[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.