View Full Version : World Banana Crop.
john_ny
07-27-2011, 01:04 PM
From the kid's page of our local newspaper:
http://www.bananas.org/gallery/watermark.php?file=44612&size=1 (http://www.bananas.org/gallery/showphoto.php?photo=44612)
Sorry, my scanner's not working, so I had to photograph the article.
Richard
07-27-2011, 01:16 PM
In both the Gros Michel and Cavendish disasters, large agriculture has been unwilling to implement regular applications of fertilizers containing minor- and micro-nutrients, and especially balanced formulas containing copper and zinc that the plants can uptake and utilize for superior resistance. Instead the focus has been on disease-resistant strains. In this latter approach, ultimately they will need a strain with cellular structures that mimic the properties of the electrochemical metal series elements without the explicit introduction of the minerals to the plant.
bananabook
07-27-2011, 04:15 PM
That article is lifted almost verbatim from my story in The Scientist that appeared last Friday:
The Beginning of the End for Bananas? | The Scientist (http://the-scientist.com/2011/07/22/the-beginning-of-the-end-for-bananas/#disqus_thread)
Writing is my business, and it may be silly to say - as such - that I don't mind being shoplifted, but I'd like to get credit for having manufactured the goods in question. And it bugs me, a bit, that the story is in the "Dear Abby" format, meaning the question purportedly came from a reader. It would be upsetting to know - and I'm not sure I do know, though the timing is pretty odd - that this wasn't the case, since the whole idea is to address the curiosity of children.
Oh, well. I hope the folks at bananas.org find my article a bit more informative….
- Dan Koeppel
RobG7aChattTN
07-27-2011, 07:53 PM
I often wonder how many "Dear Abby" type letters are created specifically to ask a question whenever an interesting answer is discovered.
Nicolas Naranja
07-27-2011, 09:38 PM
I once read something abou soils that are suppressive to panama disease. It seems tjat we need more research into what makes a soil suppresive
venturabananas
07-28-2011, 12:35 AM
Wow, embarrassingly plagiarized. My students are better at that than Clay Wollney. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, Dan? Or the best way to steal your work.
john_ny
07-29-2011, 01:08 PM
While I can't be absolutely positive, Mark, I don't believe there is plagiarism involved here. All of the material in the article is available from many, many sources. I don't know Mr. Woolney personally, but I did meet him, fleetingly, several years ago. I found him to be very intelligent and, like you, a teacher.
venturabananas
07-29-2011, 01:25 PM
John, you might be right because plagiarism is a somewhat slippery thing to identify, but in this case, I think the two articles are just too uncannily similar for it to be coincidence. Just because all the words are not the same does not mean it is not plagiarism. I agree that all of the information is widely available, but the very similar structure of the two articles suggests that the second was plagiarized. There are software and web-based plagiarism checkers that are widely used by colleges now (e.g., "Turnitin.com"). I suspect that if you were to use one on Wollney's article is would come up with a very high plagiarism score. Coincidence is always possible, but to me seems unlikely here.
bananabook
07-29-2011, 01:32 PM
I wish I could be as sure as you, John. Unfortunately, his sentence structure, sequencing of information, and use of substitute adjectives makes me believe he met the academic definition of plagiarism, which - as a teacher - I'm sure he instructs his students to follow, and which he should follow himself. As a teacher, he has a responsibility to set this example and teach it - or risk seeing his former students run up on the rocks of the issue when they move on to higher education, where the offense becomes very serious.
That definition, btw, comes from the Modern Language Association's handbook, the accepted reference on the topic, which is:
: "Using another person's ideas or expressions in your writing without acknowledging the source constitutes plagiarism.... [T]o plagiarize is to give the impression that you wrote or thought something that you in fact borrowed from someone, and to do so is a violation of professional ethics.... Forms of plagiarism include the failure to give appropriate acknowledgment when repeating another's wording or particularly apt phrase, paraphrasing another's argument, and presenting another's line of thinking" (6.1; see also Gibaldi, MLA Handbook, ch. 2). It is important to note that this definition does not distinguish between published and unpublished sources, between ideas derived from colleagues and those offered by students, or between written and oral presentations.
I think a fair reading of both articles would lead to a conclusion that he paraphrased, appropriated, and therefore violated the above standard. I absolutely respect the right of anyone to disagree on that, but I feel strongly about it.
In any case, I have contacted the author - it has now been three days - with no reply. All I ask is a correction that attributes the information source; I'd add that by failing to do so, he potentially stifles the ability of a curious student to further explore the topic.
Richard
07-29-2011, 01:46 PM
There are software and web-based plagiarism checkers that are widely used by colleges now (e.g., "Turnitin.com").
I highly recommend Turnitin.com. It not only has tools for teachers but for writers as well. You could "turn in" one piece then another and get a similarity score. The original algorithms are from UC Berkeley.
bananabook
07-29-2011, 01:49 PM
Turnitin is a good and valuable resource - however (and this has nothing to do with the incident we're discussing here) it can be gamed; and results that check out positive for plagiarism can also then be reworded until they pass the test; not exactly the definition of good academic work. But I don't blame the tool; I'm just noting what I've seen.
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