Oddbean new post about login | logout Nostr - what are your thoughts on plagiarism? Real crime or fiat practice?
misattribution is in the same category as a false accusation
Sorry, what does that mean?
if you say "this person killed that person" that is a misattribution if it's not true, that's a false accusation if you say "something something something" and actually you copied a whole paragraph or more of that text from someone else it's not your own work and you are effectively claiming responsibility for this statement it can be verified that you didn't say it first, and you copied so much, and the whole point is that you are marketing yourself in some way based on this, it's false advertising, it's not you, you are just as retarded as a photocopier in this act that you should be outed for trying to ride on someone else's work to gain a reputation you don't deserve
Copy one person it’s plagiarism, copy a hundred it’s research Sums it up for me , information wants to spread freely
I appreciate the practice of crediting work in the same way I think you should tip a server who does a good job. I'm currently doing a course where they are essentially saying plagiarism is a thought crime and that you should google search main points in your paper for comparable work that might have "subconsciously inspired you". Which seems absurd.
claiming credit for literal words of others is fraud it's not a thought crime, it's fraud, it's claiming credit for something you didn't do it's the opposite of a false accusation and it should be considered to be as serious, it's a similar thing as the "stolen valor" law about not being legal to pretend to be an officer of some official title, same thing, i wrote this, i am this, he is that (but isn't) all of these are lies with serious consequences
Where do you personally draw the line between taking someone else's ideas and directly copying their work? In all honesty, it's very rare you see a legitimately novel idea these days.
when it gets to much more than a paragraph of verbatim text, or 95% identical paragraph or more i think that should be obvious, it's not just one statement, it's a line of reasoning that is being repeated without reparsing and taking credit for it in the header of the document
Thank you for the clarification, that makes sense. It's crazy how much direct copying there is at high levels of academia. You'd think they'd be paid enough to at least mix the words and add a source.
Crediting is important and the cool thing to do but I don’t think it’s a crime if you don’t Pretty much everything we think & say is copied from others
there's a big difference between "copying is fine" and "pretending to be the original author"
I agree I should’ve acknowledged this point
it's not about the copying of information it's about the attribution of the source if you claim you are the source and you are not, you are trying to steal the reputation of the real source
And you sooner or later get busted when you do so.
Either way your thoughts get further reach. Why would you care? (You can usually prove that you're the author)