Serving the Flathead Valley & Montana since 2006. A reality based independent journal of observation & analysis. © James Conner.
Plagiarism detection software such as Turnitin was available when John Walsh wrote and submitted his Strategic Research Project paper to the U.S. Army War College. Why didn’t the USAWC require that he run his paper through Turnitin or another checker before submitting it for review and grading? And why didn’t the USAWC run a plagiarism check on Walsh’s paper after it was submitted?
Not only would a self-check have caught instances of plagiarism generated by sloppiness (not all, probably, but enough to make the exercise worthwhile), but the requirement itself, especially coupled with the after submission check by the school, would have served as a powerful deterrent to academic misconduct.
But the USAWC doesn’t take such commonsense measures says its provost, Lance Betros, as reported by the Associated Press yesterday:
The college also will conduct a review of its procedures and internal controls in the wake of the Walsh allegations. Betros said he is comfortable with the plagiarism safeguards in place, which includes training faculty to look for triggers such as work that is above a student’s normal abilities or poorly transitioned paragraphs.
The school does not run each student’s paper through an online plagiarism checker. That practice would foster an environment of mistrust among a student body of high-level military officers and senior civilians, Betros said.
“These are highly capable and competent people,” he said. “We assume they are people of high honor.”
That argument is at odds with the facts.
Just in the last year dozens of Air Force officers in that service’s missile corps dishonored themselves and their service by cheating on exams at Malmstrom Air Force Base.
And the 14 July death of former Army Secretary Martin Hoffmann was a reminder that cheating scandals have been a regular feature of our service academies. One of Hoffmann’s sad duties was cleaning up the 1976 West Point cheating scandal that resulted in 152 expulsions.
Given that history, and given the nature of some humans, the USAWC’s policy should have been trust, but verify. Instead, it was don’t verify and trust to luck that nothing goes wrong.
That approach failed John Walsh, who also failed himself. But had he run his paper through Turnitin before he submitted it, he probably would not have been turned-in as a plagiarist when he ran for the U.S. Senate seven years later.