Plagiarism: The plague of digital media?

Hudson, Zoe

doi:10.1016/j.ptsp.2010.06.003

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Volume 11, Issue 3 , Pages 73-74, August 2010

Plagiarism: The plague of digital media?

published online 05 July 2010.

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Speak to anyone working in an academic setting and you will most likely hear about plagiarism being a problem at both undergraduate and post graduate levels. Academic disciplinary boards up and down the UK are inundated with cases of plagiarism. Indeed, it is common practice to have guidelines on plagiarism and students are requested to sign a disclaimer at the start of a course to declare that they have read and understood the guidelines and the penalties that will be incurred if these are transgressed.

The New Shorter Oxford English Dictionary (1993) defines ‘plagiarize’ as the following; “Take and use as one’s own (the thoughts, writings, inventions, etc, of another person); copy (literary works, ideas, etc.) improperly or without acknowledgement; pass off the thoughts, work, etc., of (another person) as one’s own”.

The most recent seminar of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) was entirely dedicated to the subject of plagiarism. Harold Sox, Editor Emeritus of the Annals of Internal Medicine started his presentation with a reminder;

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Plagiarism is not a new phenomenon and it can occur in many disciplines. Indeed the temptation in the electronic and Internet era to cut and paste would appear to encourage this academic dishonesty. Whether it is an undergraduate student plagiarising in a piece of coursework or a Professor writing in a highly acclaimed scientific journal, the principal is the same. The likelihood is if they have done it once it is likely they have done it before. The penalties for plagiarism can be severe, from academic censure and loss of credibility, withdrawal of a paper, to expulsion from the Institution. Given the severity of the penalties, why are people tempted to do it? Ignorance, laziness, misguided, cultural and not writing in the first language of the author are all possible reasons that have been suggested. But none of these positions are really defendable. Academic ownership is largely self-policed by academics in Institutions or by editors and reviewers in academic publishing. Whilst the process of cutting and pasting from digital sources is easy and therefore tempting, the advent of electronic plagiarism checkers (E.g. Ithenticate, Turnitin) makes detection much easier as well. In fact many institutions and journals will run random checks or check a whole sample of submitted work through these checkers.

As with most things, prevention is better than cure and education of junior researchers and undergraduates to have a high moral standard with regard to their academic conduct and reporting of scientific data is one way to go forward. Early detection of any plagiarism is important, before it gets into the literature; it is much easier not to publish than to have to retract the paper at a later date. Detection in this case is down to electronic checkers, vigilant editors and reviewers, but in most cases is picked up by the plagiarised author. A note of warning, there is a common misconception that self-plagiarism is a lesser evil; however this is not true in the eyes of the law.

Plagiarism is an issue at all levels in academic life and I will finish with a quote from Dr Morgan, chair of the General Medical Councils fitness to practice panel on the conduct of Dr Raj Persaud, the British TV celebrity consultant psychiatrist who was found guilty of copying work for books and journal articles without acknowledging the sources. “The panel has determined that a three-month period of suspension is sufficient to send out a signal to you, the profession and the public that plagiarism is unacceptable behaviour” (Jenkins, 2008).

Onto the content in this issue of Physical therapy in Sport. Neck strength is important in contact sports such as the various codes of rugby, American Football, some martial arts and also non-contact sports such as motor racing. Specifically, neck strength training may have a role in both the prevention and treatment of cervical injury. In the first piece of original research, Netto and colleagues from Australia investigate the recovery rate of the cervical musculature following a single bout of strength training. The exercise protocol involved 3 sets of 8 repetitions (60–70% 1 RM) in extension and flexion in neutral and non-neutral positions. A significant reduction was reported in neck extension strength in all participants which took 3 days to recover. These finding indicate that athletes may be vulnerable after this type of training and the authors suggest periodised training to accommodate this.

Knee joint position sense (JPS) has been widely used as an indirect indicator of proprioception however, comparison between studies is complicated by the many variables of testing this parameter. Early studies evaluated knee JPS in non-weight bearing, but more recently the trend is to evaluate this in more functional weight bearing postures. Active and/or passive repositioning can be adopted. Additionally, different methods of measurement can be employed from the simple goniometer in a clinical setting to the use of dynamometers or kinematic analysis in the research setting. Whatever method is employed, it is useful to know how these measures may differ when evaluating the relevant literature. Kiran and colleagues from the States present a paper investigating the correlation between these different variables. Encouragingly for those working in clinical settings, the electrogoniometer correlated with more complex measures in both non and weight bearing positions.

Continuing on this theme, Magalhaes and colleagues from Portugal investigated the effect of a warm up routine on knee JPS in karate practitioners (karatekas) in both the open and closed kinetic chain position. Knee JPS improved in the CKC but not in the OKC testing position following a standardised warm up and the authors discuss the possible reasons for these findings.

Soft tissue therapy techniques are essential skills for clinicians working with athletes. Myofascial trigger points, whether these are active or latent, have been treated using a wide variety of different methods. This includes friction massage, digital pressure, dry needling, ultrasound, TENS and interferential, to name but a few. PNF techniques are also used to increase range in contractile tissue in the short term. Trampas and colleagues from Greece conducted a randomised controlled trial to investigate the effects of PNF and friction massage in subjects with tight hamstrings and at least one latent trigger point. One group received PNF alone, a second group received friction massage to the trigger point and PNF and the control group received no treatment. The primary outcome measure was ROM with stretch perception and pain being secondary outcomes. The combined treatment group demonstrated significant improvements in all outcomes in the short term. Many studies on trigger points to-date have focussed on active rather than latent points. This study would indicate that manual treatment of latent points in addition to PNF stretching is more effective than stretching alone in the short term.

Groin pain in athletes is notoriously difficult to diagnose, symptoms are often recurrent and it is one of the major causes of playing time lost in sports such as soccer and rugby union. Many structures can be involved and indeed pathologies may co-exist. To confuse matters further, there tends to be no consistent patterns of presentation. Differential diagnosis can include hip-joint pathology (labral pathology, chondral injury, OA), inguinal hernia, adductor related pain (tendinopathy, enthesopathy, MT junction), nerve entrapment (ilioinguinal, obturator, genitofemoral), stress injury to the pubic bone, rectus abdominis strain, conjoint tendon tear, external oblique tear, iliopsoas syndrome, stress fracture NOF and referred lumbar pain (L1/2). Few studies (probably for the reasons stated above) have attempted to investigate conservative treatment of the athletes’ groin. In the final piece of original research, Weir and colleagues from Holland report a retrospective case-series of 44 athletes (mainly soccer players) with adductor related groin pain for more than 4 weeks. All athletes received a combination of initial rest from competitive sports, manual and exercise therapy. The exercise therapy was specifically focused on TA control and the adductor muscles with a graduated return to sport specific exercises. The short-term results are initially impressive with 86% of the athletes returning to full sport at 142 days. However, of these, 26% had a recurrence by 3.5–13 months later. Prevention strategies for athletes at risk of groin pain need to be developed in conjunction with optimising treatment strategies.

By the time you are reading this the jamboree of World Cup football in South Africa will be over, in the anticipation of it starting I hope it is a glorious spectacle of sport.

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