Plagiarism, Ethics and Morality

How do we respond when we spot unauthorized publication of writing and images?

Yesterday, as I was working through the draft queue as editor of a publication, I came across an article that seemed a bit off. It seemed too polished to be someone sharing their individual thoughts and was written in a third-person voice that is uncommon to find on Medium.

When I say, “too polished”, I am not referring to writing ability. There are many astoundingly great writers on Medium as well as in this particular publication. It just sounded like something purposefully tailored as either a response to a graduate level business studies essay prompt or something written for a business blog.

So, on a hunch, I highlighted about 250 words from the middle of the article and searched Google. Yep. Exact match to a business blog post from an author with a different name, initially published several years ago.

My background has taught me to not jump to accusation, so my response was a personal note to the author saying that we would hold off on publishing at this point because it seemed to a verbatim reprint of another article and provided a link to the blog post.

I acknowledged that people sometimes write under pen names, and Medium does not prohibit you from publishing your prior work (keyword being “your”). I asked for the author to provide some substantiation that they were the original author and encouraged them the use the canonical link function.

The article has since disappeared from the Medium platform entirely.

This reminded me of a similar situation a year ago as I was completing my master’s in business. A discussion post assignment in a class studying game theory required us to provide a short video clip of a movie or television show that illustrated the difference of a simultaneous versus sequential game.

We were to, “Provide a short synopsis” of the clip in order to provide a frame of reference for those not familiar. I chose a scene from Breaking Bad, wrote a paragraph to describe the characters and situation; then I went on to a much longer analysis of the various “games” within the scene.

Once I posted my work, I went to read and comment on others. One person had chosen the movie Reservoir Dogs. A good classic go-to for game theory in the movies. However, the bulk of their post used some strange slang and made oddly opinionated references to parts of the scene. It just seemed a bit off from the norm of our class discussion. So, highlight and search. And, yep. Verbatim copy from a movie fan site.

So began my first inner consideration of how to deal with the fact that I now knew that someone had plagiarized another’s work.

Of course, the university had a very strict policy against plagiarism. However, was it my responsibility to call it out?

My own moral code and set of personal values places a lot of weight on allowing others their freedoms. I try to never force my morality on others. Looking out from that particular lens, I didn’t feel that it was my place in this case to publicly or even privately call the person out.

There was a lot of ambiguity in the direction to, “Provide a synopsis”. I didn’t feel like I was in a place to interpret the professor’s direction and split hairs over definitions of “write vs. provide”. Plus, it was so glaringly obvious that I had to assume that if I saw it, then so did the professor.

This particular situation hinged on an internal and moral consideration. Ultimately I decided that saying nothing from my given role as a student was an acceptable action (or lack of action).

Fast forward to the next quarter. Now the class is an advanced analysis of U. S. tax code. The deliverable was a roughly 800-word discussion post providing informed opinion on a particular scenario. The post itself wasn’t difficult but gaining enough awareness to synthesize an opinion was.

To garner insight, I frequently consulted not only our text and tax law, but also tax and business blog sites that might provide some “plain speak” to help me understand the dense subject matter.

That is how I noticed that one of the other student’s posts sounded pretty familiar. I knew that I had just read something very, very similar in researching my work. In fact, it was verbatim from one of the blog sites.

This situation had a different feel to it. I still had the same values and moral code that strongly urged me to stay out of people’s business. However, this time the act of using someone else’s work seemed more insidious and inexcusable.

The discussion of business and tax law uses a lot of the same vocabulary and similar contexts. It wasn’t obvious at first take that this was an un-cited use of someone else’s work. I just happened to catch it by coincidence. Also, this represented the entire weight of the assignment rather than an adjunct to help set a scenario.

I realized that this now presented not as a simple moral problem, but now had ethical connotations as well. My role as bearer of this information shifted compared to the prior scenario. Did I owe the university and my fellow students an obligation to call out this act?

I lost sleep over the decision, but ultimately decided that the integrity of the university and the MBA program was called in question to allow this act of plagiarism to occur, and as I might be one of only a few people knowledgeable of the act that I had a duty to report it. I called the professor and relayed what I had discovered and then provided some documentation outlining the situation.

The professor seemed almost disinterested, and I don’t know what became of the situation. However, I knew that I probably done the right thing. It just didn’t seem very cut and dried at the time.

Now, as to yesterday, there was no quandary. As an editor my ethical obligation to the publication always outweighs my personal stance. Any version of plagiarism is a violation of Medium’s policies and an obvious red flag for the publication.

Personally though, I can’t get over the fact that someone would intentionally present someone else’s writing as their own on Medium. I can’t believe they would do it in a university class either; but, for some reason, it seems even more heinous to do so on Medium.

I am also now second guessing myself a little on whether I should have reported the person directly to Medium. I suppose many may have done so. However, I wanted to allow (at least briefly) for the possibility (however slim) that this person had a right to publish the work.

Now the article is gone. If someone throws trash on the ground and then picks it back up after you call them on it, is it still littering?

Rest assured though, my awareness is heightened with regard to this particular writer; and to the possibility that someone would actually steal another person’s work and pass it off as their own here on Medium.

Plagiarism is 100% wrong. But sometimes how we should react to its occurrence isn’t always obvious.

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Timothy Key spent over 26 years in the fire service as a firefighter/paramedic and various fire chief management roles. He firmly believes that bad managers destroy more than companies, and good managers create a passion that is contagious. Compassion, grace and gratitude drive the world; or at least they should. Follow me on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter, and join the mail list.