plagiarism » 2cultures.net(.au)

German defense minister’s plagiarized PhD dissertation visualized

plagiarism, Visualization No Responses »

Mar 022011

As some of you might know, Germany's defense minister, Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg, resigned yesterday after admitting that he plagiarized his PhD dissertation. Pitiful, I know.

Gregor Aisch visualized Guttenberg's dissertation, highlighting the plagiarized portions. The dark red represents complete or masked plagiarism, while the lighter red represents different categories of plagiarism. Longer bars are for normal text, and small bars represent footnote lines. Not sure why there seems to be as much footnote as there is normal text.

In any case, at least Guttenberg wrote some of it. But still sad.

[vis4]

on cheating, standardized testing, and the coming decade

cheating, plagiarism, policing, standardized testing, writing Comments Off

Jan 012011

Students find out early what it's like to live in a country that generally believes that the best defense is a good offense: That catching and punishing wrongdoers will deter others from going down the wrong path. Never let the facts get in the way of a good theory: We'll keep passing ridiculously harsh drug laws even though they don't deter people from buying, selling, and using illegal drugs. Our politicians, supported by right-wing pundits, will resist extending unemployment benefits in the worst economic recession we've seen since the Great Depression. Why? Because they've decided, in direct contradiction of the evidence, that America's 15 million unemployed adults are lazy bums who just need a swift kick in the ass.

That's the world our students are headed for, so they might as well learn the lesson early that it's a world that prefers punishment over dialogue, short-term fixes instead of enduring solutions, and using bandaids to fix gaping wounds.