Professional Dishonesty – Plagiarism
Professional dishonesty is an issue of utmost importance. Plagiarism is arguably the most severe form of cheating as it violates the main pillars of engineering ethics as well as the TAMU Code of Honor; lying, cheating and stealing. In order to understand what plagiarism is we first have to explain the term and fully understand it. Plagiarism is the act of using another person’s work as your own without his/her consent. Plagiarism considerably devalues academic and professional work. Furthermore, it could have severe consequences for those involved, knowingly or unknowingly. In real-life professional settings, there have been a number of instances of plagiarized progress reports, research papers and
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A shocking example is that of a chemist in India who had plagiarized and fabricated over seventy research papers that have been submitted to well-known scientific journals such as Talanta, Chemosphere, and Journal of Hazardous Materials.3 This had been referred to as “a massive case of fraud”.3 It is a very serious awakening issue – especially to us as future engineers – as it has a “domino effect” since it could result in significant errors and outcomes if used by other researches. In addition to plagiarism found in the scientific world, there have also been multiple occurrences in established …show more content…
In a case between two multi-billion dollar companies, Google and Oracle, abuse of the legislature was evident. A large dispute aroused in the United States courts after Oracle accused Google of unlawfully using its Java programming language in Google’s widely known Android mobile operating system. Oracle argued that Google should pay 8.8 Billion Dollars for unlawfully using Oracle patents.7 The United States appeals court ruled in Google’s favor by describing Google’s use of Oracle’s patents as “fair-use”.8 It is evident from these incidents that no one is immune from patent infringement and plagiarism cases; however, there is a definite potential for the legal tools available to combat plagiarism to be unlawfully used to “patent troll” other companies in the professional