I just realized I may have accidentally plagiarized parts of my undergraduate honors thesis

[seacloud]

I was reading an article recently about some public officials who had been accused of plagiarizing books or their PhD/law school theses, and I noticed something that really scared me.

With some of them, what they did was copy close to verbatim passages from other articles or books which had citations in them, and they cited those same citations in the footnotes, without citing the secondary source (the passages in question were descriptions of a legal case or facts). If it matters, those officials did so in humanities, law, and/or international relations. In contrast, my thesis was in a STEM field.

I was unaware that this is considered plagiarism, and realized that I had done something similar in my undergraduate honors thesis. I had looked at the thesis of a former student in the lab to guide me in how a thesis was written. His work was closely related to mine, and as I was short on time, I ended up writing an introductory and methods section that were most likely, in some sections, extremely similar in wording and style. For the introductory, I tried to paraphrase what he wrote and cite the same sources he did (I did check to see if the sources were accurate) on background information relevant to both of our projects, but I'm sure that a side-by-side look would spot the similarity, as the sections were mostly definitions and descriptions of things such as the structure of DNA and NMR spectroscopy - none of it original work, and neither of us claimed them to be original.

For the methods, as I had used some of the exact same protocols and procedures that he did, I just wrote down what I did but the wording most likely ended up being extremely similar to his, enough to notice, with no citation given for that part because the protocol was just given to me orally by the grad student when I was starting out. I thought this wasn't an issue because the methods section is difficult to phrase in different words if the experimental protocol was the same. I passed the defense and the thesis was approved - my PI didn't notice any similarities.

The parts of the thesis where I branched off in a different direction than that student I wrote without the aid of the previous thesis, and I cited sources as appropriate and reported my own work.

My former PI stores hard copies of his students' theses on a shelf in his lab, and there is another hard copy in the university library, but there are no electronic copies available. I don't have the thesis of that former student with me. What I'm terrified of is that a future undergrad in the same lab might use my and that person's thesis as guides to writing their thesis, notice the similarities, report me to my former PI and/or the honor council, and get my degree revoked for plagiarism. It's been a year since graduation and I'm about to head into grad school.

Do you think I am right to worry? If so, what should I do?

 

 

Edited May 22, 2018 by seacloud

[TakeruK]

I don't think you need to worry. I think what's done is done. Unless you become some political figure or otherwise attract attention, people generally aren't going to be poking around at your history to find ways to accuse you of things like this.

However, I hope you now know that what you did was definitely ethically dubious and would likely count as academic misconduct. It would be minor though. For the future,

- Don't paraphrase what others have said unless you have attributed the work to them. I don't understand what you mean when you said that you didn't claim the introductory material to be original. Unless you cite it, you are claiming that it's original (or that it's something so common knowledge that doesn't require citation). 

- Just because a protocol was taught to you orally does not mean that the protocol itself did not require a citation. In my field (also STEM), when training a new student, we don't always have citations off the top of our head and it's not really helpful to include the citation in the training material. However, when it's time for the student to write up what they did, it is the student's responsibility (and the supervisor's too) to ensure that all methods and protocols are adequately justified and if it's not your idea, then you need to cite the people who came up with the protocol---credit where credit is due (also the paper that describes the protocol often justifies it so you can use that citation to support your decision).

- The methods section is indeed difficult to phrase in different words. I have used the same method now in 12 papers and it is indeed challenging to ensure that you are not copying one of your older versions verbatim. The right thing to do is to say that you are using the method from XYZ (citation) and then give a brief summary, including any modifications you made for this particular application. This way, everything is cited and any paraphrasing you've done is correctly attributed.

[seacloud]

3 hours ago, TakeruK said:

I don't think you need to worry. I think what's done is done. Unless you become some political figure or otherwise attract attention, people generally aren't going to be poking around at your history to find ways to accuse you of things like this.

