#4 Plagiarism and Fabrication

Plagiarism and Fabrication in Sports

        These days, everywhere you look you will more than likely see some form of plagiarism or fabrication. In some cases, people are completely blind to the fact that they are plagiarising but others do it intentionally. Whether you are writing a paper, writing a song, or designing your next clothing line, there is always a chance of plagiarism and fabrication. 

        In this specific case, a sports reporter out of Virginia was fired for plagiarism and fabrication. The sports reporter was Blair J. Parker and she was a reporter for The News Leader. She was caught making up at least four stories and taking pieces of other people's stories and using them as her own. Dave Fritz, another reporter for The News Leader, wrote an article about the situation and said "Only one source was clearly real and correctly identified". After her firing, there were other acts of fabrication that came to the surface. 

        In another instance, the UNC football team was put on three years' worth of probation and kept from participating in their post-season in 2012. NCAA had to do some investigation of academic fraud so they put the program on hold until they could sort through the problems. There were several cases of plagiarism, for example, the receiver Erik Highsmith stole information from two different websites and posted it on a blog for one of his classes along with stealing content from an education website that was written by an eleven-year-old. Michael McAdoo was also on the team at the time and he was caught turning in a paper that he completely plagiarised and was not allowed to return to the team. This should be an eye-opener not just for students but for student-athletes as well. Athletes on a college campus are watched more than anyone else and plagiarism is something the professors look out for because they are held to a higher standard. 

        It has been discussed that in some cases plagiarism, fabrication, and falsification could be a crime. Most of the time it is pretty obvious if someone meant to steal words from another article or not. It all comes down to checking your information and making one hundred percent sure that you aren't copying anyone else's work. Some information could be straight from your head but another person could have thought of it and published it first. You really never know and have to double-check. As far as Universities go, they are responsible for giving out their own punishment for their student's actions. Each school's policy is different. In a lot of cases, if you are caught plagiarising you will be warned and then the second time it could lead to suspension or expulsion. 

        The bottom line is you just have to be tedious when watching out for plagiarism. You could be oblivious to the fact that you plagiarised but in this case, it is better to be safe rather than sorry in the end. These days people are ruthless when it comes to plagiarism and fabrication.