Saturday, May 9, 2009

Boening, Meehan, plagiarism

Plagiarism in the news: the Tuscaloosa News has available for download the University of Alabama dissertations of Carl Boening and William Meehan. Meehan's abstract includes this acknowledgement:

Using a case study and content analysis design, this study replicated at a regional comprehensive institution a study of sabbatical leave patterns that had first been conducted at The University of Alabama in 1996 by Carl Boening.
The phrasing — "a study . . . that had first been conducted" — is odd. It suggests not that Meehan is doing the same kind of thing but that he and Boening are doing the same thing, with Boening having gone first.

A glance at the almost identical tables of contents of the two dissertations makes clear that Meehan is indeed replicating. A couple of samples from Chapters Five:

Boening:
The current chapter was designed to provide a summary of the study and to explore the conclusions and recommendations for further study and practice that may be drawn from the analysis of the data. The chapter is divided into five sections: Summary of the Study, Conclusions, Recommendations for Further Study, Recommendations for Practice, and Chapter Summary.
Meehan:
The current chapter was designed to provide a summary of the study and to offer conclusions and recommendations for further study. The chapter is divided into five sections: Summary of the Study, Conclusions, Discussion, Recommendations, and Chapter Summary.
Boening:
Six research questions were presented in the study for analysis:

Research Question 1:

What were the sabbatical approval patterns, by discipline, at the University of Alabama . . . ?

Research Question 2:

What was the typical requested length of sabbatical period?
Meehan:
Seven research questions were presented in the study for analysis:

Research Question 1: What were the sabbatical leave patterns, by discipline, at Jacksonville State University . . . ?

Research Question 2: What was the typical requested length of sabbatical period?
And so on.

And so on.

These samples make clear that Meehan is not doing the same kind of thing; he is borrowing without attribution the content of Boening's dissertation, with Jacksonville State's sabbatical data replacing data from the University of Alabama.

Is it possible to plagiarize even after acknowledging a source? Yes. Is it possible to plagiarize bland, everyday prose? Yes. Is it possible that a committee saw nothing wrong with replicating a dissertation, even down to its sentences? Yes, in which case Meehan's dissertation, like that of Southern Illinois president Glenn Poshard, raises questions about the standards of scholarship in education programs. But by any standard of academic integrity, William Meehan's dissertation involves plagiarism.

More:

Yes, its [sic] plagiarism (Tuscaloosa News)
Carl Boening dissertation (PDF download, 3.8 MB)
William Meehan dissertation (PDF download, 3.5 MB)

comments: 2

Geo-B said...

It is a revelation to compare Menard's Don Quixote with Cervantes'. The latter, for example, wrote...:

...truth, whose mother is history, rival of time, depository of deeds, witness of the past, exemplar and advisor to the present, and the future's counselor.

Written in the seventeenth century, written by the "lay genius" Cervantes, this enumeration is a mere rhetorical praise of history. Menard, on the other hand, writes:

...truth, whose mother is history, rival of time, depository of deeds, witness of the past, exemplar and advosor to the present, and the future's counselor.

History, the mother of truth: the idea is astounding. Menard, a contemporary of William James, does not define history as an inquiry into reality but as its origin. Historical truth, for him, is not what has happened; it is what we have judge to have happened. The final phrases-exemplar and advisor to the present, and the future's counselor--are brazenly pragmatic.
The contrast in style is also vivid. the archaic style of Menard--quite foreign, after all--suffers from a certain affectation. Not so that of his forerunner, who handles with ease the current Spanish of his time.

Jorge Luis Borges, "Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote"

Michael Leddy said...

For anyone who doesn't recognize the context: Borges' story concerns an imaginary writer who immerses himself in Cervantes' world in an attempt to recreate Don Quixote, word for word.