Digenis.org

If you’re a new reader to this site you may not be aware of an ongoing series I started back in 2004, when I was a student at Moscow International University. The series is called ‘Academic Integrity po-russky’ and explores the lax attitude towards plagiarism in Russian academic circles and the controversy that’s come up against initiatives to curb it.

My previous posts told of the wide-scale plagiarism I saw as a student, how one could buy research papers in the Moscow metro, the ingenuity of Russian shpargalki (crib-sheets), and Russian LiveJournal reactions to the accusations that Putin himself was a plagiarizer (gasp!).

I’ll just begin this post with a short humorous quip I heard as I was asking some Russians about this topic:

“Списывание с одного источника - плагиат, с двух - компиляция, с трёх и более - диссертация.”

“Copying from another source is called ‘plagiarism’. Copying from two sources is called ‘a compilation’. Copying from three or more sources is called ‘a dissertation’.

Whether or not you think plagiarism is a big deal, it’s clear that it’s becoming a hotter issue in educational institutions thanks to peer-to-peer networks, where users trade not only pirated music and video, but also documents and research papers. There are also a few websites, for example, 5ballov.ru (5 points, the Russian equivalent of an A+ mark), where Russian students can freely download tens of thousands of term papers on a number of subjects.

Kommersant Newspaper last Thursday ran an article entitled ‘Антиплагиат не пройдет’ (Anti-plagiarism Won’t be Tolerated) about the controversy over a website where Russian instructors can check their students’ papers for instances of plagiarism.

The web application, which resides at Antiplagiat.ru, has in fact been around since 2005. According to the website, the purpose of the initiative is ‘to improve the quality of the Russian education system, specifically in those areas where students are required to write research papers, term reports, and other original compositions’. As of September 21, 2007, the Antiplagiat database contains over 10,600,000 documents with which it compares the papers uploaded and checked by instructors. Since its launch, many institutes, universities, and even the Russian Ministry of Education have given their support to the project.

As it turns out, the site is also frequented by students themselves, no doubt using the service to see if the complex algorithms can indeed detect instances of ‘borrowing’ in their course work. In fact, one of the more active threads at the Antiplagiat Forums is titled ‘How to get around the system’, where many students have voiced their frustrations:

Наша кафедра взяла на вооружение антиплагиат…. млин, я никогда так не мучался с курсовой!!! (Петров Иван Аликович

Our department is now armed with the Antiplagiat system… Dang, I’ve never been so tormented by a term paper!!! (Ivan Alikovich Petrov)

and

Готов заплатить больше, чем Министерство образование (за создание сайта) - только бросьте этот, по-моему, “дурацкий” проект. (Пономарев Алексей Владимирович)

I’m willing to outpay the Ministry of Education (to build a site) - just abandon this stupid project (Aleksei Vladimirovich Ponomarev)

The commentary goes on and on with people’s suggestions on how to ‘fool’ the system and the moderators’ claims that it cannot be fooled. The author of the Kommersant article tracked down a Russian hacker named Georgi who claims to have created a program called ‘Killer’, which can effectively fool the Antiplagiat system.

Here’s a screenshot of the results of feeding a plagiarized paper through Antiplagiat:

The table shows three instances of plagiarism and their original sources.

Whether or not any such services could effectively curb plagiarism is still up for debate; students will either use their creativity to write original papers or they will use it to find ways around the system. Student groups in the United States have been successful in pressuring their universities to cease using such systems under the premise that it’s an infringement of their intellectual property rights for their papers to be added automatically to these databases.

In my opinion, the real test of determining whether such a system could actually work actually rests with the instructors and professors. Do they really have the time or will power to digitize and upload each paper of each of their students, then weeding out false positives? With the relatively low salaries of teachers, I highly doubt that many of them would consider it worth their time. I’d give the Antiplagiat site an ‘A for effort’, but I don’t think it passes the test in practicality.

A bomb exploded at Moscow State University on Saturday and a second was found before it was detontated. Several hundred people had to evacuate the Soviet-era “wedding- cake” style university building on Moscow’s Sparrow Hills, a police spokesman said.

“There are many, many myths people hold about copyright law. However, the most dangerous by far is the myth of poor man’s copyright (PMC).”

It’s not often that I delve into issues of crime and punishment on my blog, but the recent not guilty verdict in the Andrea Yates retrial has got me thinking about the insanity defense. First of all, let me make it clear that this is not a post about capital punishment; this entry is solely to express my feelings that the insanity plea at the stage of conviction is morally suspect.

I realize that much of my readership is out of the United States, so let me give you a little background here. In 2001 Andrea Yates killed all five of her children by drowning them in the bathtub. She confessed to the crime and was found guilty in a 2002 trial. In 2005, the Texas Court of Appeals reversed the convictions due to false testimony of a psychiatrist hired by the prosecution. So, the case headed back to the courts.

Now, I have no doubt that Yates’ mental condition was diminished. She attempted suicide twice and had been admitted to a psychiatric hospital four times. The diagnosis of schizophrenia was probably right on. Add to that postpartum depression and dealing with 5 very young children and I’m sure her condition was one far beyond what I can comprehend.

But at what point can we say that one’s mental condition changes the criminality of acts they commit? I would argue that it should never have that effect.

I’m certainly not arguing that we should completely disregard mental illness in such cases. All I’m saying is that it should not be part of the conviction stage, but rather only part of the sentencing stage. What does that mean? Well, one’s mental illness does not remove their culpability from a crime, but it may mean that they are in need of treatment rather than punishment. The point here is that we at no time declare these criminals ‘not guilty’ of their crimes.

I guess one of the biggest flaws with the insanity defense is this: Who defines insane? We could also argue that there are some crimes that could only be committed by an insane person.

Andrea Yates was declared not guilty of the crimes of which she confessed. Regardless of the verdict, she’ll be receiving court-supervised psychiatric care, which is exactly what she is in desperate need of; in that sense, justice was served and this sick person is getting help.

Still, it says a lot about the moral objectivity embraced by our justice system when moral judgments concerning things like murder can no longer be made, and that worries me.