Miami Herald Logo

Authors of Miami Dade College textbook divided over allegations of plagiarism | Miami Herald

×
  • E-edition
  • Home
    • Site Information
    • Contact Us
    • About Us
    • Herald Store
    • RSS Feeds
    • Special Sections
    • Advertise
    • Advertise with Us
    • Media Kit
    • Mobile
    • Mobile Apps & eReaders
    • Newsletters
    • Social
    • Facebook
    • Twitter
    • Google+
    • Instagram
    • YouTube

    • Sections
    • News
    • South Florida
    • Miami-Dade
    • Broward
    • Florida Keys
    • Florida
    • Politics
    • Weird News
    • Weather
    • National & World
    • Colombia
    • National
    • World
    • Americas
    • Cuba
    • Guantánamo
    • Haiti
    • Venezuela
    • Local Issues
    • Crime
    • Education
    • Environment
    • Health Care
    • In Depth
    • Issues & Ideas
    • Traffic
    • Sections
    • Sports
    • Blogs & Columnists
    • Pro & College
    • Miami Dolphins
    • Miami Heat
    • Miami Marlins
    • Florida Panthers
    • College Sports
    • University of Miami
    • Florida International
    • University of Florida
    • Florida State University
    • More Sports
    • High School Sports
    • Auto Racing
    • Fighting
    • Golf
    • Horse Racing
    • Outdoors
    • Soccer
    • Tennis
    • Youth Sports
    • Other Sports
    • Politics
    • Elections
    • The Florida Influencer Series
    • Sections
    • Business
    • Business Monday
    • Banking
    • International Business
    • National Business
    • Personal Finance
    • Real Estate News
    • Small Business
    • Technology
    • Tourism & Cruises
    • Workplace
    • Business Plan Challenge
    • Blogs & Columnists
    • Cindy Krischer Goodman
    • The Starting Gate
    • Work/Life Balancing Act
    • Movers
    • Sections
    • Living
    • Advice
    • Fashion
    • Food & Drink
    • Health & Fitness
    • Home & Garden
    • Pets
    • Recipes
    • Travel
    • Wine
    • Blogs & Columnists
    • Dave Barry
    • Ana Veciana-Suarez
    • Flashback Miami
    • More Living
    • LGBTQ South Florida
    • Palette Magazine
    • Indulge Magazine
    • South Florida Album
    • Broward Album
    • Sections
    • Entertainment
    • Books
    • Comics
    • Games & Puzzles
    • Horoscopes
    • Movies
    • Music & Nightlife
    • People
    • Performing Arts
    • Restaurants
    • TV
    • Visual Arts
    • Blogs & Columnists
    • Jose Lambiet
    • Lesley Abravanel
    • More Entertainment
    • Events Calendar
    • Miami.com
    • Contests & Promotions
    • Sections
    • All Opinion
    • Editorials
    • Op-Ed
    • Editorial Cartoons
    • Jim Morin
    • Letters to the Editor
    • From Our Inbox
    • Speak Up
    • Submit a Letter
    • Meet the Editorial Board
    • Influencers Opinion
    • Blogs & Columnists
    • Blog Directory
    • Columnist Directory
    • Andres Oppenheimer
    • Carl Hiaasen
    • Leonard Pitts Jr.
    • Fabiola Santiago
    • Obituaries
    • Obituaries in the News
    • Place an Obituary

    • Place an ad
    • All Classifieds
    • Announcements
    • Apartments
    • Auctions/Sales
    • Automotive
    • Commercial Real Estate
    • Employment
    • Garage Sales
    • Legals
    • Merchandise
    • Obituaries
    • Pets
    • Public Notices
    • Real Estate
    • Services
  • Public Notices
  • Cars
  • Jobs
  • Moonlighting
  • Real Estate
  • Mobile & Apps

  • el Nuevo Herald
  • Miami.com
  • Indulge

Miami-Dade County

Authors of Miami Dade College textbook divided over allegations of plagiarism

BY EMMA COURT

    ORDER REPRINT →

August 14, 2014 05:24 PM

The co-authors of Miami Dade College’s main communications department textbook have been embroiled in accusations that some of the text may have been plagiarized.

