In November 2004, about 5 months after Dr. Alam began to unfairly stonewall me on my master's thesis, Distinguished Professor Dr. Tadeusz Malinski approved a chemistry doctoral dissertation that contains pages of blatant plagiarism. To show you, I have highlighted pages of plagiarized text from the dissertation. The text highlighted in blue is copied from this source, and the text highlighted in green is copied from this source.
There are some very important questions that arise from this dissertation.
How will Ohio University's College of Arts and Sciences deal with this cheating student? The student clearly shows an intent to deceive the reader by making the subtle change of switching the word "we" to "I" (see page 22) or failing to include the copied sources in her reference list. It is also important to recognize that the student avoided performing literary research on her subject by copying many of her citations from others. In other words, the multitude of citations and associated references make it appear like she went to the library and read numerous papers on her subject when in reality, she was able to build a lengthy reference list without ever obtaining, reading or analyzing those references. This person clearly does not deserve the title: Doctor of Philosophy.
How will Ohio University deal with the professor who awarded a doctoral degree to a student who cheated to meet her degree requirements? I seriously doubt that Dr. Malinski and the other professors on the doctoral committee believed that their student wrote with such expertise. I believe that either they did not read the dissertation or they did not care that she copied. Either way, the approving professors are in violation of the Ohio University Faculty Handbook Statement on Professional Ethics.
Will President McDavis, and the other distinguished professors strip Dr. Malinski of his distinguished professor title like they did to Dr. Gunasekera?
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4 comments:
There needs to be accountability all the way in the chain...students, advisers, professors, chairs, deans. Degrees and titles cannot be just given away, they are to be earned and complying with a code of ethics is part of the process.
Here are two articles and two books that have helped me better understand the plagiarism scandal at Ohio University. Maybe others will find them helpful too.
The articles are by OU Distinguished Professor Richard Vedder:
Groundhog Day In Academia
http://collegeaffordability.blogspot.com/2007/02/groundhog-day-in-academia.html
The Cheating Epidemic in Higher Education
http://collegeaffordability.blogspot.com/2007/09/cheating-epidemic-in-higher-education.html
The books are by David Callahan and Barbara Ehrenreich:
The Cheating Culture: Why More Americans Are Doing Wrong to Get Ahead
http://www.amazon.com/Cheating-Culture-Americans-Doing-Wrong/dp/0151010188
Bright-sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America
http://www.amazon.com/Bright-sided-Relentless-Promotion-Positive-Undermined/dp/0805087494/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1257463748&sr=1-1
Also, I believe that the plagiarism scandal Tom Matrka has discovered at OU is also widespread across colleges and universities in America and abroad – and why should anyone think otherwise nowadays?
Finally, I want to make it very clear that I’ve not made any of these remarks to in any way excuse the plagiarism scandal at OU (which I think is a tragedy).
Disclosure: I’m a retired OU professor.
One distinguished professor mentoring a plagiarist might pass as an anomaly, but not two. Good students should stay away from this place, which seems to be a safe haven for bad students and professors that either aren’t paying enough attention to notice, don’t care, or are culpable.
As an undergrad student at OSU, I have begun to realize the wide-swept problem of cheating, not just in theses. And although this is a huge generalization, a common theme is that foreign students seem to be more prone and 'encouraged'(by friends) to cheat. I have discussed this topic with my peers often, and have been told that in every class, we have found cheating that is especially rampant among foreign exchange students. Is the stress of success in America too much? OU is not the only case, however, I do not believe it is as widely approved as it seems to be at OU.
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