[BashiBazouk]

My wife started teaching a class at the local university. She had a bunch of positives on the anti-plagiarism software used by the university. She ran a bunch of papers by me and man, analyzing the results are an art within it's self. People will unconsciously remember and write down phrases and smaller sentences they have read all the time. A little highlight here and there just has to be accepted. Then there are the papers that almost the entire thing is highlighted. It's the ones in between that are tricky as hell. A lot could have gone either way and it's a judgement call on the teacher whether to send it to the administration for review. I expect AI will just make it more difficult or hand writing is going to be the new hot subject taught to new levels in elementary...

[jfghi]

To me it seems like academic papers force people to back up every statement with a quote and agree with assigned readings. This style of writing leads to unoriginal results.

[skybrian]

Isn't that how non-fiction is supposed to work? It's about finding interesting evidence that adds up to something, not making stuff up.

Though, ideally by finding interesting evidence in books that aren't in the assigned reading.

[jfghi]

It is, but I think that it would lead to a lot of false positives for automated plagiarism detection.