Wednesday, January 30, 2008

Ferrets are HOTT (or: A Cautionary Tale about Plagiarism)


Okay, I know I'm hardly the first to post a link to this, but just in case you missed it, a tale about how entire passages from a semi-scholarly article about black-footed ferrets appeared nearly verbatim in a bodice-ripper, making for some of the worst postcoital chatter of all time.

I'd like to make some of my students read this, as an object lesson in how, when they plagiarize, there are jarring shifts in prose style that give them away. But I suppose I should just be grateful that, after lifting entire passages from an online article on Hildegard von Bingen, they don't immediately shift to her and Volmar having hot monastic sex up against the cloister wall.



2 comments:

Dr. Curmudgeon said...

Of all the things I have read this week, that last sentence gives me the most pleasure of all.

Mad props. Mad, I say.

Notorious Ph.D. said...

Thanks DC -- I aim to please.