However, I hope you now know that what you did was definitely ethically dubious and would likely count as academic misconduct. It would be minor though. For the future,

- Don't paraphrase what others have said unless you have attributed the work to them. I don't understand what you mean when you said that you didn't claim the introductory material to be original. Unless you cite it, you are claiming that it's original (or that it's something so common knowledge that doesn't require citation). 

- Just because a protocol was taught to you orally does not mean that the protocol itself did not require a citation. In my field (also STEM), when training a new student, we don't always have citations off the top of our head and it's not really helpful to include the citation in the training material. However, when it's time for the student to write up what they did, it is the student's responsibility (and the supervisor's too) to ensure that all methods and protocols are adequately justified and if it's not your idea, then you need to cite the people who came up with the protocol---credit where credit is due (also the paper that describes the protocol often justifies it so you can use that citation to support your decision).

- The methods section is indeed difficult to phrase in different words. I have used the same method now in 12 papers and it is indeed challenging to ensure that you are not copying one of your older versions verbatim. The right thing to do is to say that you are using the method from XYZ (citation) and then give a brief summary, including any modifications you made for this particular application. This way, everything is cited and any paraphrasing you've done is correctly attributed.

Understood. Reading that article and reflecting back on what I did was definitely a lesson learned. My only fear was that a particularly observant undergrad in the same lab using prior theses as guides may notice and have me reported, though after a Google search my undergrad doesn't seem to have a provision for reporting an already-graduated student or for revoking a degree, though that could be because there was never a case which necessitated it. On the off chance that something does come up (like you said, slim to none chance) I am perfectly willing to make corrections if given the opportunity - I remember after submitting my rough draft, I had missed a few quotation marks and image citations and he just had me correct them on the edit instead of immediately reporting me to honor council, as he knew it was probably just an oversight and I meant no mal-intent.

What I was saying in terms of me not claiming the introduction as original is that I cited the primary sources of my information, and therefore didn't claim the existing body of knowledge as my own. I just happened to use a prior thesis which let me know what pertinent information I should include, and I tried to paraphrase (perhaps not particularly well) that thesis while citing the primary sources, which I now know is improper.

As for the methods, I will be sure to, in future work, cite any sources where it could have come from even if you weren't informed of the source yourself - I never learned that it was necessary until now.

I will carry those lessons to my future work - it only stands to reason that I gained something from this.

 

Edited May 23, 2018 by seacloud

[Sigaba]

3 hours ago, TakeruK said:

I don't think you need to worry. I think what's done is done. Unless you become some political figure or otherwise attract attention, people generally aren't going to be poking around at your history to find ways to accuse you of things like this.

However, I hope you now know that what you did was definitely ethically dubious and would likely count as academic misconduct. It would be minor though. For the future,

I respectfully disagree with @TakeruK (a first time for everything?).

Someone doesn't have to be out to get you personally for you to get caught up in a wider net, especially given the advances in AI/deep learning that are coming on line. The likelihood of you getting caught up in this net may be closer to n% than to 0%. It's up to you to decide if you want to get in front of it now or to play the odds that you won't be held accountable if your miscue is discovered.

What you might do as a first step is to review your UGI's guidelines on plagiarism and then contact anonymously the ombudsmen at your UGI and your graduate program and ask for guidance. If the answers indicate penalties that will be catastrophic for your life plans, you'll have a decision to make. (IMO, your description of what you "most likely" did may not be as beneficial as a more straightforward recitation of the sequence of events: I have recently realized that I did not provide sufficient attribution for materials I used in my honors thesis. What can I do to make things right?)

What ever path you decide to walk, please use this thread to provide updates. 

 

[TakeruK]

5 hours ago, Sigaba said:

I respectfully disagree with @TakeruK (a first time for everything?).

Someone doesn't have to be out to get you personally for you to get caught up in a wider net, especially given the advances in AI/deep learning that are coming on line. The likelihood of you getting caught up in this net may be closer to n% than to 0%. It's up to you to decide if you want to get in front of it now or to play the odds that you won't be held accountable if your miscue is discovered.

