Tag Archives: plagiarism

ChatGPT and the academic cheating industry

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I have two items on ChatGPT and academic cheating. The first (from April 2023) deals with the economic impact on people who make their living by writing the papers for the cheaters and the second (from May 2023) deals with unintended consequences for the cheaters (the students not the contract writers).

Making a living in Kenya

Martin K.N Siele’s April 21, 2023 article for restofworld.org (a website where you can find “Reporting [on] Global Tech Stories”) provides a perspective that’s unfamiliar to me, Note: Links have been removed,

For the past nine years, Collins, a 27-year-old freelance writer, has been making money by writing assignments for students in the U.S. — over 13,500 kilometers away from Nanyuki in central Kenya, where he lives. He is part of the “contract cheating” industry, known locally as simply “academic writing.” Collins writes college essays on topics including psychology, sociology, and economics. Occasionally, he is even granted direct access to college portals, allowing him to submit tests and assignments, participate in group discussions, and talk to professors using students’ identities. In 2022, he made between $900 and $1,200 a month from this work.

Lately, however, his earnings have dropped to $500–$800 a month. Collins links this to the meteoric rise of ChatGPT and other generative artificial intelligence tools.

“Last year at a time like this, I was getting, on average, 50 to 70 assignments, including discussions which are shorter, around 150 words each, and don’t require much research,” Collins told Rest of World. “Right now, on average, I get around 30 to 40-something assignments.” He requested to be identified only by his first name to avoid jeopardizing his accounts on platforms where he finds clients.

In January 2023, online learning platform Study surveyed more than 1,000 American students and over 100 educators. More than 89% of the students said they had used ChatGPT for help with a homework assignment. Nearly half admitted to using ChatGPT for an at-home test or quiz, 53% had used it to write an essay, and 22% had used it for outlining one.

Collins now fears that the rise of AI could significantly reduce students’ reliance on freelancers like him in the long term, affecting their income. Meanwhile, he depends on ChatGPT to generate the content he used to outsource to other freelance writers.

While 17 states in the U.S. have banned contract cheating, it has not been a problem for freelancers in Kenya, concerned about providing for themselves and their families. Despite being the largest economy in East Africa, Kenya has the region’s highest unemployment rate, with 5.7% of the labor force out of work in 2021. Around 25.8% of the population is estimated to live in extreme poverty. This situation makes the country a potent hub for freelance workers. According to the Online Labour Index (OLI), an economic indicator that measures the global online gig economy, Kenya accounts for 1% of the world’s online freelance workforce, ranking 15th overall and second only to Egypt in Africa. About 70% of online freelancers in Kenya offer writing and translation services.

…

Not everyone agrees with Collins with regard to the impact that AI such as ChatGPT is having on their ghostwriting bottom line but everyone agrees there’s an impact. If you have time, do read Siele’s April 21, 2023 article in its entirety.

The dark side of using contract writing services

This May 10, 2023 essay on The Conversation by Nathalie Wierdak (Teaching Fellow) and Lynnaire Sheridan (Senior lecturer), both at the University of Otago, takes a more standard perspective, initially (Note: Links have been removed; h/t phys.org May 11, 2023 news item),

Since the launch of ChatGPT in late 2022, academics have expressed concern over the impact the artificial intelligence service could have on student work.

But educational institutions trying to safeguard academic integrity could be looking in the wrong direction. Yes, ChatGPT raises questions about how to assess students’ learning. However, it should be less of a concern than the persistent and pervasive use of ghostwriting services.

Essentially, academic ghostwriting is when a student submits a piece of work as their own which is, in fact, written by someone else. Often dubbed “contract cheating,” the outsourcing of assessment to ghostwriters undermines student learning.

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But contract cheating is increasingly commonplace as time-poor students juggle jobs to meet the soaring costs of education. And the internet creates the perfect breeding ground for willing ghostwriting entrepreneurs.

In New Zealand, 70-80% of tertiary students engage in some form of cheating. While most of this academic misconduct was collusion with peers or plagiarism, the emergence of artificial intelligence has been described as a battle academia will inevitably lose.

It is time a new approach is taken by universities.

Allowing the use of ChatGPT by students could help reduce the use of contract cheating by doing the heavy lifting of academic work while still giving students the opportunity to learn.

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This essay seems to have been written as a counterpoint to Siele’s article. Here’s where the May 10, 2023 essay gets interesting,

Universities have been cracking down on ghost writing to ensure quality education, to protect their students from blackmail and to even prevent international espionage [emphasis mine].

