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Honestly, I'm a little disappointed with this article. Plagiarism detectors themselves are neither a crutch nor a problem--they're simply a tool. People's use of them as the grand arbiter on plagiarism as though they were stone tablets delivered to them from Mount Sinai is the problem. I thought that, despite the title, that's what the author was talking about for the majority of this article, but then they mention things like... > Only if a text is somehow off, and online searching does not help, should software systems be consulted. Sorry, what? The only reason text would sound weird is if it's been specifically mangled to defeat plagiarism software (which makes plagiarism software already useful). There's practically no way you, as a student marker, busy professor, or someone reviewing hundreds of academic proposals has the time to slowly wade through each paper you get by googling choice sentences manually--something the plagiarism checker software can do just fine. I'm more-so confused, by the pair of statements that 1) "Software cannot determine plagiarism [...] That decision must be taken by a person" but also 2) "Only if a text is somehow off, and online searching does not help, should software systems be consulted". Isn't the author's whole point that plagiarism software false flags all the time? Isn't this, then, just "hey this sentence sounds funny, time to fail this student on some plagiarism." If their argument, however, is that you should use plagiarism software for curatable results, then this seems like the opposite order of what should be done. Why waste all your time fruitlessly finessing Google if the software will straight up just find the OG source for you? You're not going to have read every single piece of writing conceivably connected to the essay/etc. you're reviewing (unless it's a field you know much about and also so narrow that you'd never consider using plagiarism software in the first place), so you're bound to be missing actual plagiarism all the time. |