We-think, I-think ... and Groupthink

one percent inspiration and 99 percent perspiration

The student said "she would have a great idea, but felt unable to guarantee that she wasn’t 'stealing' it."

Surly plagiarism is more concerned with people cut'n'pasting large parts of other people's work, not sharing the same ideas.

In the case of an essay the hard work is constructing the argument to support the idea, understanding the consequences of the idea and writing all this down concisely and readably. It doesn't matter if the idea is new or old, commonly held or unusual... ideas are cheap, its implementation that counts.

Everyone with any spare time comes up with hundreds of ideas for inventions, ways to improve the government, plots for books or TV shows... The silly part is then complaining that "I came up with it first" when someone else actually puts in the 99% effort to make something happen. Even if all they do is go though the pain of getting a patent.

We-Think, I-Organise

Ok, so we may not be able to have any new ideas in the modern world? Everything has been done already? Everything I could possibly think about has been thought about my someone else?

Theoretical eclecticism, and shared ideas across the globe certainly create an image of the individual being lost within a hive mind.

However, if you look at what "thinking" really is, there appears to be some light at the end of the tunnel.

Chaos is the paradox of order and disorder. Disorder is what exists outside of the mind, Order is what the mind does to filter the world into something it can make sense of.

One who structures ideas into an 'opinion' may chose their own facts, may use different ideas to the next person. Originality is no longer the "idea" it is in fact the "organisation" of information.

Plagerising is claiming an idea as your own.

Offering an opinion must include a disclaimer: "In my opinion...".

I root, therefore my children are.

Does it really matter if that student is suffering from typical student uncertainty? The human race will continue regardless, and that student will, in all likelihood, contribute to that continuation sooner or later.

oh get over yourself !

Navel-gazing angst just turns my stomach.

Subjective sciences have always relied on a certain amount of received wisdom, references and precedent to prove their cases.

If you don't like that environment switch to a purely empirical science based on laboratory experiment.

say something, anything.

I don't think you're saying anything except new technology means new ways for people to conform or not conform.

At least Colbert has a target with truthiness and Manjoo a point with "post-fact societies".

He thinks

The fact that Charles Leadbetter has produced this book - that _he_ is the author - rather neatly disproves his own assertion.

Or that's what I think anyway.

Coat? I never take it off.

somewhat related is ....

http://arxiv.org/abs/0803.4058

Crime and punishment in scientific research; Mathieu Bouville

Abstract: Arguments against scientific misconduct one finds in the literature generally fail to support current policies on research fraud: they may not prove wrong what is typically considered research misconduct and they tend to make wrong things that are not usually seen as scientific fraud, in particular honest errors. I argue that society cannot set a rule enjoining scientists to be honest, so any such rule can only be internal to science. Therefore society cannot legitimately enforce it. Moreover, until an argument is provided to prove that lack of honesty is far worse than lack of technical competence, intentional deceit should not be punished much more harshly than technical errors. Keywords: cheating; ethics; fabrication; falsification; integrity; plagiarism; research fraud; scientific misconduct.

Not so, Swift?

The bit about Descartes sounds like The Battle of the Books in _Tale of a Tub_.

The Herd Mentality

I've been teaching college students in various capacities for nearly 2 decades. One thing has not changed; very few of them are truly original, critical or creative thinkers. Out of laziness, apathy or simple lack or intellect, most of them want easy answers, lists of "facts" and "rules" they can apply.

This dynamic aids the process you describe.

"Wikidpedia" is both a symptom and cause also. Plagiarism is rampant there, yet at the same time there is a big taboo against "Original research" and a push to have every statement of every article inline cited.

Studies have shown less than 1% contribute anything substantial in terms or quality, well-written content to it. Most of the rest is added by plagiarists and parrots.

Wkipedia is good as an index of sources

Lookup in Wikipedia and find their sources and learn from those sources.

Then write what you learned quite properly quote wikipedia's sources.

Sam

Surely she'd find out when she did the research?

Bright Spark, great idea, woohoo! Now I'll go do some research on my great idea, after all, research is pretty integral to essay writing... Oh look! Someone else had the same idea - I'll reference that and build on it...

I'm sorry, but I *really* don't see what the problem is.

re: April Fool - I'm fed up of trying to tell which is fake and which is real today. Hell, if someone showed me flying penguins I'd prob... oh, wait a ... EGADS!