Contract cheating websites store personal data making students unwittingly vulnerable to extortion to avoid exposure and potential expulsion from their institution, or the loss of their qualification.

Some researchers are warning there is an even greater risk – that private student data will fall into the hands of foreign state actors.

Preventing student engagement with contract cheating sites, or at least detecting students who use them, avoids the likelihood of graduates in critical job roles being targeted for nationally sensitive data.

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Given the underworld associated with ghostwriting, artificial intelligence has the potential to bust the contract cheating economy. This would keep students safer by providing them with free, instant and accessible resources.

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If you have time to read it in its entirety, there are other advantages to AI-enhanced learning mentioned in the May 10, 2023 essay.

Plagiarism and cheating in the science community

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In late January 2012 there seemed to be a bit of a flutter over scientific plagiarism. There was the Jan. 24, 2012 news item on physorg.com about Howard (Skip) Garner’s work detecting signs of scientific (specifically, medical science) plagiarism,

Garner, creator of eTBLAST plagiarism detection software, identified numerous instances of wholesale plagiarism among citations in MEDLINE [online database of medical science articles]. “When my colleagues and I introduced an automated process to spot similar citations in MEDLINE, we uncovered more than 150 suspected cases of plagiarism in March, 2009.

“Subsequent ethics investigations resulted in 56 retractions within a few months. However, as of November 2011, 12 (20 percent) of those “retracted” papers are still not so tagged in PubMed [clone sister to MEDLINE database]. Another two were labeled with errata that point to a website warning the papers are “duplicate” — but more than 95 percent of the text was identical, with no similar co-authors.”

Garner and Mounir Errami published a comentatary in the Jan. 24, 2012 online edition of Nature magazine about their joint study of plagiarism,

Are scientists publishing more duplicate papers? An automated search of seven million biomedical abstracts suggests that they are, report Mounir Errami and Harold Garner.

…

Given the pressure to publish, it is important to be aware of the ways in which community standards can be subverted. Our concern here is with the three major sins of modern publishing: duplication, co-submission and plagiarism.

I was quite interested to see the definition of these ‘sins’,

 The most unethical practices involve substantial reproduction of another study (bringing no novelty to the scientific community) without proper acknowledgement. If such duplicates have different authors, then they may be guilty of plagiarism, whereas papers with overlapping authors may represent self-plagiarism. Simultaneous submission of duplicate articles by the same authors to different journals also violates journal policies.

That last one about simultaneous submissions of the same article has never made sense to me. As long as you’re not pretending it’s different than the pieces being published elsewhere, I don’t see a problem other than the journal wants exclusive rights to your work. (I’m talking about scholarly publishing only.) If it’s yours, I think you should be able to publish it in as many places as you can.

After all, no one has time to read every single journal that might apply to their own specialty or look at journals that don’t apply but might have useful or applicable materials. In the interests of scholarship and sharing information, there’s a much better chance of stumbling across something if it’s published in a number of places.

Apparently, I’m not the first to think of this, although they are primarily considering the situation from the perspective of language (from the Nature Commentary),

One argument for duplicate publication is to make significant works available to a wider audience, especially in other languages. However, only 20% of manually verified duplicates in Déjà vu are translations into another language. What of the examples of text directly translated with no reference or credit to the original article? Is this justified or acceptable? And is such behaviour more widespread for review-type articles for which greater dissemination may be justified? We do not yet have answers to these questions.

The authors don’t seem to have considered this issue the problem of finding relevant material in a very ‘information-noisy’ environment.

As for self-plagiarizing, I’m a little muzzier about that. It’s not like you’re taking credit for someone else’s work (which is how I’ve always defined plagiarism). However, presenting your own work as if it’s new when it’s not is unacceptable to me.

Leonard Lopate did an interview with Garner and Professor Melissa Anderson about plagiarism in scholarly and medical journals for this NPR (National Public Radio) show Jan. 19, 2012. I haven’t listened to it all since Anderson begins by discussing the downloading of music from various archives. It seems she’s confused file sharing with plagiarism. She did go on to discuss plagiarism but had lost credibility with me and this is an almost 30 min. interview (or investment of my time).

I do think that plagiarism and cheating have a negative effect on the practice of science and I agree with the observers who all note the tremendous pressure placed on scientists to produce in a very competitive environment.  I just wish they had communicated a little more clearly.

