Dear Gunnar,

Thanks for your thoughts. You add a new dimension to this with reference to designed artifacts.

One of the issues that Michael Lissack raised in his article on sloppy scholarship (Lissack 2013) involves originality, but there are several issues at stake here.

The first is cases of prior influence that becomes unconscious over time. Whether the original source is colleagues in work groups, browsing the Internet, or forgotten readings, carelessness is inappropriate. In many cases, people may believe their work to be independent when it is not.

The second issue is priority of publication. In the sciences, this is crucial – and that would apply to the social sciences and humanities. If a scientist or scholar discovers that someone else has published an idea first, whether the same idea or a different idea or variant, credit is due – even when one has developed an idea independently. Even though prior publications are not always visible or evident to those who write, this is the standard. This standard is implicit in a third criterion for that which makes something significant or worthy of publication: an original contribution to the knowledge of the field.

This third criterion is the ostensible reason that journals accept our work for publication. The premise is that our contribution makes an original contribution to the knowledge of the field. Estelle Phillips and Derek Pugh (2005: 62) described fifteen kinds of original contributions for which students may earn a PhD. Their first studies provided a list of six,

“1) setting down a major piece of new information in writing for the first time; 2) continuing a previously original piece of work; 3) carrying out original work designed by the supervisor; 4) providing a single original technique, observation, or result in an otherwise unoriginal but competent piece of research; 5) having many original ideas, methods and interpretations all performed by others under the direction of the postgraduate; 6) showing originality in testing somebody else’s idea.”

They later added nine more,

“1) carrying out empirical work that hasn’t been done before; 2) making a synthesis that hasn’t been made before; 3) using already known material but with a new interpretation; 4) trying out something in [one’s own nation] that has previously only been done abroad; 5) taking a particular technique and applying it in a new area; 6) bringing new evidence to bear on an old issue; 7) being cross-disciplinary and using different methodologies; 8) looking at areas that people in the discipline haven’t looked at before; 9) adding to knowledge in a way that hasn’t been done before.”

While there may be more kinds of original contribution that would justify publication in a peer-reviewed journal or a conference, these fifteen make a good start. If the justification for publication is the implicit quality of an original contribution, party of the quality of an original contribution is a demonstration that the contribution is indeed original. This requires disclosing a gap in the knowledge of the field – what people in the field already know – and this requires a proper look at what people in the field already know and what they have published.

There is a fourth criterion, essentially a negative criterion. This involves contributions that are original and independent to us even though they are not original contributions to the field. Imagine, for example, that my dog Freddy were to walk up to me one day at the beach and use his paws to demonstrate the Pythagorean Theorem in the wet sand. Now let’s say that Freddy wants to make sure that I know he knows what he is doing, so he draws both the right-angle triangle, and the well-known diagram with boxes containing 9, 16, and 25 squares. Then, just to be safe, let’s say that Freddy offers yet another visual proof. Being a dog who lives at home, I know he hasn’t been studying math and we certainly have not taught him. And because he hasn’t been to school, he is not literate, so he doesn’t use the algebraic version – a (squared) + b (squared) = c (squared). It’s clear that he has only been thinking deeply about something to develop an important formula on his own. This would be a massive act of original thinking in a dog, and a demonstration of deep, independent intelligence. But it would not be an original contribution to the knowledge of any field.

This is quite the opposite of Srinivasa Ramanujan. Ramanujan was a self-taught mathematical genius whose work included a wide variety of results. He created new and astonishing theorems and proofs, he made intuitive discoveries that were correct without meeting the criteria of formal proof, and he developed new and important ways to prove prior results. In addition, he made original and independent rediscoveries of already existing mathematics, along with some incorrect work. The latter two kinds of results would not have made Ramanujan the major mathematician that he was. Unfortunately, if Freddy rediscovered a theorem that was known long before Pythagoras, he’d be an Einstein among dogs, but he would not be a significant mathematician.

One may argue that Einstein himself did not bother with carefully referencing in his world-changing papers of 1905. Even though the theory of special relativity (Einstein 1998 [1905]) has no references, however, the prior works on which Einstein draws are named, and physics is a quantitative field in which everyone knows the key prior works – and their creators. This is not the case in the social sciences or in design.

Avoiding plagiarism is significant and necessary obligation.

To me, it is less important than giving credit where credit is due by acknowledging priority and acknowledging the ideas on which we draw. It is also how we build the knowledge of the field, and it provides evidence for the arguments we make. Most significantly, it allows readers to query our arguments by considering and interrogating the evidence for themselves. Only when the argument stands up to robust interrogation can we truly make a contribution to the knowledge of the field.

It’s good to be a mensch. This is true  for scientists and scholars as well as for designers.

Yours,

Ken

Ken Friedman, PhD, DSc (hc), FDRS | University Distinguished Professor | Swinburne University of Technology | Melbourne, Australia | [log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]> | Mobile +61 404 830 462 | Home Page http://www.swinburne.edu.au/design/people/Professor-Ken-Friedman-ID22.html<http://www.swinburne.edu.au/design>    Academia Page http://swinburne.academia.edu/KenFriedman About Me Page http://about.me/ken_friedman

Guest Professor | College of Design and Innovation | Tongji University | Shanghai, China

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Reference


Einstein, Albert. 1998 [1905]. “On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies.” (Annalen der Physik 18: 639–641). In: Einstein’s Miraculous Year. Five Papers that Changed the Face of Physics. Edited and introduced by John Stachel. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, pp. 123-160.


Lissack, Michael. 2013. Subliminal Influence or Plagiarism by Negligence? The Slodderwetenschap of Ignoring the Internet. [Draft under submission to the Journal of Academic Ethics.]


Phillips, Estelle M. and Derek S. Pugh. 2005. How to Get a PhD. A Handbook for Students and Their Supervisors. 4th Edition. Maidenhead, Berkshire, UK: Open University Press.



Available at:

http://swinburne.academia.edu/KenFriedman



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Gunnar Swanson wrote:



—snip—


It’s a worthwhile article. I understand the urge to stick to a narrative--to tell the story of the ideas--and that could get you into this sort of trouble but even if your ideas are arrived at independently, the thing missed by many egoists is that giving credit to others doesn’t make you look stupid or uncreative. Saying “Here’s the way I believe the world works and Professor Soandso has confirmed much of it” is more convincing than “Here’s the way the world works and everyone else is too stupid to notice it.”


I’ve seen so many designers showing their work as if nobody else helped. If they said “I love this part that my assistant, Lynda, did” or “This could have been a disaster if we didn’t have the help of XYZ Corp on the finishing” then nobody would think less of them creatively. Everyone would just think “This guy is a mensch in addition to being a great designer. How did that happen? I’d love to work with him.”



—snip—






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