Jessica, I try to use as few apps as possible, so I don't use the substack app. I tried several times to report the page noted in Katie's (excellent) post, both from the profile page itself and one of the posts, noting that it was either a plagiariser or a bot. Each time, when I hit the orange button to submit it, the screen locked up and stopped.
Either the reporting algo/software is being swamped, or I can't submit a report via browser, or ss is preventing reporting it. I ended up just blocking that page/profile, ss did let me do that.
Different but similar, and a bit terrifying. I'm in my final quarter of nursing school. I found out the second to the last day of last quarter that essentially 80% of the class is cheating. Im not in the 'in group' of students because I am literally twice their age. But the level of cheating is crazy. There's a whole rabbit hole of details I wont get into but, in addition to finding ways to cheat on exams they're using AI to write their papers. And we know AI plagiarises all writers, so they do too, just one step removed.
Oh, that's disturbing. I wondered how we wound up with so many doctors and nurses who don't seem to know jack about healthcare, and I guess that answers the question. Probably been going on for a while, and AI just making it way worse.
Horrific . Would be shitty enough if it were some art creative industry they were training for or academia but health? Yeah I am thrilled a vast percentage of younger doctors and healthcare workers just scammed their way thru school for the paycheck and honestly may have no retention or clue about what they may have needed to learn to keep humans alive.
Unforgivable actually. Congrats for not being oart of this in crowd and being an older ethical student who may actually hone the real skills to do the important jobs you will have!
@Zobot, thanks for this, though it is disturbing, enraging, and heartbreaking all at the same time to me. I'm an "old" retired RN, retired in Sept. of 2021 after 45 years. My last 1.5 years in were doing skilled home health care in the (ongoing!!!) pandemic (and masking kept both my patients and me and my family covid-free).
It was heartbreaking to see healthcare starting to be enshittified by hedge funds and private equity, but the pandemic (and how it has been handled) has caused terrible consequences on top of that.
I want to commend you for going into nursing, it was a wonderful career for me to be able to provide care for so many others for so long. It was a way to do what I could to make someone else's day better, and that's been a guiding principle for me. I also want to strongly encourage you to protect your own health as best you can -- and my best tool has been and continues to be wearing a 3M Aura N-95 respirator mask.
I don't know where you are, or the attitudes toward masking that suround you, but all I can do is say this: your health may be excellent, but it can be threatened and/or lost with one illness.
I'm glad Katie Jgln outed that person by name. I've seen a few others complain about plagiarism without calling people out, more on Medium than here on Substack. The fact I've seen it more on Medium is related to the simple fact I've been there longer, though, I'm sure.
I think if you've got the goods, like Katie did, where she demonstrated side by sides, it's helpful to everyone to call out someone by name. I hope she reported them, too.
Hot tip: Write like me, with horrible cliches and broken metaphors! It's like a shield against plagiarists!
Plagiarism is as old as time. In today’s monetized schemes, grifters can cut and paste here and there, rehash or condense others’ work and hope that no one notices. It is frustrating when it feels like all day is spent working to make content and people are repackaging other people’s hard work.
I'm glad, too. Plagiarism has definitely been around for a long time, but it really looks like it's getting frontloaded with the enshittification process.
When I started trying to do professional photography (being a chronically ill person I have tried to find jobs I could work around my issues), people would steal whole portfolios online and use them to market themselves.
That's awful. I've seen similar things in 3D modeling (new hobby). People will lift other artist's work into their portfolios and then try to get hired.
In music there’s a fine line between plagiarism and inspiration. Here is a recent example where I went out of my way to write original lyrics for my album.
I have been following you for years, since covid, through all your twists and turns on various platforms. I said to my husband one day, why do I read this? This would be when you wrote a piece that was so painfully truthful, it would completely alter my thinking on whatever the topic was. I'm a therapist, I have recommended a few of my clients read your work. I have recommended you to friends and family. I would tell them, she tells the truth, the painful truth, backed up by research. I want you to know that your writing changed my life. In so many ways. You always keep it real, and stay true to yourself. I admire the hell out of that.
