Thursday, August 16, 2012

VroniPlag Wiki Case # 29

The cases of plagiarism in dissertations seems to be a never-ending story. VroniPlag Wiki's case # 29 was awarded the best grade and a prize at the TU Dresden in 2009. This thesis, submitted to the business faculty, deals with statistics and risk management. Currently, 32 % of the pages contain text or formulas that closely parallel other works.

Are the universities actually doing anything to fix this obviously broken system? Yes, they are having the submitters swear on oath that they did everything correctly. And purchasing software (that can only suggest text parallels, never determine the absence or presence of plagiarism).

The magazine "ZEIT campus" is currently publishing the results from a three-year investigation by the University of Bielefeld into how many students cheat. Their results (partially published at Zeit Online) are shocking: 79 % of students asked self-reported having cheated. It's only going to get worse if nothing happens.

No comments:

Post a Comment

Please note that I moderate comments. Any comments that I consider unscientific will not be published.