After reading the news about recent Harvard’s plagiarism saga, I went through Harvard’s Plagiarism Guide. If I’m not wrong, and as per its guidelines, and under Verbatim or Mosaic Plagiarism or Inadequate Paraphrase clause, then there’re well paid well-known Columnists who adapt, replicate, get inspired by the ideas of other Articles, Blogs already published & existing; yet, the said Columnists’ (may) never quote the source, anticipating that, as these columns are being published in the well-known mainstream with a good number of audience reach, its readers would think that this is the only original Column/Article published, alas, that wasn’t/isn’t the case!
Further, I wrote to the erstwhile twitter also, to introduce a plagiarism check tool even on twitter (check my below tweet) when I was on twitter, because, again, as per the arbitrarily assigned non-subscription based blue ticks earlier, & due to followers reach, the readers sometimes might get the impression that that’s the original tweet, although, that wasn’t the case either!.png)
Even likes of YouTube may’ve distributed hundreds of millions of dollars to Users (under their no. of views/clicks == ka-ching monetary policy) who would’ve easily fallen under the above said purview, as on this also, I've already written another blog why Google might be wrong in distributing money via above policy, citing concealed plagiarism. Furthermore, though mere abstract themes or ideas can’t be generally contested, yet, whether in the mainstream or otherwise, we can discern the similarity between several themes produced, written, directed, in which case, according to Harvard guidelines, that’s also the classical cases of Plagiarism. And what if Tech Giants themselves were/are involved in hiding original data, as I wrote in one of my previous blog, as how google search engine might’ve hidden some of my mammoth-massive poetries, blogs published under ‘jpranavc’, until, the day I brought into the notice of both Blogger & Google via feedback & email, thus making me to ponder, how would’ve even tools alike Turnitin worked then online to its fullest? Why it happened, only google search tech executives can answer! I never received the reply, but yes, they corrected this anomaly initially.
Now, why I’ve given you the above examples? Because there're two roads, that lead us to the answer, alas, from it only one can be chosen:
- · Is the definition or the scope of plagiarism has been unnecessarily expanded w.r.t. Verbatim or Mosaic Plagiarism or Inadequate Paraphrase clause, by including under its purview even broader terms alike abstract ideas or themes? OR,
- · Cleverly, the mainstream always decided suo moto of which Careers to be built or erected or published, despite knowing the presence of such justifiable plagiarism clauses!
This, you must decide!
© Pranav Chaturvedi 2023