One of those sections, ironically, deals with the very definition of plagiarism.

It’s there on page 37 of The Freedom to Communicate textbook: Plagiarism is taking someone else’s work without giving them credit. It is, the textbook states, “a serious problem in today’s society.”

That’s what Isabel del Pino-Allen, a communications professor at MDC, charged that her colleague and co-author Adam Vellone did with a handful of passages — including lifting language nearly word-for-word from a paper defining 10 different types of plagiarism produced by the anti-plagiarism software company Turnitin, without providing proper credit.

Sign Up and Save

Get six months of free digital access to the Miami Herald

SUBSCRIBE WITH GOOGLE

#ReadLocal

Early this month, the college issued a report of its investigation of the controversy, finding that some contested passages needed to be clarified but also not stamping any of the scholars with the academic stain of plagiarism. The MDC report found that the Michigan-based publisher of the book, Hayden-McNeil Publishing, may have been responsible for removing quotation marks and citation links in the process of standardizing the textbook’s citations.

“It is unclear whether each of the four incidences of alleged plagiarism in the book can be explained by changes made by the publisher,” Beverly Moore-Garcia, MDC’s vice provost for academic affairs, wrote in the report. Moore-Garcia recommended that the five authors, all from the MDC communications department, work with the publisher to fix “incomplete citations.”

The MDC report also concluded that because the authors’ contract did not delineate who would write which chapters of the book, all five “bear an equal responsibility for the book’s integrity.”

Del Pino-Allen, who has taught at the college for 12 years, said she was “flabbergasted” by MDC’s final report. As authority figures who can discipline students who plagiarize, including expelling them from school, professors should be role models in their own work, she said.

“When you copy something, you’re supposed to attribute to the source. Plagiarism stems from one of two things: incompetence or dishonesty. And neither one has a place in academia,” del Pino-Allen said. “The chapter that has to do with plagiarism, maybe that was incompetence. But if [Vellone] didn’t know what plagiarism was, he had no right to write about plagiarism. If we tell [our students] to not cheat, then we can’t do it ourselves.”

Vellone, a professor of speech and communications who has been at MDC for 11 years, did not respond to calls and emails for comment. Neither did three other co-authors.

But Mark Richard, president of the United Faculty of Miami Dade College union, who spoke on the behalf of the book’s other co-authors, stressed that the MDC investigation had not charged Vellone or any of the textbook’s other authors with plagiarism. Moreover, Richard said that all of the referencing procedures in the textbook were done together by all of the authors along with the publisher.

“We respect people raising questions, but all of them were independently investigated by college academic leaders and the allegations were proven to be completely unfounded,” Richard said. “We believe the matter is now closed.”

Del Pino-Allen said she first became suspicious when she stumbled upon a question about refrigerator motor circuitry in an online bank of end-of-chapter questions for the textbook. The question turned out to have come from another communications textbook, del Pino-Allen said.

She said she found several other examples of improperly or inadequately credited material in chapters she said were written by Vellone, including a Pablo Picasso quotation, the definition of “pitch” as well as several additional online end-of-chapter questions.

Del Pino-Allen said she was most troubled by the test questions, but the plagiarism definition passage was particularly ironic, she said. Several paragraphs long, the passage uses the same bold-faced terms to name different types of plagiarism, and the definitions contain much of the same wording as a paper produced by Turnitin.

There were some minor changes in the textbook passage on plagiarism, including reordering the 10 definitions from how they appear in the Turnitin paper.

None of the references at the end of MDC’s textbook refers directly back to the Turnitin paper but there is a trail — albeit circuitous — that does link back to the original source: The textbook cites an MDC library guide, which does not contain the actual original text but does link to the website plagiarism.org. Although that link itself is defunct, plagiarism.org does link to the original Turnitin paper.

