Category: Writing

Three economists, Stroud, Jones, and Wicket, published a
paper describing a mathematical model for representing collective bargaining.
The following year, Stroud and two other authors, Weinberg and Smith, published
a paper that applied the model to a collective bargaining dispute between a
teacher’s union and a school district. The paper included two paragraphs in the
methods section that were identical, word for word, to two paragraphs in the
methods section of the paper published by Stroud, Jones, and Wicket. The paper
by Stroud, Weinberg, and Smith did not mention or even cite the paper by
Stroud, Jones, and Wicket.
• Is this unethical?
• Is this plagiarism? Self-plagiarism? A possible copyright
violation?

Drs. Clearheart and Wing are studying socioeconomic factors
related to incarceration. They recently read a paper published by Drs. Langford
and Sulu on the relationship between juvenile incarceration and the mother’s
age at birth. Clearheart and Wing believe that they may be able to incorporate
the supporting data obtained by Langford and Sulu in their analysis, so they
send them an e-mail asking them to share the data used to support their
publication. (Due to space constraints, the journal published some of the data,
but not all of the supporting data.) Langford and Sulu agree to send Clearheart
and Wing the supporting data provided that Clearheart and Wing list them as
authors on any publications that use the data. Dr. Wing is uncomfortable with
agreeing to this request, because he believes that one should do more than just
provide data to be an author. Dr. Clearheart wantsto honor their request. “Our
publication will be much stronger,” he says, “if we incorporate their data into
our analysis.”
• What should they do?
• Is it ethical to name someone as an author for providing
data?

Dr. Thomas published a review article on recent developments
in mitochondrial genetics. In the article, he mentioned his own work
prominently but failed to mention the work of several other researchers who
have made key contributions to the fi eld. Dr. Thomas is clearly one of the
most important researchers in the fi eld, and he has done some important work.
But he also has some long-running feuds with some of the other prominent
researchers in the fi eld, based in part on fundamental disagreements about the
role of the mitochondrial DNA in human evolution. In his review article, in
several instances he cited his own work instead of giving proper credit to
colleagues who had published their articles before his.
• Is this plagiarism?
• Is it unethical?