with 10 percent in 1999. –Emily Sachar 

Plagiarism is a problem. But is it not the responsibility of the teacher to teach the right way to cite a copied material, versus accusing a student of plagiarism? Is it not the teacher’s job to point out mistakes in the classroom where the student can learn from their mistakes in a safe environment? Instead of teaching, many instructors take the word of a piece of software over doing their job properly. They neglect teaching students effective writing skills, which includes proper citations of others’ work. Isn’t that part of the college experience: growing, learning as well as teaching proper referencing?

TurnItIn software proponents admit their software benefits at best, “the vast majority.” But a further viewing of the Duke University study shows the vast majority of students cheat in some manner. So is the system helping to turn the tide of student cheating simply by its use? That is what TurnItIn would want you to believe. Yet their methods of detection are suspect at best, and libelous at worst.

In a plea to his university, Mike Smit encourages those who make the decisions to take a closer look at TurnItIn and its implications.

“I doubt the service's efficacy. In a series of test submissions, I found that even very, very minor alterations to text copied from a paper known to be in the database were sufficient to trick the system. TurnItIn.com has known properties. If it is so easily fooled, it loses both its deterrent value and its inherent value.” –Mike Smit [TurnItIn.com at Dalhousie - An Open Letter]

Smit goes on to state how a writer who publishes his own weblog, assuming that TurnItIn adds this internet content to its database, could end up plagiarizing themselves by testing positive for expanding on their own work! Since each entry in the TurnItIn database is allegedly stripped of authorship, a published author taking a university course could end up being flagged for using selections from their own published work.  “In this world of blogging and instant online publishing, it may be more common than you think.” [Smit] 

David E. Harrington goes further by conducting his own test:

I wanted to test TurnItIn but needed a suspicious manuscript. I had one in my hands—Shoplifting: A Social History. I suspected Kerry Segrave of plagiarism when I heard echoes of his book while reading New York Times articles he cites. He cites a lot of them—35 in the first 14 pages! To investigate my suspicions, I created a document containing the 14 pages stripped of direct quotations and another one containing the New York Times articles. I began by searching for identical phrases (of at least 6 words) in the two documents using the open source software Copyfind, which highlighted the matches it found in each document and produced the metric that 15 percent of the early pages of Shoplifting were taken verbatim from the New York Times. – David Harrington, the Economist 

But this 15% positive test did not tell the whole story:

This measure captures only the most flagrant form of plagiarism, where passages are copied from one document and pasted unchanged into another.  Just as shoplifters slip the goods they steal under coats or into pocketbooks, most plagiarists tinker with the passages they copy before claiming them as their own.  In other words, they cloak their thefts by scrambling the passages and right-clicking on words to find synonyms.  This isn’t writing; it is copying, cloaking and pasting; and it’s plagiarism. –[Harrington, same source]

Harrington notes that scrambling words, paraphrasing sentences, and re-wording by using an in-program thesaurus are ways to avoid honest detection of dishonest practices. After further analysis, he discovers that almost 33% of the work is actually plagiarized by the use of order changes and synonyms from the original articles cited. He even reached out to the TurnItIn support team, but was told the lack of subscriptions to certain online publications negated the full reach of their software. What good is a system that cannot access all works with potential to be plagiarized? The sample size of the database is not nearly extensive enough to fully protect the educational institution from unoriginal work.

In this case, knowledge of the methods used may be inherent to the problem.

By noting the use of certain software detection methods, are colleges merely informing the real cheaters of the tricks they’ll need to employ to avoid discovery? And do the law-abiding students really suffer without adequate restraint on the part of the law-breakers? If these cheaters are going to find ways to cheat regardless of software used, is the benefit of not competing with these cheaters lost in the wash? Leaving the well-meaning students with an intrusive and accusatory device that might trip them up at the expense of their time, money, and academic integrity?

What happens to the minority of users who do not intend to cheat yet must spend hours trying to revise and reword their original work simply because a piece of software warns them of potential plagiarism? What happens to the well-meaning student who lacks the skills necessary to synthesize the guided thoughts of others in producing a truly original work? TurnItIn only favors those who conform to its mold of academic inquiry. Its effectiveness has not been fully investigated. And its reach may not cover all possible sources of plagiaristic work.

 “According to iParadigms the only option available to a student no matter what iParadigms does to the student (including selling his or her personal information to spammers, criminals, or a “paper mill”) is to stop using the site.  In return for this it seems that neither the teachers nor students are guaranteed that the site will even work at all, or that information they submit to the site will not be stolen by hackers (see “Warranty Disclaimer” section).” –Fairfax County Public School Principal’s letter  

Those who are concerned about the security implications and intellectual abuses of this software are left with little to no recourse. They may file complaints or lawsuits, but at their own risk and expense. Per the contracts with educational institutions, TurnItIn is not even financially liable to cover the expense of the schools in such lawsuits. The legal cowardice and dummy science has to end. TurnItIn owes much more to an academic world that is increasingly trusting their company and their database to help their clients produce better scholars. And the security implications do not disappear for the dissatisfied, as their only legal recourse is to excuse themselves from future use of the software – their past submissions already deemed the legal property of the database. And these past submissions may expose the student’s information should the database ever be hacked. At best, TurnItIn leaves past, present and future clients exposed.

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

Part 4B:  Academia Plagiarizes its Students