iThenticate Blog

In most industries, problems start at the highest corporate level and trickle downstream to the lower levels of a company. Corporate and legal regulations are purposefully enforced to prevent problems from going upstream – starting with a low level worker and then going on to affect management, executives and investors. These measures are in place so that a company’s organizational hierarchy doesn’t collapse at the drop of a dime.

Research misconduct can cause damage in many ways. Institutions, publishers and patients can all be affected by the misconduct of a single researcher. A recent case that involves a researcher at Duke University could go down in history as one of the biggest medical research frauds ever.

The Journal Register Company recently took on plagiarism at one of its Connecticut publications in a very unique way. After two incidents of plagiarism in a time span of three months, the editor of the Journal Register’s Connecticut papers, Matt DeRienzo, decided to utilize an evaluation technique employed in middle schools across the country: a pop quiz.

You’d think that when you’re buying from a company as prestigious as Amazon that you could avoid plagiarism, but unfortunately, the theft of intellectual property and manuscripts rears its ugly head even in the most legitimate business circles. When buying reading material for your Kindle, you might be getting the real deal from a genuine author, or you could be getting a pirated version that someone else downloaded, copied, and repackaged.

Earlier this month Hungarian President Pal Schmitt was accused of plagiarizing his 1992 doctoral thesis. The controversary has heated up as several hundred demonstrators gathered on Saturday calling for his resignation, and claiming he is unfit to be in office.

According to HVG, 180 pages of Schmitt’s 215 page thesis was a "word-for-word translation" of a text written in French by Bulgarian sports historian and diplomat, Nikolai Georgiev (now deceased), who reportedly collaborated on research projects with Schmitt in the 1980s at Budapest Sports University.

President Pal Schmitt has rejected charges of plagiarism. According to Politics.hu, he said that “the paper had been based on primary data, using 21 source materials altogether... the basic material he drew on, some of which was also made use of by the Bulgarian Nikolay Georgiev, was not anyone’s intellectual property.”

The latest case of breaking misconduct news comes out of the University of Connecticut.  Dr. Dipak Das is the director of the UConn Health Center’s Cardiovascular Researcher Center, and is best known for his groundbreaking research on resveratrol, the chemical agent found in red wine that has been touted to benefit health in a number of ways.

Looking back at events that took place during the past year is one of favorite things to do. This year I am recounting a few of the best plagiarism events in 2011.

The relationship between authors and publishers has been rapidly evolving along with the digital age.  Many authors have taken to publishing their own books through large online e-book sellers like Amazon and distributing on platforms like the Kindle and iPad.  Not only do services like these provide streamlined publishing and distribution pathways, but they also offer authors a larger cut of profits than they would get with a traditional publisher.

Journalists and bloggers seem to be at the forefront of the fight against literary plagiarism it seems. With the recent exposure of several high profile and respected authors and the shock felt about this in the literary world, a watershed has been reached. Hodder & Stoughton’s statement on one notorious case involving Q.R. Markham (the pen name of bookseller Quentin Rowan) set a benchmark for others in the publishing industry:

"We deeply regret having acquired a book for our list that we can no longer accept as an original work, and in partnership with Little, Brown we have acted immediately to recall the book from distributors and retailers."

Lately, plagiarism has become a hot topic in the news. Over the past several years high profile cases have come to the forefront of major news outlets and given the issue of plagiarism a renewed sense of urgency. Each of these plagiarism cases has its own unique ‘plot’; including a cast of characters involved, a timeline of events, and a final result or judgement for the perpetrators. In a way, the public has become attracted to these cases for much the same reasons that they are drawn to reality television: the drama.