See How Much Plagiarism There Is on the Internet

There is a lot of plagiarism on the Internet.  Yes, I know my last blog dealt with how students plagiarized.  This one will show you how much is going on.

Try this exercise if you want to see just how much.  Go to Wikipedia.  Look up something scientific like “stem cell research.”  Then copy and paste a sentence from the article and put it in Google within quotations.  See how many sites come up with that exact same wording. 

For this blog, I search for “The practical definition of a stem cell is the functional definition—a cell that has the potential to regenerate tissue over a lifetime.”  My entire first page offered sites with the exact same wording.  In fact, I scrolled through ten pages, and all 92 results had this exact same wording.  Which one is the original?  I have no idea, but at least 91 sites plagiarized.  Who knows, maybe the original one on the Internet plagiarized from a print publication.

One exercise I have my online students do is find out just how many papers there are for sale.  An easy one you can try is Faulkner’s “A Rose for Emily.”  One search you can try is – papers “A Rose for Emily.”  Scroll through the first ten results, and you’ll see a variety of sties offering you papers for free and for a fee.  One site I see today actually tells you the grade you will potentially get for each paper offered. Plagiarism has become a business.

Why as a teacher would I post this information?  Won’t students go and use this advice on how to plagiarize?  Perhaps.  But as there are more ways for students to cheat, there are also more ways for teachers to catch cheating.  Most students will take this information and remember that they should not plagiarize and that there is a good chance that they will be caught.  I think education should involve the good and bad.  Students need to know what’s out there, even if they should not use it.