Jason Chu, education director at Turnitin, said that while the textbook’s roundabout citation of the plagiarism definition was problematic, he did not consider it plagiarism but rather “sloppy scholarship.” Citations should refer directly back to the original source and give credit to the source that referenced the reader there, he said.

Not citing the original source “gets kind of gray — it’s not technically plagiarism,” Chu said. “Is it unethical, improper? Absolutely.”

Meanwhile, as the new academic year approaches, the future of the textbook is uncertain. Communication between the five co-authors has broken down.

  Comments  

Videos

A development wave is redrawing the face of Coral Gables

Codina calls new office building, “home”

View More Video

Trending Stories

Man arrested after climbing crane near FIU to ask Trump for mercy for Cuban exile bomber

February 18, 2019 08:44 AM

One dead in shooting near South Beach’s Ocean Drive

February 17, 2019 06:47 AM

A Florida 6th-grader called the Pledge of Allegiance ‘racist.’ Then he got arrested.

February 18, 2019 08:59 AM

Did the rock star unzip it on stage in Miami? Fifty years later, let’s take a look

February 17, 2019 09:41 AM

Wade on relationship with Riley: ‘We’ve had way more amazing moments than we’ve had not’

February 17, 2019 02:13 PM

Read Next

Man arrested after climbing crane near FIU to ask Trump for mercy for Cuban exile bomber
Video media Created with Sketch.

West Miami-Dade

Man arrested after climbing crane near FIU to ask Trump for mercy for Cuban exile bomber

By David J. Neal

    ORDER REPRINT →

February 18, 2019 08:44 AM

Diego Tintorero, 62, climbed a construction crane near Florida International University’s main campus, where President Donald Trump spoke Monday afternoon, with a U.S. flag and a plea for Eduardo Arocena.

KEEP READING

Sign Up and Save

#ReadLocal

Get six months of free digital access to the Miami Herald

SUBSCRIBE WITH GOOGLE

MORE MIAMI-DADE COUNTY

Actor Gregg Weiner makes powerful Zoetic Stage debut in ‘Every Brilliant Thing’

Performing Arts

Actor Gregg Weiner makes powerful Zoetic Stage debut in ‘Every Brilliant Thing’

February 18, 2019 09:03 AM
Miami ostomy group helps patients adjust to their new lifestyles

Health & Fitness

Miami ostomy group helps patients adjust to their new lifestyles

February 18, 2019 02:32 PM
Fugitive crashed at Publix, was caught at an animal hospital by a dog bite to the butt

Miami Beach

Fugitive crashed at Publix, was caught at an animal hospital by a dog bite to the butt

February 18, 2019 02:28 PM
Woman dead after early morning shooting in Miami, cops say

Miami-Dade County

Woman dead after early morning shooting in Miami, cops say

February 18, 2019 09:53 AM
Mark Walton, Cincinnati Bengal jailed for battery, had unreported Miami marijuana charge

Crime

Mark Walton, Cincinnati Bengal jailed for battery, had unreported Miami marijuana charge

February 18, 2019 01:01 PM
A high-rise building boom put Coral Gables on steroids. Will it remain the City Beautiful?

Real Estate News

A high-rise building boom put Coral Gables on steroids. Will it remain the City Beautiful?

February 18, 2019 07:00 AM
Take Us With You

Real-time updates and all local stories you want right in the palm of your hand.

Icon for mobile apps

Miami Herald App

View Newsletters

Subscriptions
  • Start a Subscription
  • Customer Service
  • eEdition
  • Vacation Hold
  • Pay Your Bill
  • Rewards
Learn More
  • About Us
  • Contact Us
  • Newsletters
  • News in Education
  • Public Insight Network
  • Reader Panel
Advertising
  • Place a Classified
  • Media Kit
  • Commercial Printing
  • Public Notices
Copyright
Commenting Policy
Privacy Policy
Terms of Service


Back to Story