To be honest, I am not 100% sure I agree with myself here either. This is indeed a tricky line and @Sigaba is right that if people using machine pattern recognition on publicly available data (maybe your thesis isn't online now but that doesn't mean it can't be scanned and uploaded later) then you might get "caught" even when not targeted. And @Sigaba is right that you have to decide whether you should get in front of it now or determine it's not worth it.

In my answer above, I thought about both sides and I gave my answer to "not worry about it" because I thought that in your case, there is little benefit to coming forward now and the consequences of being caught would be small (unless you are a high profile figure in the future). I had a busy afternoon and didn't fully elaborate so I apologize for the oversight. Ultimately, it is your decision based on your choices of risk taking which path you should follow.

For transparency, here's what led me to think it would not be worth it if I was in your situation. Hope this is more helpful for you to make the right decision for yourself:

1. Like I said above, even if you are caught in a wide net, I'd imagine many other people will be found with similarly minor offenses. So, unless you were being targeted, you would be among many others who made similar mistakes and I don't think the consequences will be that severe. This is purely conjecture though, so take it with a grain of salt. However, if you do become a high profile person and is targeted, then even the tiniest slip-up will/can be magnified to attack you (see: Clinton's emails).

2. Bringing up this case might not actually lead to anything that will protect you in the future. The school might just brush it off now but that doesn't absolve you of being caught in the future.

3. If your school's thesis repository is like mine, then every entry is permanent. That is, if I was in your shoes and now, 1 year later, I wanted to correct my PhD thesis intro, I would submit a new version. The library would then host both versions, the original that I defended and a new version (after getting approval from whatever protocol). So, this doesn't protect you from something like Sigaba describes either---a web trawling deep learning net would still find the original work and although it will look slightly better that you self-reported and corrected, an enemy can still make a point that you were dishonest in the past.

4. So, ultimately, I see very little benefit in self-reporting. You lose the chance to do damage control via self-report, but since the damage level would be tiny (except if you are a high profile person but then see #1 and #3), there's little need to damage control.

Just my thoughts on what I would do. You'd make the best choice for yourself.

[Hope.for.the.best]

22 hours ago, seacloud said:

I was unaware that this is considered plagiarism, and realized that I had done something similar in my undergraduate honors thesis. I had looked at the thesis of a former student in the lab to guide me in how a thesis was written. His work was closely related to mine, and as I was short on time, I ended up writing an introductory and methods section that were most likely, in some sections, extremely similar in wording and style. For the introductory, I tried to paraphrase what he wrote and cite the same sources he did (I did check to see if the sources were accurate) on background information relevant to both of our projects, but I'm sure that a side-by-side look would spot the similarity, as the sections were mostly definitions and descriptions of things such as the structure of DNA and NMR spectroscopy - none of it original work, and neither of us claimed them to be original.

For the methods, as I had used some of the exact same protocols and procedures that he did, I just wrote down what I did but the wording most likely ended up being extremely similar to his, enough to notice, with no citation given for that part because the protocol was just given to me orally by the grad student when I was starting out. I thought this wasn't an issue because the methods section is difficult to phrase in different words if the experimental protocol was the same. I passed the defense and the thesis was approved - my PI didn't notice any similarities.

Do you think I am right to worry? If so, what should I do?

You mentioned that your school does not keep electronic copies, but were you asked to upload a copy for plagiarism checking? If so, then you don't need to worry, because you would have got into troubles already if what you did was problematic. 

If not, then it is difficult to give you good advice here, as it really depends how similar your thesis is to the previous student for the parts of concern. It is true that background information and methods are similar for projects from the same group, but there are always different ways to describe generic information like this. If you did a good paraphrase in your own words, and brought this out in a distinct way from the previous student, then it is not plagiarism even if you used the same references as him. That said, if the style and structure of your writing were very similar to him, e.g. paragraph 1 on DNA structure and paragraph 2 on NMR spectroscopy, then you run the risk of plagiarism, as no 2 people would write about DNA structure and NMR spectroscopy in exactly the same way. 

