Should I report an accepted PhD thesis in which the literature review is copied verbatim from sources?

Question

While writing the literature review for my doctoral dissertation, I picked up a few recent dissertations on similar topics from the library to get some pointers on references and style. As I was reading some of the articles cited in one of these theses, I discovered that this person had lifted large blocks of text from the cited works verbatim. Although the original works were cited, the borrowed text was not presented as a quote, but used directly in the thesis.

I checked a few more, just out of curiosity, and realized that basically the whole literature review by this author (who graduated with a PhD two years ago) was cut-and-paste verbatim quotes strung together (and who knows how much more of the thesis is plagiarized - I only checked this one chapter).

This really ticks me off, as I (and many students like me) spend a great deal of time reworking cited information into proper coherent explanations for our projects. I happen to know the offending author's advisor pretty well, as we currently work together outside of my graduate program.

Should I say something or should I just let this person get away with plagiarizing large parts of their dissertation?

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Edit:

I still don't know what I will do about this -- no-one wants to be a tattle-tale, and it really isn't any of my business how other people go about getting their doctorates. However, as I am currently writing my dissertation, it really irks me when I see someone else getting away with this, as I know from experience how much hard work goes into writing a PhD thesis.

I just have one more comment -- I ran the chapter in question through the TurnItIn software, which I have access to as an instructor at my institution. The thesis came back as 52% unoriginal. Turnitin only counts exact matches, so the 52% figure doesn't even include some of the paragraphs that I caught, where the author has changed one or two words but kept the sentence structure.

I doubt that there would be any legal consequences, even if I report the thesis for plagiarism -- it is more a question of academic dishonesty and what steps the institution that awarded the degree would take. I will show it to my advisor and see what he says before I do anything.

Answer 1

This is of course a sensitive issue. However, the ethically correct behavior is to notify someone responsible about the problem. Etiquette says to go to the advisor first, as the advisor is the person who, after the author who committed the plagiarism, stands to lose the most from the accusation.

However, if you feel squeamish about doing it by yourself, you can talk to your advisor about the best way to proceed.

The main issue on your part is if you will need to rely on the plagiarizer's advisor for recommendation letters. Then you should definitely proceed with caution, and with the support of your advisor, department administrators, or both.

Of course, make sure that you've done your due diligence before going public with your charges, and to have the evidence with you when you meet with anyone about this matter.

Answer 2

My institution has a commitee in charge of this, does yours not have anything similar? There you can report such findings (even anonymously since the evidence is not depending on the person providing it). They will then decide upon the procedure to be followed.

Revoking a title is not an easy procedure in any case, also as there are large numbers of personal relationships entangled in it. I just know that almost any case where something like this happened, it ended in court.

Answer 3

The person did provide the citations, so for me it is not clear if legally this person did something wrong. I would first try and find this out before taking any steps. Of course, I would not accept this kind of verbatim copying if I were a supervisor. The angle on takes in an article is always a bit different than in the cited work. In addition, paraphrasing the text shows that you have understood what was written.

And be carefull how you deal with this, some people would not appreciate you being a snitch (in their view). However, I agree with @aeismail that it is the scientifically ethical thing to do to at least report this. And do get some backup from your own supervisor/professor.

Answer 4

One possible course of action is to talk to the student's advisor about a "hypothetical," that is, ask him how he would feel if he were told that someone had plagiarized a PhD thesis in such-and-such a way.

One possible result is that he is entirely surprised, or better yet, indignant. Then you can follow up with your secret and tell him the truth about his student.

Another possibility is that he winks and then says something like "yeah, these things happen from time to time." If that's the case, he "knows," and then it's up to you to decide (from a political point of view), whether or not to bring it to his official knowledge.

This idea came from a novel, "Strong Medicine" by Arthur Haley, where a young doctor went to his hospital CEO to inquire about how he should advise a "friend" to report that a senior doctor (his boss) was operating under the influence of drugs. The CEO said, "I don't want to deal with problems from another hospital, but tell your "friend" to keep his mouth shut," then winked at the young doctor and told him how valuable the boss was to his hospital.

The young doctor had his answer.

Answer 5

If I understand you correctly, the only place in which text is known to have been lifted was the literature review. While it is inappropriate to do so, it's possible that only the phrasing can be considered as plagiarized (and even that, like @PaulHiemstra states, is not exactly the case since the author did cite the sources).

In other words, you do not have evidence that the actual research presented in the thesis is original and not lifted from anyone. That means one cannot claim that "large parts of the... dissertation" are plagiarized. Now, in theory, some other content could be plagiarized as well, but I would avoid suggesting this is the case.