This is serendipitous. I was just rereading an old novel (dated, but an interesting look at the sordid underside of the '40's Hollywood movie mill) by Budd Schulberg called "What Makes Sammy Run" that deals explicitly with plagiarism taken to its fullest most vicious extent. The title character, one rapacious little monster named Sammy Glick, abuses a talented but vulnerable writer, taking credit for his writing, his ideas, destroying his life in the process. Digital/social media and AI have given these bottom feeders a nuclear arsenal of tools for grifting.
And lawwomen of course, but I had in mind the specific mid-20th century Western trope, specifically for its recognition that to rid a society of bad actors, one is compelled at times to use force — even deadly force.
That’s the foundational “deal” in societies, and it’s also true about pluralistic secular democracies, even though it makes many liberals more uncomfortable than it should:
“Here are ours rules & expectations, and if you don’t like it, leave. But if you choose to stay & flout those rules, there will be consequences, potentially very harsh ones.”
Provided that law enforcement & justice systems operate fairly & with appropriate oversight (I know that’s a real issue in the US, and also to some extent across the entire freeish world), and that *all* such laws have reasonable & evidence-based foundations (e.g., no blasphemy laws, no revelation-based “morality” laws, etc.), it’s a critical part of building & maintaining a healthy society.
Otherwise the bad actors — or “defectors” as Bruce Schneier has called them in his superb game theoretical book “Liars and Outliers” — will run roughshod over the society through the loophole that exists due to society members misunderstanding the (non-existent) Paradox of Tolerance.
How about a writer who founded a new age cult on plagiarism? Yes the most prolific philosophical writer in the world L. Ron Hubbard started a lucrative “religion” called Scientology. Early on in the 50’s he did give some credit. Once he got rolling that stopped and he was dubbed “source” by his followers. All references to those he lifted from was removed from his books and gospel.
I worked with him directly so I got to see him operate. Amazing researcher and plagiarist. When I left the cult after 46 years I did research and the true sources of his “brilliant philosophy and story of the universe” were revealed. I spent over a quarter of a million on donations and services. I was one of many. Thinking I was receiving the secrets of the universe. What a fraud and criminal he was.
I’m a songwriter and composer. I make sure I give credit to my collaborators and those who inspired me. As Jessica wrote, writing is a lot of work. She deserves support. It’s a gift she gives us.
We, perhaps because of some atavistic flaw in the nature of human social impulses, look for the alpha silverback in our tribe. We need one, and if we can't find one we create one. And it may be a particular psychopathological flaw, a particular breed of narcissist catalyzed by insatiable need for dominance and power, for whom lies, deceit and often cruelty are simply tools, that gives rise to monsters and mountebanks all too willing to stand in for whatever the idealized "real thing" might be. I'm thinkin' Joseph Smith, too many televangelists to mention, the Kim dynasty of DPRK, Father Coughlin, D.C. Stephenson, king of the Indiana KKK, Charles Ponzi. Fred Phelps, and of course our current leader.
Damn , sir, I hope you are writing king and loud about the epic grift that is scientology. It has harmed so many, and the ugliness of the lives of those born into that cult is bottomless. Kids are still stick in it while current longtime member celebs and asskissers distance them selves from the lower ranks of it all. Sickening and any ex insiders should be writing every detail and warning the world about it. Thanks and respect to you for surviving it, and being able to look back and name its crimes.
I once wrote an introduction for a book, and a year later found my text almost word for word as part of an essay by a very well known person in the same field.
It was mind-boggling. I never would have thought she would do such a thing, it was clearly done on purpose (you cannot accidentally reproduce three pages of another person's writing).
I was a relative newcomer, she was very well established, well connected, and held powerful positions.
She had obviously counted on 1. nobody remembering my intro, and 2. getting away with it even if I or the author of the book found her out.