As @TakeruK pointed out, not referring methods to relevant published studies is another problem. The grad student from your group is so familiar with the procedures that he simply talked you through them, but this does not mean that you don't need proper references. Methods like NMR spectroscopy are usually published, e.g. in Nature Protocols, or at least described in textbooks. It is very important to describe your methods using relevant sources. 

Regardless of what you decide to do next, I hope that you have learnt a good lesson here. In future, allow sufficient time for your writing, as "short on time" will not get you out of troubles if you are accused of plagiarism. It may be a better idea to layout a structure for your writing, before you use others' writing as a guide. This way, you still get to include the information that you need, but in your own style and structure. 

[Sigaba]

9 hours ago, TakeruK said:

For transparency, here's what led me to think it would not be worth it if I was in your situation. Hope this is more helpful for you to make the right decision for yourself:

1. Like I said above, even if you are caught in a wide net, I'd imagine many other people will be found with similarly minor offenses. So, unless you were being targeted, you would be among many others who made similar mistakes and I don't think the consequences will be that severe. This is purely conjecture though, so take it with a grain of salt. However, if you do become a high profile person and is targeted, then even the tiniest slip-up will/can be magnified to attack you (see: Clinton's emails).

2. Bringing up this case might not actually lead to anything that will protect you in the future. The school might just brush it off now but that doesn't absolve you of being caught in the future.

3. If your school's thesis repository is like mine, then every entry is permanent. That is, if I was in your shoes and now, 1 year later, I wanted to correct my PhD thesis intro, I would submit a new version. The library would then host both versions, the original that I defended and a new version (after getting approval from whatever protocol). So, this doesn't protect you from something like Sigaba describes either---a web trawling deep learning net would still find the original work and although it will look slightly better that you self-reported and corrected, an enemy can still make a point that you were dishonest in the past.

4. So, ultimately, I see very little benefit in self-reporting. You lose the chance to do damage control via self-report, but since the damage level would be tiny (except if you are a high profile person but then see #1 and #3), there's little need to damage control.

Just my thoughts on what I would do. You'd make the best choice for yourself.

To @TakeruK 's points.

1. A potential impact of being a fish caught in a wider net is that if a scandal were to engulf a department and school, the stain could seep into one's own professional reputation.

2. This point merits careful thought. Schools, like other institutions, will brush off complicated issues rather than figure out ways to address underlying problems. This unfortunate approach to risk management can also include shooting the messenger. The kind of "cover" that would insulate the OP may not be a sustainable option to her or his school.

4. Arguably, the biggest benefits to self reporting are for the OP's sense of self.

A general comment. IMO @seacloud 's posts in this thread and elsewhere thus far provide a learning opportunity for all of us. How careful should one be in managing one's on-line presence? Why should we do our own due diligence when it comes to learning the rules of the Ivory Tower IRT academic conduct? What should one do if one realizes that one has made mistakes after the fact?

[seacloud]

@TakeruK: I'm inclined to agree, mostly because I think the chances of someone dragging me in front of the honor council are very low, especially considering that it'll be years post-graduation if it ever comes to light (I have seen people getting in trouble years later, though they tend to be graduate-level theses and reported because they plagiarized literature that the accuser is familiar with), the violations, if I did commit them, are minor and affect mostly the background/methods, and the only people who could possibly notice what I did are undergrads (1-2 a year at most, and my PI is in his 60s) working in the same lab as I did writing honors theses (and even then, they most likely won't notice as it would require reading both of the theses at the same time, might not recognize the problems, and/or won't report). My undergrad does not seem to have a provision for reporting incidents that happened after the student graduated, though I don't know if that's just because they've never had it happen. I would never go into politics or public office anyways. Of course, my hope is that my thesis begins its rot into obscurity while I focus my efforts on doing better next time, though if for any reason there is attention drawn towards it I hope that my former PI will allow me to make corrections and treat me in good faith instead of making moves to uproot my life.