Anyway, based on what you know there is nothing which merits a reconsideration of the awarding of the title. At most, the Ph.D. candidate should have been chided for failing to cite clearly enough, and require to resubmit his dissertation so that the literature review is less copy-pasty.

However, the dissertation's readers / examination committee should have picked up on this. They weren't doing their job and that's actually a different problem, which is even more important to address (among other reasons, because of the possibility they may have missed a more material plagiarism)

With that said, I think it is your duty as an academic to act here. My suggestion for the order of actions is as follows:

1. Inform your own advisor of this matter, letting him know you're going to talk to the dissertation author's advisor. Don't ask for his permission or anything - but he might have some relevant cautionary information.
2. Talk to the dissertation author's advisor. Tell him that the dissertation needs to be corrected, or at least an erratum added on all relevant pages in the physical and on-line copies. Ask him to contact his previous advisee (is that a word?) about it, as though he (the advisor) noticed it himself, to make the advisee feel less uncomfortable and more obliged to act.
3. If the advisor agrees, you're done with this part (well, you'll need to check up on him). Stop reading this list
4. Tell him you intend to continue to pursue this despite his refusal.
5. Contact the dissertation author and ask that he address the problem.
6. If the author doesn't agree, write the both of them and threaten to report them (now they're both at fault; maybe the advisor already knew and didn't care).
7. If that doesn't work, try your grad student union / junior researcher union, and specifically your department's union rep. Don't have one? Too bad... anyway, the union might have some ability to apply pressure and the interest to uphold academic professionalism; and ratting someone out to his union is not as bad as ratting him out to the university authorities.
8. Talk to someone like the vice-dean in charge of graduate researchers, or a corresponding relatively-low-level official in charge of oversight of Ph.D. candidates' academic progress. (I mean someone in an academic capacity, not an administrative one).
9. Talk to your dean / department head.
10. If all else fails, publish an open letter. Make sure it's very polite, vitriol-free, makes no unfounded assumptions and does not demand anyone's head on a platter, merely that the issue be addressed and that the principles of professional academic behavior be better adhered to.

With this resolved, consider trying to talk to whoever in your university is in charge of appointing dissertation reader / examiner committees for Ph.D. candidates. There should be some kind of effort on his/her part to ensure committee members understand they need to notice such things.

Answer 6

A lot of posts have already touched on the delicacy of this issue, and the vulnerable position the OP is in. I agree whole heartedly, especially if your field intersects with this other person's field, as it presumably does.

Ethically, I think you're bound to report this; at the same time I don't think you're bound to make your own career path more difficult over it. The obvious solution to me then, is to do it anonymously.

Create a random free email address somewhere without any identifying info involved, address your letter to a few appropriate people, and explain nothing about how you came upon the info. Simply report exactly what you found, then be done with it. I don't think it's your duty to make sure action is taken once you've appropriately reported it. I do think one of the places you send it to needs to be an impartial university body though, like the registrar.

You don't go straight to the advisor who oversaw it, or only to your department, because worrying only about damage control isn't ethical either, and you would be potentially placing them in ethical conundrums as well. I also don't think you go to your advisor, because then you're just punting a difficult thing that has a clear right answer on to someone else. You're also potentially attaching your name to it; most departments are talkative places.

As you described it, it seems like several people did something wrong and there probably should be consequences. If you help them avoid any consequences, are you complicit when it happens again? I would think so.

Edit: I just noticed this is a necro'd old post, so hopefully this is useful for others besides the OP

Answer 7

I strongly advise not to contact the supervisor of the other student directly. I have seen my share of scientific misconduct while i was in research and most of the time when a student crossed the line so hard the supervisor was either ignorant to it, tolerating it or outright encouraging it.

While i would have trusted my supervisor to do the right thing (i informed him about shady things and he reacted appropriately) this is where it gets tricky: If your supervisor and the other supervisor are friends it could end up not so well, but you should know your supervisor good enough to know.

So you could try go via you supervisor, inform he ombudsman or corresponding committee anonymously, or you could wait after you have your PHD until you notify the institution.

Answer 8

I'd recommend you to stay anonymous since your professors will be hostile to anything that reflects poorly on them and their institution. For example, they've been unable to just use Turnitin as a basic checker.

There are plagiarism hunters online who dissect theses for fun and entertainment. This might be a place to start.

In addition, you should contact the plagiarized sources.

Lastly, let chatgpt write all of your anonymous emails, so you don't give away your personal writing style.

It's important to point out academic misbehavior and you should have no second thoughts about doing so. Just take care of yourself in the process.