ASU professor demoted for SECOND plagerism

Popular ASU professor Whitaker demoted after plagiarism

I thought professor were sacked for this, not just demoted.

Apologies, misspelled "plagiarism" in subject

 

Two things jumped out at me:

and

I don't know the guy and I don't know his work. But it sounds like the university may have felt (at least in the 2011 investigation and probably in this one as well) that he wasn't intentionally plagiarizing material but was just sort of sloppy in some of his citations. The fact that he cited the source but failed to put a direct quote in quotation marks would buttress that claim.

Still, the demotion is a pretty serious blow to a person's career (well beyond the loss of $10,000 in pay per annum). Maybe he should start double checking stuff.

 

Absent any further, more damaging evidence, it looks like he was more careless and lazy than it was an intentional act of plagiarism.

 

I'm more stunned at the guy's salary: $153K for a history prof at a pretty good but not uber elite university? What's going on there?

 

Plagiarism is such regardless of intent. Failing to cite sources, failing to indicate direct quotes, etc. are all forms of it, not just purposely presenting someone else's work as one's own.

That said, unintentional cases of a minor nature can and should be corrected with an apology. Repeated unintentional instances might indicate incompetence, though.

 

Anyone who has ever written a legitimate thesis/dissertation knows full well the responsibilities of academic writing. Plagiarism is unethical. Plagiarism is lying. Plagiarism is stealing. I could understand perhaps a college freshman saying, "Oops, I let that one slip by." However, a guy with a PhD, and this is the second time he is caught "being careless," it's really difficult to believe this was unintentional plagiarism. If I was serving on the committee that dealt with this, I would request that his PhD dissertation be evaluated for plagiarism.

 

And then the entire investigating committee would arch their eyebrows and say:

"Lighten up, Francis."

The points of others here, yes, plagiarism is plagiarism even if unintentional. No one is disputing that this is plagiarism. He admits that it was plagiarism.

However, when doling out employee discipline intent does matter, at least to a certain extent.

It was a sloppy citation. However, this wasn't a self-published Kindle book, either. His book was published by the University of Nebraska Press. Was the error in his original manuscript or was it in error in the editing? I don't know and neither does anyone else here. The final product was flawed and that's his responsibility because his name was printed on it. Presumably, had it been an editing error he would have stated such. But, then again, maybe he just didn't want to look like he was sidestepping culpability. Just because the news report doesn't include something doesn't mean that something wasn't presented to the investigatory committee and weighed as they considered disciplinary action.

As to ASU investigating his PhD dissertation that would really be a bit odd. Why would ASU investigate a dissertation presented and defended at Michigan State? Or are you suggesting that ASU should give Michigan State a call and ask them to start digging into this guy's dissertation to try and find a reason to revoke his doctorate? Sounds a bit more like a witch hunt to me than a serious inquiry.

I'm sure this is the last chance he's going to get. If he pulls this a third time he'll most likely be out the door and I can't imagine very many universities would be lining up to employ him. Personally, I'm glad that ASU is acting with some restraint in dealing with a long time, well respected and relatively high profile professor despite his mistakes. Losing a tenured position due to plagiarism wouldn't just be a loss of a job it would be a loss of a career. And it's a decision that shouldn't be taken lightly particularly if it was unintentional and there is a reasonable expectation that such behavior won't be repeated in the future.