@Hope.for.the.best: Neither of us submitted through plagiarism detection software. I do remember that our theses were structurally similar at points (with me adding in/removing sections that were relevant/irrelevant to my own work), and that I made (perhaps feeble) attempts at paraphrasing.

@Sigaba: I say "most likely" because I don't remember what the previous student wrote (and as there are no electronic copies, I cannot get access to one without traveling back to my school), so I don't know how well I paraphrased things. Perhaps I paraphrased well enough for it to be a non-issue; I am just not sure. I did not notice any shift in tone in my own paper at any point, though that is more common in STEM, where there is less of an individual "voice" in writing style.

Like I said though, whether I get away with it or not, it's a learning experience for me in terms of learning about what is appropriate citation practice and how not to repeat this in the future.

Edited May 24, 2018 by seacloud

[Almaqah Thwn]

How often do undergrad theses even get read? Even in STEM? Even at my lower ranked grad program, in the teacher assistants' lounge we had a bunch of master's theses and we just used them for paper weights or for laptop props, for when students wanted to pretend to have a standing desk.  

[itsjoya]

A good citation may save you, have you acknowledge the resource where you got it? 

[seacloud]

12 hours ago, Almaqah Thwn said:

How often do undergrad theses even get read? Even in STEM? Even at my lower ranked grad program, in the teacher assistants' lounge we had a bunch of master's theses and we just used them for paper weights or for laptop props, for when students wanted to pretend to have a standing desk.  

Mostly, I'm concerned about another undergrad in my lab in later years reading both mine and the one that I used as a guide but ended up paraphrasing rather closely at the same time as to guide their own thesis-writing (so, doing the same thing I did - I also noticed similarities between theses but didn't report anything because I thought it was completely appropriate), and then reporting me to my PI and/or the honor council, who may or may not investigate (like I said, I already graduated). It's very unlikely but not entirely impossible.

[Daniel.Scribbler]

Obviously, you plagiarized unintentionally. You were lucky to escape the punishment because it is often severe. It would be a tough decision to request rewriting your thesis, but such a deed would be an honorable one. You can read about plagiarism cases among UK universities' nursing students and decide if you have to do something about it. https://plagiarismsearch.com/blog/plagiarism-cases-in-college.html 

Edited May 31, 2018 by Daniel.Scribbler
improper insertion of a link

[seacloud]

Thanks for all of your responses!

There are a few things I want to say though:

- As I don't have a copy of the thesis that I used as a guide (and as I said, there are no electronic copies), I don't know how well I paraphrased. It could be that the paraphrase was good enough to escape notice. It could also not. I wouldn't even have the proof necessary to self-report/accuse. I had honestly thought I was not doing anything wrong by trying to paraphrase and then citing the primary sources.

- As some people have noted, the chances of another undergrad reading my thesis and the other thesis at the same time, while noticing and being bothered enough about the similarities to report them are very slim, especially given that it would be years after I graduated. While obviously this hasn't prevented some other people from getting their degrees revoked, I don't recall verbatim lifting entire passages - I just recall trying to paraphrase the other thesis where there was background information relevant to my project and citing what he cited. Most people who have had their degrees revoked were at the master's or PhD level who plagiarized, usually by verbatim copying. Obviously, I have learned better citation practices from this.

- I don't plan on becoming a public figure, and not just because of this; being a public figure can be extremely detrimental to one's mental well-being, as every move you make will be watched and you will have no privacy.

Because I cannot even ascertain exactly what I did, I won't say anything for now, count my blessings, and do better with citations next time. If somehow I was able to see exactly what I did and believe that I would be better off making a self-report, then I could do that as well.

Edited June 4, 2018 by seacloud