plagiarism and you.... (and me!)

Having spent the past few weeks marking undergraduate research papers, I have gained a new perspective on issues of plagiarism. While none of my students were found guilty of stealing intellectual property, others in my course were and it makes me wonder whether there is anything we can actually do about it? If it were not for Turnitin.com, many of these cases of plagiarism would go unnoticed. I can only think of one paper handed into one of my esteemed colleagues that so blatantly plagiarized the work of other authors that it was plainly obvious without outside help.

I can’t help but remember an article I read on the Toronto Star Online that dealt with plagiarism. The article talks of cryptomnesia or unconscious plagiarism and made the point that it is quite difficult for people to tell where their ideas came from. The term cryptomnesia was first coined in 1900 by Theodore Flournoy but has only recently garnered scientific attention. It seems that memory is very reliant on the sensory perceptions that inevitably accompany life events. Other than page colour or font, such perceptions are absent when reading which makes it difficult for the brain to keep the sources of different ideas straight.

The implications are huge! Any student that gets caught plagiarizing could possibly use the unconscious plagiarism excuse. How would we really know if they’re telling the truth or just taking advantage of science? Damn that science!

Is there anything that can be done? Probably not, unless we wait for science to unwreak the havoc it has caused within ivory towers the world over. In the meantime, if (and this is probably the biggest ‘if’ I’ve ever uttered – and by uttered I mean wrote) any of my work is ever published, I will make sure it is on blue paper with white writing. And if I come across any written material in these colours, rest assured I’ll hunt those people down for plagiarism. Fortunately, my first target – the Toronto Maple Leafs – have deep pockets.

Fired for blogging?!? CNN vs. DXM

Randomly surfing the internet usually turns up odd and interesting tidbits of semi-useless information. Usually, such tidbits are not bloggable material due to their decidedly non-historical nature but, every once in a while, one stumbles across something interesting or relevant (or even both!), in this case the story of an unassuming blogger who was fired by CNN for (you guessed it) blogging. Such a story seemed perfectly suited to discussion in our digital history forum so here are the basics:

Chez, the Deus Ex Malcontent, worked as a producer on American Morning on CNN. Having already worked for CNN for three years, Chez decided he needed his own personal creative outlet so he started a blog. He worked for CNN for almost two years after starting Deus Ex Malcontent, all the while earning consistent praise from his superiors who thought he was on track to become an executive producer.

Eventually, Deus Ex Malcontent caught the eye of the Huffington Post, an entirely online 'newspaper' that relies on bloggers for content, who asked Chez to be a regular contributor. He agreed and his popularity skyrocketed. Unfortunately, Chez' growing popularity caught the attention of his boss at CNN who called him in to discuss the matter before firing him the next day. He was informed that a single line in CNN's employee handbook stated that any writing done for anyone other than CNN had to be cleared by the network. Chez had little input into the daily editorial content of American Morning but was still fired for his "opinionated blog".[1]

Following his dismissal Chez was surprised to learn that a number of things: (1) CNN thought he was their only employee blogging under his own name, (2) that CNN employs people to specifically research the online activities and publications of its employees, (3) that he was not the only CNN employee to be fired for blogging – a 29 year old intern had also been fired for blogging about her positive experiences at CNN on a password-protected online journal, and (4) that he was fired for violating that single line from the handbook but also for the content of his liberal writings.

To be honest, I am not surprised that the national terror network CNN would fire an employee for having liberal views. If they are worried that employing such people could possibly tarnish their reputation as an unbiased news outlet then they should have their online Gestapo do a little more homework. CNN is already biased, no huge conspiracy there. But, don’t listen to me, I know nothing, listen to these people.[2] One only needs to google “CNN bias” and wade through a few of the over half a million results to find evidence of their this.

Fortunately for me, my MA in history already makes me practically unemployable so I don’t suppose the contents of this blog will matter one way or the other….. so, would you like fries with that?





[1] Deus Ex Malcontent: Monday, February 18, 2008 - Say What You Will (Requiem for a TV News Career). (Return to text).

[2] Cable News Lies, Counterbias, Honest Reporting, Christian Witness Ministries, even Wikipedia has a page on CNN’s bias though they can’t seem to figure out who’s biased against who, or satisfy your own curiosity and google “CNN bias”. (Return to text).

what's a little perspective got to do with anything??

Perspective. What does it mean? What makes my perspective better than yours? Can it really be qualified in this way? Doesn’t perspective necessarily imply a personal attachment that cannot really be deemed better or worse than any other? I may not think very highly of Apple Computers but who cares what I think, I am but a lowly history grad student who should probably blog more often. Are you more willing to listen to what I have to say if I stick to historical subjects? What if I try to convince you that Italy is part South America or that the Boer War was actually fought on the glaciers of Antarctica? Do you believe me now? I hope not.

