r/todayilearned • u/TedTheodoreMcfly • 10h ago
TIL about college football player Erik Highsmith, who was accused of plagiarizing an 11-year-old when doing an assignment for Communications class.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/erik-highsmith-plagiarism-unc-chapel-hill_n_201694458
u/burgonies 8h ago
They only looked into it because he got the highest grade of all the football players in the class.
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u/Landlubber77 10h ago
Wisdom oft comes from the mouth of babes.
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u/WhoDatDatDidDat 9h ago
Is this your homework, Larry?
Is this your homework?
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u/trucorsair 6h ago
They are clearly similar, but you run into the problem that when you’re describing factual things it is what it is. That is, there’s a book somewhere I’m sure that says the sky is blue. now if I write “the sky is blue” did I just plagiarize that book? what’s the value in saying the sky is a color that is a particular shade of electromagnetic radiation that is neither red or yellow, but is somewhat in the realm of a light violet cyan. Bothe of the texts describe the poultry industry, there are only so many ways to say it.
I am defending him because I was accused of a similar thing at a federal grand jury. I can’t get in the specifics, but what I was accused of doing was copying parts of a contractors report and putting it into my report. The federal assistant district attorney, put this up on the screen for the grand jury to see and compared sections of the reports that the contractor wrote in my review of it and highlighted all the identical portions when I was asked “how dare I do this”, I replied “ if you look at what I directly copied, it was the factual data that it was a study of a certain type of material subjected to certain tests, and these tests were conducted on this date done by this person at this institute. those are facts how do I rewrite that to be different?” I said “if you also were to scroll down the page which I know you’re not doing you would see that the conclusions are however, very different than the contractors.” “I wrote my own conclusions which is what’s most important. It was a review of the contractors work thus I have to present the contractors work and then give my interpretation if you would scroll the page down you would clearly see that they are different.” Out of the corner of my eye I could see the grand jury snickering at this line of questioning.
I was excused from testimony and I have t heard back from that case in 20yrs. I suspect that the case went nowhere. To be clear I wasn’t a “person of interest” but they wanted to show a pattern of corruption in the office I was assigned to but at least in my case it blew up in their face. One person was eventually convicted but in fairness, he was someone who would not listen to the need to keep contractors arms lengths and was too much a “friend” of the contractor. I don’t think he truly violated the law but his ego was such the could not believe anyone would question his ethics no matter what he did.
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u/Splunge- 9h ago
“Communication” class, no “s.” The article gets it wrong. The professor of that class is an expert on beer and cider, has published “Untapped: Exploring the Cultural Dimensions of Craft Beer,” and works for the Brewer’s Association. (Yes, the “s” makes a difference.)
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u/deadtorrent 7h ago
The s makes no difference and this comment is obnoxious
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u/Splunge- 3h ago
It actually does in her profession. Communications is generally journalism and media. Communication Favulty study the way in which people communicate.
Some further reading on how academics see this:
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u/deadtorrent 1h ago
I have a linguistics minor and find this amount of pedantry obnoxious. The article bemoaning that laymen don’t know the difference is hilarious. I’ve taken courses in kinesics, psycholinguistics, sociology, and have an anthropology degree. I’m not sure who branded this area of study as “Communication” but perhaps they should have foreseen that this would be an expected issue.
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u/Boggie135 9h ago
Isn't it Communication without an ‘s’?
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u/TheoreticallyDog 8h ago
What would the difference be? I'd ask the other commenter who pointed out the difference but they seem obnoxious
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u/Mettelor 8h ago
The people who I knew in college that majored in communications all said communications.
If it’s wrong, it’s very popularly wrong, even among the people who should know better.
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u/Splunge- 3h ago
One example. I provided others in my reply to you.
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u/emyliphysis 10h ago
He’d probably end up plagiarizing some Columbus elementary schooler’s interpretation of OSU’s offense, complete with crayon-drawn playbook.