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RE: [xmca] FW: The Shadow Scholar - He writes your students' papers.

And I can also confirm that this extends to submissions to peer reviewed journals, too. I have had the experience of receiving a paper which was noticeably more lucid than the email which accompanied it, a quick bit of googling revealed that the paper was the work of a student at a UK university where the submitter had been working as a visiting academic. 

Rod

-----Original Message-----
From: xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu [mailto:xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu] On Behalf Of Robert Lake
Sent: 10 January 2011 01:20
To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
Subject: Re: [xmca] FW: The Shadow Scholar - He writes your students' papers.

I can verify that from my experience last semester.

With one student I suspected because of an obvious misuse of future tense in
a paper, Google worked,,,,,, Turnitin missed it.

On Sun, Jan 9, 2011 at 6:46 PM, Nancy Mack <nancy.mack@wright.edu> wrote:

> There are significant problems with commercial plagiarism checkers.
> There are studies that indicate that a simple google search for a unique
> phrase is more accurate and is free.
> See this study
> http://wac.colostate.edu/journal/vol20/gillis.pdf
>
> The National Council of Teachers of English website has several better
> resources for issues of plagiarism. Here is just one resource:
> http://www.ncte.org/magazine/archives/122871/
>
> Turnitin is very expensive. School districts are being pressured to buy
> this service. Some teachers are using these policing mechanisms rather than
> teaching students effective ways to use direct citation. Moreover, citation
> practices do vary from discipline to discipline.
>
> Nancy
>
> Nancy Mack
>
> Professor of English
> Wright State University
>
> http://www.wright.edu/~nancy.mack
>
>
>
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: David Cross <d.cross@tcu.edu>
> Date: Sunday, January 9, 2011 6:22 pm
> Subject: Re: [xmca] FW: The Shadow Scholar - He writes your students'
> papers.
> To: "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
>
> > Turnitin is used at TCU ... it works well for plagiarism, but
> > wouldn't
> > have caught The Shadow Scholar.
> >
> > http://turnitin.com/static/index.php
> >
> > Cheers
> >
> > David Cross
> > d.cross@tcu.edu
> > www.davidcross.us
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > On Jan 9, 2011, at 4:11 PM, David H Kirshner wrote:
> >
> > > Karen,
> > > I'd not heard of anti-plagiarism services.
> > > What a great idea. Their use should be routine--a high-tech
> > solution
> > > to
> > > a high-tech problem.
> > > To tell you the truth, I don't know how they would be able to detect
> > > frauds like the Shadow Scholar, in that the papers are one-of-
> > a-kind,
> > > not recycled. Yet some organized effort to combat this really
> > is in
> > > order. This is something that a union of university
> > professors, or
> > > some
> > > other pan-university organization should undertake.
> > > David
> > >
> > >
> > > -----Original Message-----
> > > From: xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu [mailto:xmca-
> > bounces@weber.ucsd.edu]> On Behalf Of Karen Heckert
> > > Sent: Sunday, January 09, 2011 4:03 PM
> > > To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
> > > Subject: Re: [xmca] FW: The Shadow Scholar - He writes your
> > students'> papers.
> > >
> > > This is not amusing. This is horrifying. (You can tell how old
> > I am.)
> > >
> > > I recently finished an MS in I/O Psychology, and one professor
> > made us
> > > submit
> > > everything we handed in to an online anti-plagiarism service.
> > > Personally, I
> > > thought she was nuts and certifiably paranoid. Now I understand.
> > >
> > >
> > > About fifteen years ago I spent some time in a Ph.D program
> > and
> > > teaching
> > >
> > > undergrads. One day I received two exactly identical papers
> > from two
> > > different
> > > students. Some astute questioning uncovered the fact that the best
> > > student in
> > > the class (Chinese) and several American students were pooling their
> > > resources
> > > to write the research papers. Since their exams were all
> > written in
> > > class, this
> > > didn't bother me too much. I just stipulated that each student
> > had to
> > > write up
> > > the work in their very own words for submission. But there
> > wasn't a
> > > question (I
> > > think) of anybody getting paid - it was just a case of uniting
> > in the
> > > face of a
> > > common enemy (the gradebook). Beng a student myself, I
> > understood only
> > > too well.
> > > Besides, I figured, most research these days is done by teams,
> > and
> > > this
> > > was a
> > > little practical experience.
> > >
> > > Another cautionary tale: One of my students who had been
> > turning in
> > > acceptable
> > > papers all semester turned in one that read very much like
> > > schizophrenese
> > > word-salad. I called her into conference and asked her point
> > blank,
> > > "Are
> > > you
> > > dyslexic?" She said that she was, but that the student
> > center's
> > > writing
> > > lab had
> > > been helping her write her papers. This time she simply hadn't
> > had
> > > time
> > > to take
> > > her paper to them.
> > >
> > > Having just survived another bout of our "educational" system,
> > I
> > > have to
> > > agree
> > > with many of the anonymous writer's points about college, if
> > not with
> > > his/her
> > > ethics. I find this sort of thing a far more serious symptom
> > of "moral
> > > decay"
> > > than abortion or gay marriage. We in the US are supposed to be a
> > > meritocracy and
> > > those things which undermine that threaten our existence in
> > more
> > > crucial
> > > ways.
> > > The "system" is failing the students and in the long run
> > failing us
> > > all.
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > ________________________________
> > > From: David H Kirshner <dkirsh@lsu.edu>
> > > To: "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
> > > Sent: Thu, January 6, 2011 3:17:56 PM
> > > Subject: [xmca] FW: The Shadow Scholar - He writes your students'
> > > papers.
> > >
> > > Not a propos of anything, this is both amusing and disturbing.
> > >
> > > David
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > ****************************
> > >
> > >> From the Chronicle Review [A Weekly Magazine of
> > Ideas/Chronicle of
> > > Higher Education], Friday, November 19, 2010, pp. B6-B9. See
> > > http://chronicle.com/article/The-Shadow-Scholar/125329/
> > >
> > > ****************************
> > >
> > > The Shadow Scholar
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > The man who writes your students' papers tells his story
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > By Ed Dante
> > >
> > >
> > > edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > __________________________________________
> > > _____
> > > xmca mailing list
> > > xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
> > > http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca
> > > __________________________________________
> > > _____
> > > xmca mailing list
> > > xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
> > > http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca
> >
> > __________________________________________
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>


-- 
*Robert Lake  Ed.D.
*Assistant Professor
Social Foundations of Education
Dept. of Curriculum, Foundations, and Reading
Georgia Southern University
P. O. Box 8144
Phone: (912) 478-5125
Fax: (912) 478-5382
Statesboro, GA  30460

 *Democracy must be born anew in every generation, and education is its
midwife.*
*-*John Dewey.
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