Monday, April 12, 2010

Intellectual Property

Please read this article:

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jQlSG_wOnzcnKwwCZl0Q68WNfNqgD9F0KIV03

What is your response to this? I have mentioned before in class that not all cultures share American standards for citation, "plagiarism," and academic honesty. Some of you might think that the domain of "plagiarism" is unclear. I don't want to give you a lot of prompting here; I am just interested in reading your responses to this news story.

12 comments:

  1. This story is just horrible. I feel bad for the original authors, because it takes a lot of time and effort to write a paper. First, you have to do research which also takes a lot of time and effort. Then you have to write and revise the paper. Next you have write and revise some more until you are satisfied with the outcome. Then to have someone just copy your paper, that is just harsh. I am of the opinion that if I have to work hard than you have to work hard. If you cannot handle the work load than you should not be writing paper, or becoming a Doctor, ect.
    Personally, I think China should just slow down and learn how to write papers and do research correctly. You should never be in such a hurry that you don’t have time to do tasks safely and correctly. Granted safely does not really apply in this case. There will be time enough later for China to be scientific power later. History proves this. For example, the Middle East used to be a scientific power. The Muslims were on the cutting edge of pretty much everything (astronomy, medicine, and mathematics). People from all over used to flock to the Middle East or refer to Middle Eastern works if they wanted to know something. Then slowly the scientific power began to shift to the western side of the globe. Also, if you think about it a lot of people live in China. If all the people were to start researching and writing papers correctly then I don’t think it would take very long for them to become scientifically powerful. They just need to take the time to do it correctly.

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  2. The article states that faculty promotions are based off quantity, not quality, of published works, and there are weak penalties for plagiarism. Like it or not, it doesn't surprise me that ethics come a distant third after happiness and success in this scenario. I think it's very similar to the idea of pirating copyrighted works or abusing welfare. If the crime is easy and the victim isn't obvious, even otherwise good people will do a bad thing to get something they want. China should step up punishments for plagiarism and the other unethical behavior that they talk about in this article. But then again, where would we get all our cheap knockoffs if China became ethical?

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  3. It's quite sad to hear about how this classifies as scientific advancement in China. Even more, it's sad that the Chinese government is simply giving promotions to those who publish more papers than their peers without any sort of quality control. It's shocking that there's hardly any penalty for these blatant acts of plagiarism. I feel like it's because China dedicated on becoming a scientific nation. But this article won't help China's relation with the rest of the countries in the scientific community. Although, I did find it interesting how people are taking advantage of this ordeal and building a business around it.

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  4. I'm not quite sure how I feel about this. While I do not feel it is right to plagiarize, I also do not feel right holding others to my moral standards particularly people from other cultures. I think the matter requires careful attention.

    I think the real problem is that there is a big push in China to publish as much as possible. As the paper says, quantity over quality. Individuals need to be held responsible for the work that they do but, ultimately, that doesn't seem like the problem here.

    The problem seems to be largely cultural. Ben-Canaan was plagiarized as he says: "Without any shame!" This would imply to me that culturally, there isn't a problem with plagiarism. Teaching this to youngsters may help fix this problem in the future but it also requires China to adopt Western standards. Sadly, I think that China will either need to accept Western styles for papers or they will be ostracized from the global academic community.

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  5. I have heard a lot of comments from my coworkers about Chinese authors and their articles in peer reviewed publications regarding to similar issues. I hope this isn't representative for the population.

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  6. From my experiences there are many articles that have sections copied directly from other previously written papers.

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  7. If the Chinese people insist on conducting themselves in this fashion it may lead to the halt of rapid advancement in all areas of their development. This could turn into a real problem for China. If the international community begins to reject products and services from the China their enormous economy would shrink considerably.

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  8. I think it might be hard with China's enormous population to control plagiarism like other countries can. Even with that, I still feel it is wrong to let uncensored articles into the world of science because it will just make the value of scientific articles depreciate. I feel this is in the same league as speculations that some members of China's Olympic gymnastic team were underage and therefore had a leg up on the competition. It seems China will do anything to get ahead.

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  9. Honestly, the whole ethics thing does not bother much as much as the fact that these plagiarists are diluting the scientific community with old rehashed information.

    I feel like the shift in focus from scientific progress to some bizarre numbers game will eventually collapse Chinese academia. Who will continue to fund research that isn't really even research? The Chinese government? External investors? I don't think either will be interested once they realize plagiarism isn't marketable.

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  10. In a communist superpower like China, such behavior is to be expected. This is a country where many people are born into a social role and are predisposed to play that role. So if someone writes a paper, and the contents of that paper are in fact constructive, chances are it won't directly impact the writers lifestyle. We see writers making contributions to science and not being justly rewarded for it. So when a plagiarist comes along and copies it, the author might not have the concept of property rights and not stand up for his work. Its sad, but no news report can change it. Many plagiarists in China will get away with it even if people raised a global awareness of it.

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  12. We must keep in mind that an act wrong in one persons eyes might be perfectly acceptable in anothers (excluding obvious things like murder). I don't believe it's right to say someone's doing wrong because you believe it's wrong.

    I believe that a researcher and/or author does need help from time to time, and can use secondary sources as help. But they must give credit where it's deserved. Plagiarism of anothers entire work doesn't even make sense. This could be like a man working full time construction, but his couch potato neighbor gets the paycheck. The neighbor never deserved the benefits of the hard work.

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