Perspective is useful because everyone’s is unique. For every person that hates Macs, there are people who hate PCs. For every person who loves Windows, there are probably two people who love Linux. For every person who believes OSX is unique, there are thousands of people who recognize its Unix shell. Basically, our world is enriched by all of these perspectives.

Think of a map of the world in your head….(do this now, I’ll wait……) Chances are that the look of your visual map will depend on where you grew up. Canadians will visualize a map that looks quite different from one visualized by Australians. Are they both correct? They probably are. Do they look completely different? They most likely do. Can we learn something from both? Most certainly we can. The map example is easy to expand on, thanks to a great little site called Worldmapper. It takes world maps and distorts them according to various criteria. It’s ingenious actually. For example, have you ever wondered what a map of the world based on alcohol consumption would look like? Well, wonder no more! How about if a map based on nuclear arms? Oh come on, don’t tell me you’re surprised?! Ok, one more…. How about a map based on the number of girls not attending primary school?

Ok, that was fun but why does it matter? Well, really it doesn’t matter, other than to make the point that perspective changes everything. What to Al Gore is an Inconvenient Truth is a convenient lie to others. [1] Most people not only believe it occurred but are saddened by the Holocaust but every once in a while, some whacko, reputable though they may seem, tries to convince people that it never happened. And don’t even get me started on poor Pluto.

In this increasingly digital world, perspective can take on new forms. The maps are again a good example. They take a classic image and manipulate it to show all kinds of information that has obvious value but would otherwise be difficult to illustrate. The problem is that digital images can be manipulated so these perspectives become vulnerable. The thing is that perspective is always subject to queries of right or wrong, true or false, yes or no. Opinion is hard to qualify and is necessarily subjective. That doesn’t mean it’s any more or less useful, just that we need to be aware of it.

So what’s a historian to do with all this perspective??? Should I even bother trying to be a historian when all I contribute to the academic world can be written off as my own crazy perspective? I guess all we can really do is document as much of it as we can and let our readers decide which version is most believable. After all, history’s purpose is to further humanity’s story and so I might as well toss my two cents in while I can. It’s better to be known as crazy then not be known at all.






[1]Ahhhh those crazy free Quebecois.. what will they think of next? See other similar rants articles here, here and here. (Return to text).

Taking the Wiki out of Wikipedia

I can't even count how many times I've heard professors impugn Wikipedia. I was somewhat shocked and mildly worried about shenanigans when Bill encouraged my fellow Digital Historians to use Wikipedia during class. Even I, a lowly MA candidate and History 020 TA, have told my students not to use it in their papers. Just because I acknowledge that many of them start their research there doesn't mean I can accept it as a credible source for a scholarly paper. Wikipedia is far too democratic to be considered reliable and scholarly. While true that much of its content is accurate and often written by credible experts in their respective fields, anyone can edit these entries. Just because most of the outrageous nonsense that is posted is eventually caught and corrected doesn’t make Wikipedia reliable. I might truly believe that George W. Bush really is a “Muppet in a chimp suit” but that doesn't mean that I should be able to cite such a reference in an essay on American history (though it would likely be a pretty sweeeeeet paper).[1]

Enter Veropedia, a not-too-distant cousin of Wikipedia, launched a few weeks ago. Veropedia is more-or-less the same as Wikipedia except for one fundamental (and thus immense) difference - its content is verified by experts . Articles can be written by anyone and submitted, much like Wikipedia. The difference is that when you submit an article to Veropedia it isn't posted online right away but first screened for accuracy by experts in that field. If the article passes, it is posted online and cannot be edited by users on the fly.

Could it really be true?!? An online encyclopaedia that is accurate? It’s like Halloween and Christmas in November!! Or not.... Just because it’s there doesn’t make its use ok. My mom owns a real encyclopaedia – a multi-volume set of regal looking books that takes up a whole section of shelves in her library. They might look pretty but I couldn’t even cite them in my high school papers. You just don’t use encyclopaedias for serious research. So what to do about Veropedia? I love the idea but is it really practical? Just because this resource exists doesn’t mean that the rules of academia will change overnight to take advantage of it, especially when you read articles like this gem from the Toronto Star. Should we really be trying so hard to come up with reasons why plagiarism isn’t our fault? Or has the internet democratized knowledge so much that our brains no longer draw a line between our own knowledge and that which we get from others?

