Confusion on the origin of most plagiarism?

Taking a leaf out of the Glenn Poshard / SIU notebook, Purdue chemistry professor George M. Bodner gives us:

Confusion about what constitutes plagiarism — not malicious intent — is the leading cause of plagiarism at the graduate school level, according to an expert presenting here today [22 March 09] on the increasingly worrisome problem at the 237th National Meeting of the American Chemical Society (ACS). George M. Bodner, Ph.D., who serves on the Ethics Committee of the ACS, which is the world’s largest scientific society, was among a panel of scientists who discussed plagiarism.

(...)

Confusion about what constitutes plagiarism may be rooted in undergraduate education, Bodner said. “There is something happening at the undergraduate level. We don’t require enough writing and we do not do careful editing of what students write and, therefore, within the context of their own education, students are not properly educated and are more likely to fall into traps.”

At least the SIU folks asserted standards were different now than in Poshard's time. Bodner makes "confusion" a forever excuse.


Bodner's background: B.S., 1969, State University of New York at Buffalo; Ph.D., 1972, Indiana University.

[LBE served on the ACS Task Force on Ethics, which recommended the formation of the Ethics Committee of the ACS.]