Avoiding plagiarism, self-plagiarism,
and other questionable writing practices: A guide to ethical writing
Acknowledging the source of our
ideas
Just about every scholarly or scientific
paper contains several footnotes or reference notes documenting the source of
the facts, ideas, or evidence that is reported in support of arguments or
hypotheses. In some cases, as in those
papers that review the literature in a specific area of research, the reference
section listing the sources consulted can be quite extensive, sometimes taking
up more than a third of the published article (see, for example, Logan, Walker,
Cole, & Leukefeld, 2000). Most
often, the contributions we rely upon come from the published work or personal
observations of other scientists or scholars.
On occasion, however, we may derive an important insight about a
phenomenon or process that we are studying, through a casual interaction with
an individual not necessarily connected with scholarly or scientific work. Even
in such cases, we still have a moral obligation to credit the source of our
ideas. A good illustrative example of the latter point was reported by Alan
Gilchrist in a 1979 Scientific American article on color perception. In a
section of the article which describes the perception of rooms uniformly
painted in one color, Gilchrist states: “We now have a promising lead to how
the visual system determines the shade of gray in these rooms, although we do not
yet have a complete explanation. (John Robinson helped me develop this lead.)”
(p.122; Gilchrist, 1979). A reader of the scientific literature might assume
that Mr. Robinson is another scientist working in the field of visual
perception, or perhaps an academic colleague or an advanced graduate student of
Gilchrist’s. The fact is that John Robinson was a local plumber and an
acquaintance of Gilchrist in the town where the author spent his summers.
During a casual discussion of Gilchrist’s work, Robinson’s insights into the
problem that Gilchrist had been working on were sufficiently important to the
development of his theory of lightness perception that Gilchrist felt ethically
obligated to credit Robinson’s contribution.
Even the most ethical authors can fall
prey to the inadvertent appropriation of others’ ideas, concepts, or
metaphors. Here we are referring to the
phenomenon of unconscious plagiarism, which, as stated earlier, takes place
when an author generates an idea that s/he believes to be original, but which
in reality had been encountered at an earlier time. Given the free and frequent
exchange of ideas in science, it is not unreasonable to expect instances in
which earlier exposure to an idea that lies dormant in someone’s unconscious,
emerges into consciousness at a later point, but in a context different from
the one in which the idea had originally occurred. Presumably, this is exactly what happened in the case of former
Beatle George Harrison, whose song “My Sweet Lord” was found to have musical
elements of the song “He’s So Fine”, which had been released years earlier by
The Chiffons (see Bright Tunes Music
Corp. v. Harrisongs Music, Ltd., 1976). Unfortunately, there are
probably other John Robinsons, as well as other accomplished scientists,
scholars, and artists, now forgotten, whose original, but unacknowledged ideas
have been subsequently and unconsciously (or sadly, perhaps quite
intentionally) “reinvented/rediscovered” by others and have, thus, failed to
get their due credit.
In some cases the misappropriation
of an idea can be a subtle process. Consider the famous case of Albert Schatz
who, as a graduate student working under Selman Waksman at Rutgers, discovered
the antibiotic streptomycin. Even though the first publications describing his
discovery identified Schatz as primary author (Martin, 1997), it was Wakman
who, over a period of time, began to take sole credit for the discovery
ultimately earning him the Nobel prize in 1952 (see, for example, Shatz, 1993; Mistiaen, 2002 for a fuller
description of this case).
Of course, there also have been instances in which unscrupulous scientists have intentionally misappropriated ideas. The confidential peer review process is a ripe source from which ideas may be plagiarized. Consider the scenario where the offender is a journal or conference referee, or a member of a review panel for a funding agency. He[1] reads a paper or a grant proposal describing a promising new methodology in an area of research directly related to his own work. The grant fails to get funded based, in large part, on his negative evaluation of the protocol. He then goes back to his lab and prepares a grant proposal using the methodology stolen from the proposal that he refereed earlier and submits his proposal to a different granting agency.
Most of us would deem the behavior
depicted in the above scenario as downright despicable. Unfortunately, similar
situations have occurred. In fact, elements of the above scenario are based on
actual cases of scientific misconduct investigated by ORI.
The peer review context appears to
be sufficiently susceptible to the appropriation of ideas that in 1999 the
federal Office of Science and Technology expanded their definition of
plagiarism as follows:
“Plagiarism is the appropriation of
another person’s ideas, processes,
results, or words without giving
appropriate credit, including those
obtained through confidential
review of others’ research proposals and
manuscripts.” (Office of Science
and Technology Policy, 1999).
Guideline 1: An ethical writer
ALWAYS acknowledges the contributions of others and the
source of his/her ideas.
