Episode 117: Brian L. Frye says to plagiarize this podcast
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Why does Brian Frye argue that plagiarism norms are morally misguided?
Hi, Matt Teichman here from the Elucidations podcast. The episode you're about to hear is an interview with Brian L. Fry on the topic of plagiarism. Believe it or not, Professor Fry is critical of the way we think of and handle plagiarism, both in the educational system and in the broader culture. One basic observation he starts with is that educators typically assume two different roles in the classroom, the role of trying to help students learn and the role of the disciplinary rule enforcer. He notes that punishing students for plagiarism really only fits into the goal of enforcing rules and doesn't contribute in any meaningful way to helping students learn. If a student copies someone else's writing and turns it in as their own, they're basically just slacking off.
And it isn't a teacher's main job to police slacking off. A teacher's main job, he argues, is to help as many people as possible learn as much as possible. He then extends this argument to the act of publishing a book, and uses it to attack the notion of self-plagiarism. The purpose of a book is to stimulate thinking and share information. So if an author repeats something they said before, but their new book still has a big impact, then the book is doing what we want it to do, even if it overlaps with something published previously. There's more to the story, but hopefully that gives you a bit of a taste for our guest's perspective. Regardless of whether you agree with the position put forth in our conversation, you'll probably find that it gives you a lot to think about.
Hello and welcome to Elucidations. I'm Matt Teichman. And I'm Stephen Chan. With us today is Brian L. Frey, Spears Gilbert Associate Professor of Law at the University of Kentucky College of Law. And he's here to discuss why you should plagiarize this podcast. Brian Alfrey, welcome.
Great to be here, Matt. As you know, I'm a huge fan of your podcast. I've been a listener for many years, and your podcast was actually the inspiration for my own podcasting. And I've always sought of your approach to podcasting as the model for my own. So it's a huge pleasure to be appearing on your show. Long time listener, first time guest.
Wow. Thank you so much. I was going to do this later, but let's just do it now. Let's plug your awesome legal scholarship podcast. So Brian L. Fry's podcast is called Ipsi Dixit. Do you want to give like a URL for that?
Sure, you can find it on iTunes or whatever. It's I-P-S-E-D-I-X-I-T. It's a podcast on legal scholarship. So me and my co-hosts interview legal scholars about their work. Each episode is about half an hour long. And it's a nice range of subject matter in an approachable format for non-lawyers.
Yeah, it's an excellent program. I highly recommend it. Listen to it as soon as this episode is over.
And
then plagiarize that episode
of that podcast. Absolutely. Plagiarize away.
Okay, so... Over the past week, when I've told friends of mine that I'm about to do an episode on plagiarism, I get a lot of furrowed eyebrows, and people are kind of in disbelief that anybody could be defending plagiarism. So I think one thing to maybe get out of the way quickly... So that people don't have the wrong idea is like the difference between plagiarizing a paper and just straight up cheating on a paper. So as I understand it, you draw a distinction between like if I just went to slate.com, highlighted, copied and pasted an article, put the name Matt Teichman in front of it, submitted that as my final paper for a class. That's still something we would consider bad, right?
Right, so I like to talk about plagiarism as a social norm that requires an appropriate social context. So I actually think that it's impossible for students to plagiarize, right? Because when we talk about plagiarism, What we properly mean is presenting something in a public context as if it were written by yourself rather than by someone else. And we can talk about whether or not that's okay and when it's okay to present something that was written by someone else as if you wrote it yourself.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
Why does Brian Frye argue that plagiarism norms are morally misguided?
0:00–4:59
2
How does Frye differentiate between cheating and plagiarism in academic work?
4:59–10:07
3
What is Frye’s argument for allowing self‑plagiarism in books and scholarship?
10:07–13:29
4
Why does Frye claim that plagiarism norms harm student learning?
13:29–18:34
5
How does copyright law relate to plagiarism norms according to Frye?
18:34–23:13
6
What does Frye identify as the true purpose of attribution and citation?
23:13–28:16
7
Why does Frye describe plagiarism norms as a cartel‑driven rent‑seeking practice?
28:16–32:34
8
How could a consequentialist view reshape plagiarism policies in academia?
32:34–38:17
Speakers
1 identifiedMore from Elucidations
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