Tuesday, May 02, 2006

Synchronicity

SideLines, May 2006

Consider the following stories.

"Liberal economist Galbraith dies at 97... In 1999, a panel of judges... picked "The Affluent Society" [for] its list of the century's best English-language works of nonfiction.... Galbraith's prose won admiration at the very top"

and then, in the same issue of The Japan Times (1st May, 2006)

"Professor plagiarized overseas paper... A Nihon University accountant has plagiarized ideas from a ...research paper published... in the 1950s, a university official said Saturday... The professor, who has authoured numerous books on accounting and bookkeeping, has declined to reply to an enquiry...".

Co-op comment: The contrast is sad, and makes Japanese research look pitiful, but think again - the entire world is plagued with plagiarism!

See:

"The so-called 'secret spy dossier' published last week by the [British] Government as a crucial plank in the argument for... war [against Iraq] was largely cribbed from an American postgraduate's doctoral thesis - grammatical mistakes and all... There are scornful mutterings in French political circles... that they cannot be expected to back a war on Iraq until Britain produces something more compelling than a 'failed doctoral thesis' (02.09.03 Guardian)

Co-op comments: So even a failed thesis can become famous - but isn't it better to do good research and writing, even if it does not attract fame?

Opportunities for plagiarism may seem too great to ignore, for some - but the opportunities to detect plagiarism must be even greater, since there are more readers in the world than writers - and detecting plagiarism is another way to become famous (if becoming famous is important).
Please contact Peter, c/o The Research Cooperative (NZ): pjm (at) gol (dot) com).

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