The Concept of Plagiarism - Essay Example

Plagiarism means “to steal and pass off (the ideas or words of another) as one's own, to use (another's production) without crediting the source, to commit literary theft, to present as new and original an idea or product derived from an existing source” (What is Plagiarism, 2011). This student has plagiarized the entirety of this paragraph from the original text. All the thoughts expressed in the student’s paragraph are derived from the Crossen piece. The second sentence in the student’s paragraph, “But it is hard to know if a conflict of interest between doctors, researchers, and the drug company stockholders has tainted the results” is the same sentiment expressed in the Crossen piece, but this sentence is not cited.

Since this sentence is not a direct quote, it would need to read as follows: But it is hard to know if a conflict of interest between doctors, researchers, and the drug company stockholders has tainted the results (Crossen, 1994). Although this next sentence is cited, it is cited incorrectly and, therefore, can be considered plagiarizing. The sentence “Yet the resulting information can be warped for five reasons: ending a study too soon, not publishing negative results, publishing results too early, skimming over or ignoring drawbacks, and “buffing” the results by showing them in the best light (Crossen, 1994, p. 167)” is cited incorrectly because much of the verbiage is copied exactly from the Crossen passage and should be in quotation marks in addition to the citation.

A better phrasing would be: The data gathered can be skewed due to the premature end of a study, disregarding disadvantages, presenting results prematurely, excluding undesirable results, and misrepresenting findings (Crossen, 1994). Recognizing plagiarism is the key to avoiding it. Plagiarism means knowing when and how to cite information from an outside source.