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Jessica Nguyen
Professor Waggner
PHSC 5305
March 23, 2015
Plagiarism
Ethics has always been a problem for researchers in the scientific
industry. One of the major issues that ethics deals with is whether we should or should
not do something. Ethics keep people from make wrong decisions which leads to
doing wrong. If one has no ethics that they will do what one wants believing it will
benefit them and get away with it, thinking that they are right. Ethics, I always
thought were laws that helped people decide not to do something because of a fear for
the consequences. Social ethics are guidelines incorporate different orders of
consciousness that are based on three set of conditions; obligations, moral ideals, and
consequences. Without ethics there cannot be laws, because laws are guided by ethics.
This concludes that although there may be exceptions; do not want to be unethical
because being unethical or acting in an unethical manner may be illegal in the
scientific industry. Plagiarism is one of the major ethical problems that come into play
with academic integrity. Many students have an idea of what the black and white lines
of plagiarism is, however, the main purpose to Dr. Ralph Lorings paper is to inform
many students who are in school, that there are gray areas in academic writing that
could be best avoided.
Plagiarism to many students comes with a bad connotation for the context of
which it is defined an act or instance of using or closely imitating the language and

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thoughts of another author without authorization and therepresentation of that author's
work as one's own, as by notcrediting the original author (Dictionary.com). Many
students think that this only applies to writing or reports that they have found some
information that they would like to report in their own form of assignment assigned in a
classroom setting. One of the major problems that is depicted in the article by Dr.
Loring is that plagiarism does not mean only copying the words that are written by
other authors without giving them credit.
This idea also applies to plagiarism as it is the copying of another individuals
idea. The times where students tend to plagiarize is when they no longer know what the
paper they are writing is about, they need to make the paper longer to fit the length
requirement, they want to tie in another source for requirements and as well as other
reasons. At times many students will not think further into the extrapolation of the latter
argument of what plagiarism applies to.
Everyone has been a student and has at least once thought about plagiarism.
From my own experience, I prefer to say that I have only attempted to think about
plagiarism when I read a piece of information that is worded the way I wish I had been
able to write. I have never plagiarize any piece of work, but found that the answer to
this was to paraphrase and still credit the author or source for the information where I
found what I was writing about.
This article basically depicts the gray areas of plagiarism that are folded
between black and white obvious situations when it comes to plagiarism. It clearly
depicts to students who are unaware if they are really plagiarizing or not plagiarizing
when they are writing papers. The problem, to some may not seem as a major problem

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as it comes across as just copying a few sentences here or there and just borrowing
someone else idea, however, attempting to be a researcher and using the extrapolation
of this example in context of working in industry, plagiarism can be the cost of ones
career. Overall, the article on plagiarism written by Dr. Lorgin is extremely informative
as it draws light to the certain situations where faculty have explained that a student is
not plagiarizing.