The Harvard case has made my work much harder

Watching the plagiarism allegations unfold against Harvard University president Claudine Gay, who resigned Jan. 2, has filled me with unease: The Harvard case is not a good example of how allegations of research misconduct are typically handled. I fear the aberrations will make my work, and that of my colleagues, much harder going forward.

An accusation of plagiarism, dropped into the everchurning X stream, threatens due process for the accused. You can’t un-ring the plagiarism bell once it has been struck. The practice of whistleblowing about academic misconduct seems to be changing before our eyes, and not for the better.

Over the years, my research colleagues and I have meticulously documented over 100 cases of serious academic plagiarism. We have submitted the evidence to journal editors and book publishers, requesting published statements of retractions for each of the plagiarizing items. (Sometimes we seek support for retractions from research integrity committees at the home institutions of the suspected plagiarists.) I’ve authored two books on academic plagiarism. But at no point have I ever contacted the plagiarists directly or posted damning accusations on social media. Rather, I engage those who can issue retractions.

Scholars who research plagiarism often get labeled as “plagiarism hunters,” which suggests a vendetta. However, I never see myself as going after plagiarists. Rather, I am going after defective publications. My goal is to correct the scholarly record by securing published retractions, not to target people or directly intend their professional demise. Those with institutional roles — not academic whistleblowers — have the responsibility for determining whether those who commit research misconduct can have any academic future. In the Harvard case, the normally separate processes of alleging misconduct and theorizing about punishment have been hopelessly intertwined. Like all types of human failure, plagiarism admits of degrees of gravity, and not all offenses need to be treated equally.

Plagiarism work is slow, plagiarism investigations are slower, and the processes do not typically play out in public. In my experience, journalists get involved only after much work has been completed: a first retraction has appeared; an institution’s investigation has concluded; or a peer-reviewed article about a failure in research integrity has been published. In the Harvard case, journalists played a key role early on. Social media and traditional media invited scrutiny from many directions, and the motivations of whistleblowers — which are irrelevant for weighing the evidence of suspected research misconduct — were suddenly treated as important.

In recent discussions, the confidence ascribed to text-matching software has been surprising. A slight change in verb tense can generate false negatives from socalled “anti-plagiarism software.” Even when such programs flag certain texts as suspect, a human judgment is required for a determination of plagiarism. The idea that a huge body of texts could be examined accurately for plagiarism with very little effort strikes me as implausible. Proving plagiarism requires lineby-line examination; there are no easy shortcuts.

There are some instances when an attempt is made to reframe a plagiarism investigation away from the integrity of the work in question and toward a public relations campaign intended to protect the reputation of the person being investigated. The first clue is the employment of euphemisms for plagiarism (e.g., “unacknowledged borrowing”). The failure to use precise language strikes me as obfuscation. The second is the focus on the intention of the suspected plagiarist (e.g., “there was no intent to deceive”). An investigation into the mind of the suspected plagiarist is irrelevant for a determination of plagiarism and the need for a retraction. The focus should always be on whether an academic text reliably credits the true author of the words.

Some have suggested that debates over plagiarism are essentially intractable, that no clear standards exist, or that standards have changed in recent years. Those who tout such views would do well to read research integrity scholarship. Determining whether an academic text is plagiarizing is simply asking whether a typical reader can know, on the basis of indicators in the text, whose voice is speaking in the text. If the answer is no, then a failure to credit the real author has occurred. In academic writing, there are a host of conventions — quotation marks, precise footnote placement — for indicating to readers whose voice is speaking in the text. In plagiarizing academic texts, these fundamental conventions have been omitted to the detriment of readers.

All of this brings us to the central question: Why does this matter? Not only are the real authors denied credit for their work but plagiarists gain an unwarranted illusion of productivity. That facade moves worthy candidates to the back of the line when it comes to academic jobs, promotions, grants, speaking invitations, and a host of academic accolades. Academic misconduct creates inefficiencies across the larger academic system.

Academic researchers who publish on plagiarism issues typically did not start out in that area. They usually encountered defective scholarship while pursuing their own research that could not be ignored. We may now have to accept that political motivations, beyond simply correcting the scholarly record, may bring people into the research integrity arena. Plagiarism investigations may become a new tool for securing institutional change, continuing culture wars, and toppling university presidencies.