Here’s an example of my problem with their discussion of duplicates (from the Nature Commentary),

In general, duplicates are often published in journals with lower impact factors (undoubtedly at least in part to minimize the odds of detection) but this does not prevent negative consequences — especially in clinical research. Duplication, particularly of the results of patient trials, can negatively affect the practice of medicine, as it can instill a false sense of confidence regarding the efficacy and safety of new drugs and procedures. There are very good reasons why multiple independent studies are required before a new medical practice makes it into the clinic, and duplicate publication subverts that crucial quality control (not to mention defrauding the original authors and journals).

If the duplicate lists someone other than the original author(s), wouldn’t it be plagiarism? This is my problem, there is a lack of clarity in this commentary.

Around the same time this commentary was published, Dennis Normile wrote an article, Whistleblower Uses YouTube to Assert Claims of Scientific Misconduct, for Science Insider about a Japanese whistleblower (I’ve removed links, plse. go to the original article to find them and more information),

ScienceInsider tracked down the whistleblower using an e-mail address connected to a blog linked to the Japanese version of the video. A man who said he posted the video agreed to a phone interview and later answered additional questions by e-mail. He asked to be identified by his online handle, “Juuichi Jigen.”

Juuichi Jigen means “11 dimensions” in Japanese. The phrase is taken from a case of misconduct (English, Japanese) the whistleblower had written about on his blog that involved a researcher who claimed to have developed an “11-dimensional theory of the universe.” According to University of Tokyo press releases, that scientist, Serkan Anilir, plagiarized numerous publications and falsified his resume. He resigned from an assistant professorship at the university in March 2010.

Jigen, who claims to be a life science researcher in the private sector, says his interest in scientific misconduct began in late 2010 when he couldn’t reproduce results reported by a researcher at Dokkyo Medical University in Mibu, Tochigi Prefecture. “This wasted time and money,” he says. After documenting problems with the papers, Jigen notified the university and posted all the evidence on a Web site. According to local press reports gathered on Jigen’s Web site, the researcher resigned his position. Many of his papers have been retracted, according to the Retraction Watch Web site.

Jigen has created separate Web sites for half a dozen cases in Japan in which he alleges scientific misconduct has occurred, and last week he posted details of what he believes is a case of image manipulation by researchers at a U.S. institution.

Not being able to reproduce the results means the data could have been an anomaly. However, if researchers cannot duplicate results from various research projects, then the data has been falsified.

In reading about ‘Juuichi Jigen’s’ work, it would seem that if you find someone who’s plagiarizing work, you might want to check the research data. I think that’s a much more compelling way to discuss plagiarism than worrying over copying and duplication. Ultimately, it’s about the practice of science.

Dem bones at McGill; innovation from the Canadian business community?; the archiving frontier; linking and copyright

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I have a number of bits today amongst them, Canadian nanotechnology, Canadian business innovation, digital archiving, and copyrights and linking.

A Quebec biotech company, Enobia Pharma is working with Dr. Marc McKee on treatments for genetic bone diseases. From the news item on Nanowerk,

The field is known as biomineralization and it involves cutting-edge, nanotech investigation into the proteins, enzymes and other molecules that control the coupling of mineral ions (calcium and phosphate) to form nano-crystals within the bone structure. The treatment, enzyme replacement therapy to treat hypophosphatasia, is currently undergoing clinical testing in several countries including Canada. Hypophosphatasia is a rare and severe disorder resulting in poor bone mineralization. In infants, symptoms include respiratory insufficiency, failure to thrive and rickets.

This research in biomineralization (coupling of mineral ions to form nano-crystals) could lead to better treatments for other conditions such as cardiovascular diseases, arthritis, and kidney stones.

McKee’s research is being funded in part by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research  From the Nanowerk news item,

McKee’s research program is a concrete example of how university researchers are working with private sector partners as an integral part of Canada’s innovative knowledge economy, and the positive outcomes their collaborations can offer.

I don’t think that businesses partnering with academic institutions in research collaborations is precisely what they mean when they talk about business innovation (research and development). From a March 2, 2010 article about innovation by Preston Manning in the Globe & Mail,

Government competition policy and support for science, technology, and innovation (STI) can complement business leadership on the innovation front, but it is not a substitute for such leadership. Action to increase innovation in the economy is first and foremost a business responsibility.

Manning goes on to describe what he’s done on this matter and asks for suggestions on how to encourage Canadian business to be more innovative. (Thanks to Pasco Phronesis for pointing me to Manning’s article.) I guess the problem is that what we’ve been doing has worked well enough and so there’s no great incentive to change.