Another April Fool shurely

this one with the postmodern angle. Good old Reg.

It is not plagiarism to have/express/publish/propagate the same idea as someone else, but to pass it off as your own. Are HE institutions so dumbed down now that this idea can no longer be successfully inculcated into the great unwashed that the nu labour project is stuffing into them?

One idea doesn't of course make an argument, a scientific theory, or an engineering theory. But one idea added to an existing context can create something new, interesting, and useful, even if the idea has been around for thousands of years. Look at religion, sects and schisms. Look at the Top 20.

A pertinent case relates to songs. For a legal action for plagiarism to succeed it must be shown that the alleged plagiarist had the opportunity to hear the original work. Sometimes this test fails, as does the action, on the reasonable conclusion that both parties produced the same work at about the same time unbeknown to each other. It's because of this (and getting lots of legal suits from chancers) that Lloyd-Webber gave up listening to demos people sent him.

Got to test the marking system somehow

I can remember wondering just how objective was the marking scheme used by teachers - this was back in the days where there was no course work marks (though just by a hair), all 100% exam.

So, a short story was taken from one of the most prolific modern authors of the time (oxford bloke), and translated verbatim. Unfortunately, he only managed to squeak a b-. To this day I cannot be sure the teacher marking didn't twig, but the author's language style was quite simple so it may have passed undetected.

Anyway it just go to show that academia is a subjective business masquerading as something objective, quite the antithesis of knowledge. Everyone is a critic, and the cover of book most certainly appears to be the thing that people in the know judge.

Knowledge is built on and modified, there are only a few story lines, and very little is original. More effort was spent on analysing this little experiment, then would ever have been put into a paper. And a lot more knowledge was gained, then just touting out the normal template crude for marks.

There was a variation on the above which was; essay by thesaurus, where an old essay you had done before was just shifted thru a thesaurus, they could be a bit hit or bachelor girl though.

I have a friend in Minsk...

I hate to display any original thinking myself, but I suspect that very few people have ever actually had original thoughts, and that the students who are apparently afraid of 'thinking' in case they accidentally plagiarise someone else are highly unlikely to be the type of people who do come up with novel ideas anyway.

The truth is that widespread intellectual creativity and independence has never been seen as a good thing by our rulers. It's simply too dangerous to have millions of people constantly calling into question the ethical basis for the 'social contract', deciding that life is essentially meaningless, or concluding that democracy is really just a dictatorship working on the behalf of people who voted largely on the basis of who has the nicest smile or who gives them the biggest bank balance.

You see, a quick look back through history shows that the typical independently minded intellectual is arrogant, self-promoting and pretty certain that they are at least as clever and original as they actually are. There will always be strong social forces applied against thinking about new ideas, but there will always be creative individuals and groups having original thoughts because the creative people who change society are those who say 'I don't give a sh*t what you think, I know that I'm right and that you're an idiot.' A mild fear of accidental plagiarism isn't going to bother them. Anyway, originality is encouraged amongst the intellectual elite,; its just that most university students in the UK no longer fall into this bracket (esp those studying political science). Those students with some element of creativity usually either opt out of the rat-race altogether or end up in jobs where creativity means finding new ways of screwing over consumers.

If there is a dearth of useful creativity in society at the moment, then it is because we are mired in this awful post-modern, neoconservative, anti-realism rut where anyone (eg Richard Dawkins) who comes along with something important to say is mocked and ridiculed for his or her failure to understand just how socially harmful voicing well-argued unilateral thoughts is. "No, Richard, don't you realise it is wrong to criticise religious people for being deluded! If people choose to be deluded we should support them, not insist that adhering to reason may actually be a good thing!" Plagiarism isn’t the problem – it’s the ruthless tolerance for all ideas irrespective of their rational or empirical merit that has us tied up in mediocrity. Genuine creativity is drowned out by the chorus of idiots repeating their favourite dogmatic ideas about the value of religion or the importance of democratic freedom (tell that one to the Iraqi PM who just used our troops to bail himself out of a disastrous military campaign against his political rivals – you know the ones… the ‘militants’ who are going to receive more votes that the PM’s candidates in the forthcoming local ‘elections’).

Teachers all quote textbooks, why can't students?

The whole business is hypocritical. How many teachers are teaching their own original thoughts? And then they have the gall to insist that student work must be original!