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Research vs. Cheating:
Lately respected authors such as Doris Kerns Goodwin and Steven Ambrose have been accused of "lifting" other peoples' work, passing it off as their own. And what about all those students who acquire their term papers over the Internet? Who draws the line between research and cheating?
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Zavala [host]: So is it possible to cheat or to plagiarize and simply not realize that you're doing something wrong? You just don't understand the ramifications of what you've done?
Kusala: I would say no. I think what's happening, again, from Buddhist perspective, you're breaking two precepts. You're stealing and you're also lying. When a person lies, they invalidate reality, which makes it even harder for other people to get out of their delusion of stealing. We all have stuff, we're attached to our stuff. When you borrow or take somebody's stuff, you're creating suffering for them as well as yourself, as it turns out, for the student who was expelled.
Marlow [host]: But as you're studying, you're absorbing ideas and some of those you're going to repeat in your writings, but --
Campbell: -- but you're not going to regurgitate them word for word --
Marlow: -- word for word and paragraph for paragraph.
Campbell: that's the difference, yes.
Josephson: You know, in the old days before Internet, we used to copy from the encyclopedia. You know, you're in the fifth grade and you couldn't even imagine how to word it differently. But today when you're dealing at the college level -- you have an interesting case with Doris Kerns Goodwin because she says her notes were taken so many years ago and it was before she had everything on computer that she actually wrote down a passage that she thought she had written. Let's give credit to that.
I mean, intent is critical, as he says. If that is in fact the case, it isn't stealing in the same way, but it was inadvertently using somebody else's. But these kids, they're using it as excuses. They're tired, they're under pressure. If they think school is pressure, try life.
Zavala: I know, but you go to the Internet today and you can buy ready-made essays on hundreds of topics. We have a whole world out there, a whole system, that's saying, "here, it's easy to do, it's okay." For ten bucks, you know, you've got your term paper done.
Josephson: You can copy videos. You can steal software. The ease of it doesn't change the morality of it. You know, we used to call things temptations. Now we call them pressures.
Zavala: No, but it might confuse --
Josephson: -- they're not confused. Don't be naïve.
Campbell: He wasn't confused. He was grateful that he was caught and I thought that was very telling, that he said it was a good lesson for him, that he realized he had done wrong. I think most kids are not confused and I think there should be penalties.
Marlow: Makes it tough for the professor, for the teacher.
Josephson: Well, now they have the software --
Campbell: -- I don't think it should be tough. I mean, I think in terms of whether to put someone out or not --
Marlow: -- no, whether they could find out whether it's plagiarism or not. (laughter)
Josephson: In Kansas City, a teacher caught almost fifty students in plagiarism like this. She penalized them and then the Board of Education reversed her decision. That's the world we're living in.--
Campbell: -- with the pressure of the parents.
Josephson: It's not only an issue of -- you talk about pressure. The pressure is against integrity, not for integrity. And the biggest problem is the parents who, instead of supporting the teachers, are out there threatening to sue them.
Marlow: We'll do one someday on executive ethics. (laughter)
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