Rag-e Harf 3: How to Commit Plagiarism Without Leaving a Trace?

How to acquire the “knack of plagiarism” without leaving a trace?

Naser Khosrow, the Persian poet and sage, sang about ten centuries ago: “If your tree bears the fruit of knowledge / you will bring the azure wheel [of heaven] beneath you.” But that was in the old days, when if a person’s tree bore the fruit of knowledge, the result was that the person would subjugate the azure wheel. Today, however, times have changed, such that: If your tree bears the fruit of knowledge / [you will acquire the knack of plagiarism]. And when the word “theft” comes up, of course, don’t let your mind go to any bad place; I am by no means referring to a one followed by infinite zeros (three thousand billion, twelve thousand billion, and so on). On the contrary, I mean that familiar category of our own “plagiarism”; that master key to problems, the one from which we all have fond memories from our student days. The one that required a simple internet search and a simple laser printout. And of course, the one about which, if you have recently browsed the virtual space (with either a fatha or a damma on the ‘mim’), you have surely heard news of one or two major cases—committed this time not by students but by prominent university professors. The work of these thefts, incidentally, became linked and coincided with the name “philosophy,” because the thieves so far have all been professors of philosophy, and from “prestigious” Iranian universities at that. This ill-omened (and neither male nor female donkey) coincidence reminds some of the Sophists of ancient Greece, the very ones from whom the term “sophistry” remains as a legacy in our linguistic treasury today. The Sophists had a golden principle that success matters, not truth, or that truth is success itself: “If you can convince others that you are telling the truth, that is enough; it does not matter even if you yourself secretly know that you have cheated and are talking nonsense.” On this basis, perhaps the coincidence of the name “academic fraud” with “philosophy” in these recent plagiarisms is not so accidental after all. And if it seemed accidental, after a professional philosopher wrote in a shocking piece that he loves the fraud more than the truth, doubts turned into certainty. But of course, do not think that all philosophers are Sophists. As it happens, the first people who exposed these frauds and thefts, and are still doing so, were themselves a group of young philosophers.

What happens to the “knack of plagiarism” in the age of exposing theft? But none of these plagiarisms and their exposure, and whether philosophers are the “pimps of history” or the “fraudsters of the academy” or the “exposing rogues,” is my subject of discussion. Whether plagiarism is a bad thing, or whether “good for him that he plagiarized, he had the necessary means and organs for it,” is also not my subject of discussion. How so much academic fraud takes place in Iran, just like drinking (mineral) water, and how it is enough to tip the relevant intermediary and buy a doctoral dissertation with a guarantee of placement, for instance on “Intuition and Illumination in the Philosophy of Shaykh Shahab al-Din Suhrawardi,” from the local supermarket by card-to-card transfer, is also not my subject of discussion. My entire discussion is this: after the exposure of the recent plagiarisms, what changes might the “knack of plagiarism” undergo? It seems that as long as there are students and professors in the manner customary in our land, there is also the “knack of plagiarism,” and it constantly updates itself. How, you ask? I will tell you right now.

The “Art of Plagiarism,” Step by Step Below, I share with you students, professors, philosophers (whether among the top hundred or not), engineers, theologians, married folk, and others, some ways to update the “art of plagiarism”:
1- If you wish to master the “art of plagiarism” in this age of exposing academic theft and keep it up to date, forget about cheating in an article meant to be written in English altogether. Highly sensitive software, for which we have yet to find a way of elimination, exists that can expose your plagiarism in a fraction of a second—even if that theft amounts to lifting a single heading from a book. It is better to confine your plagiarism to the Persian-language sphere. Because those exposing software programs do not exist for Persian, and the websites recently launched in Persian for detecting plagiarism are very rudimentary and their use is not yet widespread. So there is still a chance for survival.
2- Instead of copying an entire piece of content and reproducing it verbatim in your article (as those academic philosophers did), chop it up and scatter it across different parts of your article. That the article becomes meaningless in this way is of no importance whatsoever. What matters is that detecting your plagiarism becomes difficult this way, and furthermore, if your plagiarism is ever discovered one day, you can self-righteously claim that you had cited the original source, but the typesetter was fooling around, his hand slipped, and he dropped your citation. In other words, the general rule is to plagiarize in such a way that leaves you a way out.
3- In the references section of the article, use the phrase “and other sources.” This has many benefits: first, if your plagiarism is not discovered, it conveys to the reader the sense of how many sources you have consulted, of which you have only listed a portion in the references section. Thus, you appear both erudite and humble. Second, if your plagiarism is discovered, you can easily, without any apology and with utter impudence, say that the sections you mentioned were among the “and other sources,” and consequently be exonerated from the charge of plagiarism.
4- Gain a relative mastery of the subject in which you intend to commit academic theft. This mastery can be limited to memorizing a few impressive names and a few important schools of thought within that subject. In this case, if your theft is discovered, you can lead others to think: “This person is truly knowledgeable and had no need to cheat in this field.”
5- But the final important method to consider for mastering and updating the “art of plagiarism” is that if none of the four aforementioned methods work, essentially sit down and work on that subject, cultivate a creative idea of your own related to the topic, and, observing research methodology and the conventions of academic writing, cite the relevant sources. That this method might no longer constitute plagiarism is, of course, a cause for concern, but as I mentioned, you only resort to this method when you have despaired of the previous four, and therefore there is not much cause for worry.
If you think that some university professors apply the “art of plagiarism” only to academic “theft,” it is enough to watch the 2013 American film The Suspect. In this film, two university social science professors engage in money laundering in a highly creative manner—one that would not even occur to the minds of jinn and fairies.

Yaser Mirdamadi / Rag-e Harf 3