And she was right. Nobody noticed (as far as I could see), and we didn't call her out. It was just too monstrous to bear. I have thought about this ever since.
Here's my take:
Plagiarists know what they are doing. They show planning and try to evade being caught out. They use every asset, every connection, every bit of professional power in their own interest.
The plagiarised are left with a shattered 'Weltvertrauen', trust in their world, and a deep feeling of betrayal and humiliation.
The plagiarists are aware of this, too, and willingly accept the costs others have to pay for their actions.
This makes them sociopaths.
And, of course, like all sociopaths, they invest a lot in their safety and they all repeat what they are doing as long as they possibly can.
AI has been unleashed on us, the most stunning theft of intellectual property ever. Every utterance of an AI bot, even if not word for word is plagiarism with the ability to twist the truth and write thousands of articles in the time we humans write one. Please, don't use AI in your work.
"You can plagiarize a whole self." Willing to completely lose what makes you... you? That would be the ultimate horror. Reminds me of the protagonist (Tom Ripley) from the novel/movie "The Talented Mr. Ripley."
As you are probably aware, I am a Canadian specialist MD who immensely appreciates your work. You are correct. The amount of plagiarism in health care and many other fields is through the roof. So called scientific and health care research papers are getting retracted all over the place. It is terribly frustrating.:((
Ugh. When I was in grad school there was this guy, Bob (not his real name) who knew 1 critic, and bullshitted his way through everything else. Several profs were taken with him. Even after he disappeared for months. Then they found out he hadn’t been teaching his comp class. For months. A friend of his (who was not and had never been a grad student) was teaching it. They still didn’t boot him. He finally vanished completely, but I don’t know that they ever expelled him. But he was soooooo brilliant 🙄. It is infuriating.
I mean, the Liver King, of all people, convinced literally tens of millions of other people that he wasn’t on steroids and that they should buy his supplements.
Yep. :) When I started writing about really gritty topics, I noticed the influencer plagiarism fell off a cliff.
Jessica, I try to use as few apps as possible, so I don't use the substack app. I tried several times to report the page noted in Katie's (excellent) post, both from the profile page itself and one of the posts, noting that it was either a plagiariser or a bot. Each time, when I hit the orange button to submit it, the screen locked up and stopped.
Either the reporting algo/software is being swamped, or I can't submit a report via browser, or ss is preventing reporting it. I ended up just blocking that page/profile, ss did let me do that.
Regardless, thank you for all of YOUR writing.
Different but similar, and a bit terrifying. I'm in my final quarter of nursing school. I found out the second to the last day of last quarter that essentially 80% of the class is cheating. Im not in the 'in group' of students because I am literally twice their age. But the level of cheating is crazy. There's a whole rabbit hole of details I wont get into but, in addition to finding ways to cheat on exams they're using AI to write their papers. And we know AI plagiarises all writers, so they do too, just one step removed.
Oh, that's disturbing. I wondered how we wound up with so many doctors and nurses who don't seem to know jack about healthcare, and I guess that answers the question. Probably been going on for a while, and AI just making it way worse.
Horrific . Would be shitty enough if it were some art creative industry they were training for or academia but health? Yeah I am thrilled a vast percentage of younger doctors and healthcare workers just scammed their way thru school for the paycheck and honestly may have no retention or clue about what they may have needed to learn to keep humans alive.
Unforgivable actually. Congrats for not being oart of this in crowd and being an older ethical student who may actually hone the real skills to do the important jobs you will have!
Yeah it's bonkers
@Zobot, thanks for this, though it is disturbing, enraging, and heartbreaking all at the same time to me. I'm an "old" retired RN, retired in Sept. of 2021 after 45 years. My last 1.5 years in were doing skilled home health care in the (ongoing!!!) pandemic (and masking kept both my patients and me and my family covid-free).
It was heartbreaking to see healthcare starting to be enshittified by hedge funds and private equity, but the pandemic (and how it has been handled) has caused terrible consequences on top of that.