There’s another problem...Veropedia, unlike Wikipedia, accepts corporate advertising. Amazon ads appear on Veropedia pages, whereas Wikipedia relies on donations. I can’t help but feel uneasy about this. What influence might Amazon or any other future sponsors, have on Veropedia’s content? ‘Accuracy’ can easily be tainted by money. What happens when users start blindly trusting Veropedia’s content? The door of corporate manipulation will be flung open and who knows what might emerge. An article about Amazon’s myriad benefits over other similar retailers like Chapters or Barnes and Noble? An article explaining that Coke will rot your teeth but Pepsi will make them whiter? How about an exposé on the dangers of generic medicines relative to their name brand doppelgangers? Or an article claiming that it was Marco Matterazzi who head butted Zinedine Zidane in last year’s World Cup Final?[2] Where does the madness end?

The bottom line is that we’re still talking about an online source. Your chances of seeing a flying pig are higher than your chances of seeing Veropedia cited in an academic paper. However, the majority of people will benefit immensely from this source. The internet is so ingrained in people’s lives that there’s no sense trying to convince them to not use it for research. So, I take solace in knowing that at least there’s one factually reliable source out there, even though it won’t make my academic career any easier.







[1]TheStar.com – Wikipedia: the Next Generation. (Return to text).

[2] So maybe this last example doesn’t have any real significance to my rant on corporate manipulation but I couldn’t help but include it so I could also point out that Italy won that World Cup. Forza Italia! You can check out the actual incident here (Return to text).

I came, I saw, I blogged...?

HeLLO UNIVERSE! (.... umm was that an echo?)

Ok, I jest - clearly I'm talking only to those lucky enough to be taking Digital History and few random friends who humour me by telling me they'll check up on my new project here but actually won't. No discrimination, no judgement so hello all!

As you may have noticed, I'm new to this whole blogging thing. In fact this is my first ever post and so far I feel like I've expended all of my creative capacity on the title (I know you loved it, be honest). The sad thing is that I'm not lying or exaggerating, it's practically October and everyone else has already posted at least a few times and I'm still left mining my friends for inspiration.[1] Fortunately, Dr Turkel assures me that this on-going assignment is a quality over quantity exercise so I am not completely irredeemable (unless irredeemable isn't a word in which case maybe I am?).

I think my problem is linked to a preoccupation with making some profound, historically-relevant discovery that I can share with my faithful readers. Fortunately, I consider myself a relatively computer-savvy person and hope to offer some insights on the 'digital' part of the course while I wait for some historical inspiration. The problem is digitalization is moving far too fast even for me. Windows Vista has returned me to a rookie level just when I was beginning to ace XP and accept that it may not be the Beelzebub to Saint Windows 2000 I had insisted it was in 2001.

Take html for example, I remember being introduced to the revolutionary? non mundane language in middle school (*gasp) over a decade ago. My first website was pretty horrible - highlighter yellow font on a bright blue background filled with a random mosaic of pictures. Yet I'm amazed at how much one can do with a basic understanding of html [2] and even more amazed at how many more web-programming languages have popped up since.

My point here is this as historians, we deal with the past - we study it, learn from it and tell our students not to write what-if history because they'll fail we just don't like the dynamic nature of the future. There's something extremely comforting about the fact that our chosen subject doesn't change fundamentally every few days, weeks, months or even years. Sure, new generations of historians will offer their own interpretations but the bottom line is that the events they're talking about are static.

The increasing digitization of everything forces us to enter a new and far scarier world. A world that changes all the time! Robespierre will always be associated with the French Revolution but soon we will think of our hard drive capacity in terabytes [3] instead of gigabytes. As soon as I master using Python to program spiders, spidering will no longer be useful because some newer and possibly simpler probably more complete will be more widely used. There's something innately scary about the whole thing. I like having a super fast computer with endless amounts of storage but I don't want to be the one who has to explain how it's gotten faster or why it will be considered obsolete in a matter of months. What I can tell you is that the first 'pc' was introduced by IBM in 1981 but the first digital computer, called the ENIAC or the Electronic Numerical Integrator And Computer, was unveiled in 1946. The World Wide Web has only been around since the 1980s but the internet has been around since the 1950s. Bottom line? it may be more fun and less intense to look backward but if we don't look forward we won't even know what we missed.

So thanks for making it this far... I think I just needed to get the first-post-gitters out of the way before moving on. Here's hoping next time will be soon better!


Cheers!



[1] The most historically relevant of these suggestions is an exposé on the greatness of our friend FGD. Sad I know but don't worry Gracie, I'll be polling the people and one day soon you will be able to bask in your own glory.

[2] The other day I was playing around with graphics when I remembered a little something I learned a few years ago that is no longer new or glorious but I'm including it anyway (so if you don't have little 'friends' raining down your screen then I did something wrong!) because, honestly, it's still more than mildly entertaining.

[3] A terabyte is roughly one thousand gigabytes.