Issue 33, Fall 2007

William A. McEachern, Editor

Oral Defense

In September, the journal Nature reported that dozens of papers containing apparently plagiarized research were taken down from a popular physics Web site housed at Cornell University. Sixty-seven papers by 15 physicists from four Turkish universities were removed after closer scrutiny revealed the problem. The name of one graduate student was on 40 of the 67 problematic papers. Suspicions were raised when, during the oral defense of his dissertation, he failed to grasp even some basic concepts of physics.

This underscores the value of an oral defense, and it reminds me of an experience I had with a student years ago in an undergraduate class. I assigned a term paper, and the class was small enough that I had students summarize their research in class. I encouraged the rest of the class to ask questions, and I would later chime in with my own. The student in this one case had an interesting topic, but he seemed annoyed with questions—as if to say the answers were obvious. But they weren't, and his vague responses didn't help.

His paper, as later submitted, made a lot more sense and was well written. Because I thought his topic was interesting but was troubled with his class presentation, I decided to pursue his research a bit more. At the college library, I identified what seemed like an especially relevant book on the topic. I found it had been marked with brackets as if to guide a typist, with some words penciled in to string it all together. These markings and edits corresponded exactly to his submitted paper. Not only had he plagiarized nearly all of his paper from this single source, he failed to erase the evidence. Were it not for his prickly and vague responses to questions during his class presentation, I doubt I would have uncovered the fraud.

Because plagiarism is even easier in this cut-and-paste Internet age, perhaps we should lean more towards requiring research summaries in class. Most students don't like getting up in front of class, but the experience is valuable for them, and it may offer the instructor an additional check on the provenance of their work. No question, the class would have to be small enough to accommodate the time required (for example, 10-minute presentations by 20 students would fill four 50-minute classes). Because some students may be more inclined to skip classes turned over entirely to such presentations, we could spread them out more so they claim only half a class period.

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