Dec 14, 2006

I'm not a lawyer, I just play one on my blog

Exhibit A for the prosecution: Joe Carter thoroughly mangles a charge of plagiarism. Read later in the comments when a real lawyer shows up.

3 comments:

RBH said...

There's a great comment in that thread:

"What do you call someone who implies original authorship of material which he has not actually created and incorporates material from someone else's work into his own work without attributing it?"

Gospel writers

Joe Carter said...

So what would you do if one of your students had done what Jones did?

Surely you don't hold Federal judges to a lower ethical standard than a high school student.

(Man, it's depressing seeing so many people make excuses for unethical behavior...)

Jim Anderson said...

Making excuses for unethical behavior? Joe, Joe, Joe. First you have to demonstrate why it's unethical. You can't just claim it to be so.

If the established procedure allows for duplicating "findings of fact," which it apparently does, then why is it unethical to duplicate "findings of fact?"

I explain to my students exactly what's expected of them, and why: I want their own thoughts because I am responsible for assessing what they have learned, not what they agree with. It's not a "higher" or "lower" ethical standard. It's simply different.

I'm not soft on plagiarists--it appears to me that that part of the text of Jones's graduation speech was indeed plagiarized, and that's simply weasely.

Playing Perry Mason in pajamas is fun, but at some point you have to realize when you've made a mistake.