“Tortured” phrases used to fool plagiarism detectors now infest scientific papers

Are you a researcher working in Counterfeit Consciousness? It’s the hottest area in computer science! Perhaps Manufactured Acumen, as they call it. Or Synthetic Perspicacity? Whatever it is, don’t call it Artificial Intelligence, or the rest of the text you swiped might be spotted by turnitin. Nature:

Further investigation revealed that these strange terms — which they dub “tortured phrases” — are probably the result of automated translation or software that attempts to disguise plagiarism. And they seem to be rife in computer-science papers.

esearch-integrity sleuths say that Cabanac and his colleagues have uncovered a new type of fabricated research paper, and that their work, posted in a preprint on arXiv on 12 July¹, might expose only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the literature affected.

To get a sense of how many papers are affected, the researchers ran a search for 30 tortured phrases in journal articles indexed in the citation database Dimensions. They found more than 860 publications that included at least one of the phrases, 500 of which were published in a single journal: Microprocessors and Microsystems.

The most interesting thing is that, despite the the obvious laziness, there seems little evidence of academic fraud. The difficulty of translating complex language to English seems to be the proximate cause of the plagiarism: authors are boilerplating existing passages they know are formally correct, but their grasp of English isn’t good enough to rephrase it themselves or to spot inappropriate word substitutions made by machines.

Compare to those bizarre sextortion emails that talk knowingly about your crimes, in language similarly mangled by a deranged thesaurus in hopes of avoiding spam detectors.

• 
  Principal busted for plagiarizing another principal’s reflections on the pandemic year. Twice.
  

  
  
  Greg Wilkey, principal of East Side Elementary in Chattanooga, Tenn, wrote a moving letter to staff reflecting on the pandemic year. The letter was so good that it spread on Facebook and was even covered by some media outlets. One of the readers was Stacie Bonnick, principal of Washington Technology Magnet School in St. Paul,… READ THE REST

• 
  University president resigns after plagiarizing speech
  

  
  
  The president of the University of South Carolina resigned Wednesday after it was reported that passages from a weekend commencement speech were plagiarized from another speech by the former head of US Special Operations Command. Bob Caslen admitted lifting lines from Admiral William McRaven and said he was “truly sorry”, reports CNN. “Know that life… READ THE REST

• 
  Wes Anderson’s “artful homage” in The Grand Budapest Hotel
  

  
  
  In this video, filmmaker Thomas Flight does a side-by-side comparison between Wes Anderson’s The Grand Budapest Hotel and a number of films he was “heavily influenced” by, mainly Bergman’s The Silence and Hitchcock’s Torn Curtain. Flight generously calls it “artful homage.” As he points out, one cool effect is how Anderson often makes clever referential… READ THE REST

• 
  Get power on the go with this OtterBox Standard Power Bank for under $30
  

  
  
  With all the devices we’re carting around these days, a reliable, durable, fast power bank is practically essential to keep them running. Considering their place as one of the premier names in smartphone cases, it’s no surprise that an OtterBox Power Bank would be able to survive the nicks and scrapes of everyday life. But… READ THE REST

• 
  Spend $30 for the over 1,000 courses in this StackSkills Unlimited training — and get a $30 rebate
  

  
  
  “Never stop learning because life never stops teaching.” We can throw quotes at you until we’re all blue in the face, but we only do it because they’re true. Henry Ford said learning keeps you young, which is also true because the day you stop coveting and chasing knowledge is the day you start slowly… READ THE REST

• 
  Blockchain could change the world. This $20 course package could show you how.
  

  
  
  If you never hear word of Bitcoin ever again, it’ll be too soon. But here’s the thing. While the merits of cryptocurrency, as well as its long-term prognosis, may vary, you won’t find many tech experts on the fence about the technology that makes crypto possible. No, the process of blockchain is not only at… READ THE REST