I’ve been on an archiving kick lately and so here’s some more. The British Library recently (Feb.25.10) announced public access to their UK Web Archive, a project where they have been saving online materials. From the news release,

British Library Chief Executive, Dame Lynne Brindley said:

“Since 2004 the British Library has led the UK Web Archive in its mission to archive a record of the major cultural and social issues being discussed online. Throughout the project the Library has worked directly with copyright holders to capture and preserve over 6,000 carefully selected websites, helping to avoid the creation of a ‘digital black hole’ in the nation’s memory.

“Limited by the existing legal position, at the current rate it will be feasible to collect just 1% of all free UK websites by 2011. We hope the current DCMS consultation will enact the 2003 Legal Deposit Libraries Act and extend the provision of legal deposit through regulationto cover freely available UK websites, providingregular snapshots ofthe free UK web domain for the benefit of future research.”

Mike Masnick at Techdirt notes (here) that the British Library has to get permission (the legal position Dame Brindley refers to) to archive these materials and this would seem to be an instance where ‘fair use’ should be made to apply.

On the subject of losing data, I read an article by Mike Roberts for the Vancouver Province, January 22, 2006, p. B5 (digital copy here) that posed this question, What if the world lost its memory? It was essentially an interview with Luciana Duranti (chair of the Master of Archival Studies programme and professor at the School of Library, Archival and Information Studies at the University of British Columbia, Canada) where she commented about the memories we had already lost. From the article,

Alas, she says, every day something else is irretrievably lost.

The research records of the U.S. Marines for the past 25 years? Gone.

East German land-survey records vital to the reunification of Germany? Toast.

A piece of digital interactive music recorded by Canadian composer Keith Hamel just eight years ago?

“Inaccessible, over, finito,” says Duranti, educated in her native Italy and a UBC prof since 1987.

Duranti, director of InterPARES (International Research on Permanent Authentic Records in Electronic Systems), an international cyber-preservation project comprising 20 countries and 60 global archivists, says original documentation is a thing of the past.

I was shocked by how much ‘important’ information had been lost and I assume still is. (Getting back to the UK Web Archives, if they can only save 1% of the UK’s online material then a lot has got to be missing.)

For anyone curious about InterPARES, I got my link for the Roberts article from this page on the InterPARES 1 website.

Back to Techdirt and Mike Masnick who has educated me as to a practice I had noted but not realized is ‘the way things are done amongst journalists’. If you spend enough time on the web, you’ll notice stories that make their way to newspapers without any acknowledgment of  their web or writerly origins and I’m not talking about news releases which are designed for immediate placement in the media or rewritten/reworked before placement. From the post on Techdirt,

We recently wrote about how the NY Post was caught taking a blogger’s story and rewriting it for itself — noting the hypocrisy of a News Corp. newspaper copying from someone else, after Rupert Murdoch and his top execs have been going around decrying various news aggregators (and Google especially) for “stealing” from News Corp. newspapers. It’s even more ridiculous when you think about it — because the “stealing” that Rupert is upset about is Google linking to the original story — a step that his NY Post writer couldn’t even be bothered to do.

Of course, as a few people pointed out in the comments, this sort of “re-reporting” is quite common in the traditional news business. You see it all the time in newspapers, magazines and broadcast TV. They take a story that was found somewhere else and just “re-report” it, so that they have their own version of it.

That’s right, it’s ‘re-reporting’ without attributions or links. Masnick’s post (he’s bringing in Felix Salmon’s comments) attributes this to a ‘print’ mentality where reporters are accustomed to claiming first place and see acknowledgments and links as failure while ‘digital natives’ acknowledge and link regularly since they view these as signs of respect. I’m not going to disagree but I would like to point out that citing sources is pretty standard for academics or anyone trained in that field. I imagine most reporters have one university or college degree, surely they learned the importance of citing one’s sources. So does training as a journalist erode that understanding?

And, getting back to this morning’s archival subtheme, at the end of Clark Hoyt’s (blogger for NY Times) commentary about the plagiarism he had this to say,

Finally, The Times owes readers a full accounting. I asked [Philip] Corbett [standards editor] for the examples of Kouwe’s plagiarism and suggested that editors’ notes be appended to those articles on the Web site and in The Times’s electronic archives. Corbett would not provide the examples and said the paper was not inclined to flag them, partly because there were some clear-cut cases and others that were less clear. “Where do you draw the line?” he asked.

I’d draw it at those he regards as clear. To do otherwise is to leave a corrupted record within the archives of The Times. It is not the way to close the case.

One last thing, Heather Haley is one of the guests appearing tonight in Rock Against Prisons.

Tuesday, March 9, 2010

7:00pm – 11:55pm

Little Mountain Gallery

195 east 26th Ave [Vancouver, Canada]

More details from my previous announcement about this event here.