Nova DBA resigns in plagiarism scandel

Jacqueline R. Griffith seemed to be flourishing as a tenured assistant professor in economics and finance at Kean University in New Jersey — that is, until another member of her department accused her of having plagiarized sizable portions of her doctoral dissertation.

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She resigned late Friday, as both Kean, a public university in Union, and Nova Southeastern University, an independent institution in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., which granted her a doctorate in business administration, were investigating the plagiarism accusation.

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Her former faculty adviser, Alan Gart, who left Nova about six years ago and moved to Pennsylvania, confirmed that he had received a call from Ms. Griffith in January or early February, saying, “I did something bad; I copied,” and asking him to read some redone pages.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/14/education/14professors.html?ref=nyregion

 

A sad story...perfect example of how cheating can cause definite harm. You would think she would have learned from her father's run in with plagiarism.

Thanks for the link.

 

I found this to be more disturbing than the Nova DBA:

"deemed six theses to warrant rewriting"? So we caught you plagiarizing, just rewrite the theses and everything will be ok?

 

If it was only a matter of impropper citations, then a re-write and some remediation would be in order. Sloppy work isn't exactly theft, and it should have been caught in process, but I'll bet it's more common than most think.

If it was outright theft of anothers work, then I agree with you. They should be hung from the proverbial yard arm.

 

My answer as an advisor

I advise a number of student thesis/dissertation projects at the undergrad and grad level. My answer is simple - I submit all of these documents to "turnitin.com". While the service isn't perfect - I do this for the student's and my own sake. Some students need to learn about how to do citations. Also, I don't want to look like an incompetent advisor by passing copied work.

Regards -Andy

 

Agreed, but it looks like severe academic fraud though, as the original author of the dissertation stated that 90% of the narrative in the document was copied. That's no minor mistake or improper citation.

Dave

 

Can the university revoke her DBA?

 

YES! Recently a faculty member of Argosy's Psychology doctoral program was found to have plagarized significant parts of her doctoral dissertation. She was terminated from her position and her doctoral degree was revoked
http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4155/is_20060306/ai_n16184232.

 

Yesterday I've heard of a case where UF was recently contacted by an author saying a 2000 UF PhD graduate copied 5 sentences from his work. The Editorial Office ran this graduate's dissertation through 'turnitin.com' and it said that 10% of the work was plagiarized. They are considering revoking that person's PhD.

I'm certainly going to make sure all my citations are correct!

 

5 sentences - wow! It would be easy to accidentally paraphrase a few sentences in the course of an entire dissertation.

I guess running one's dissertation through Turnitin prior to submission wouldn't be a bad idea.

 

Not to hijack the thread, but can someone recommend any software or service to run my own papers through before submitting?
Thanks,

Monte

 

Cronicle of Higher Education
http://chronicle.com/daily/2007/03/2007032904n.htm

 

You can get an individual license with Turnitin. It appears to be more for instructors than individuals, but I suppose you could use it for yourself. You could contact them to see if they offer a license for a single person. I'm not sure how much it costs or how it works.

http://turnitin.com/static/price.html

 

See if your university offers the software to its instructors. My committee chair is running my dissertation through turnitin now.

 

If you cannot get Turnitin you might want to give this a try:

EVE Plagiarism Detection System

http://www.canexus.com/

I have access to both Turnitin and EVE. Found EVE to be useful if ran at maximum search. Turnitin was more accurate however.

 

Nelson Diaz Plagiarism

Faculty members at Nova Southeastern found that Nelson Diaz plagiarized major parts of his dissertation. He also received his doctorate from Nova. He probably will get his degree revoked with the school finally decides to step up and do something about this.

students for TRUTH | Wix.com