I want to commend you for going into nursing, it was a wonderful career for me to be able to provide care for so many others for so long. It was a way to do what I could to make someone else's day better, and that's been a guiding principle for me. I also want to strongly encourage you to protect your own health as best you can -- and my best tool has been and continues to be wearing a 3M Aura N-95 respirator mask.
I don't know where you are, or the attitudes toward masking that suround you, but all I can do is say this: your health may be excellent, but it can be threatened and/or lost with one illness.
My best wishes go with you on your psth.
I just went over to read Katie's post and decided to subscribe. 😁
Worth it!
Yeah she’s incredible. I’m obsessive about sources and citations and she’s consistently on par with me. Definitely legit, no doubt about it.
I know I’ve said it like twelve times now but I’m so, so glad you’re back, Jessica.
This is the first I'm hearing it, so no worries. Glad to see old faces. There's a lot of Medium peeps here now.
Yeah, stuff gets buried here. All the notifications can be a mess sometimes and I miss so much people are saying to me.
I'm glad Katie Jgln outed that person by name. I've seen a few others complain about plagiarism without calling people out, more on Medium than here on Substack. The fact I've seen it more on Medium is related to the simple fact I've been there longer, though, I'm sure.
I think if you've got the goods, like Katie did, where she demonstrated side by sides, it's helpful to everyone to call out someone by name. I hope she reported them, too.
Hot tip: Write like me, with horrible cliches and broken metaphors! It's like a shield against plagiarists!
Yep. :) When I started writing about really gritty topics, I noticed the influencer plagiarism fell off a cliff.
Plagiarism is as old as time. In today’s monetized schemes, grifters can cut and paste here and there, rehash or condense others’ work and hope that no one notices. It is frustrating when it feels like all day is spent working to make content and people are repackaging other people’s hard work.
Glad they were caught and called out.
I'm glad, too. Plagiarism has definitely been around for a long time, but it really looks like it's getting frontloaded with the enshittification process.
When I started trying to do professional photography (being a chronically ill person I have tried to find jobs I could work around my issues), people would steal whole portfolios online and use them to market themselves.
That's awful. I've seen similar things in 3D modeling (new hobby). People will lift other artist's work into their portfolios and then try to get hired.
In music there’s a fine line between plagiarism and inspiration. Here is a recent example where I went out of my way to write original lyrics for my album.
https://open.spotify.com/album/4FvmxIOQGOp8rbf7EBCrRQ?si=6ZTwjjOORxyGlni3uvbkbA
I have been following you for years, since covid, through all your twists and turns on various platforms. I said to my husband one day, why do I read this? This would be when you wrote a piece that was so painfully truthful, it would completely alter my thinking on whatever the topic was. I'm a therapist, I have recommended a few of my clients read your work. I have recommended you to friends and family. I would tell them, she tells the truth, the painful truth, backed up by research. I want you to know that your writing changed my life. In so many ways. You always keep it real, and stay true to yourself. I admire the hell out of that.
Thank you, that's good to hear. Always keeping it real over here.
This is serendipitous. I was just rereading an old novel (dated, but an interesting look at the sordid underside of the '40's Hollywood movie mill) by Budd Schulberg called "What Makes Sammy Run" that deals explicitly with plagiarism taken to its fullest most vicious extent. The title character, one rapacious little monster named Sammy Glick, abuses a talented but vulnerable writer, taking credit for his writing, his ideas, destroying his life in the process. Digital/social media and AI have given these bottom feeders a nuclear arsenal of tools for grifting.
I love your writing and your thought processes.
Thank you. :)
Bad actors abound, and few want to support the honest lawmen, as they know they could just as easily be at risk of being “found out as X”.
And lawwomen of course, but I had in mind the specific mid-20th century Western trope, specifically for its recognition that to rid a society of bad actors, one is compelled at times to use force — even deadly force.
That’s the foundational “deal” in societies, and it’s also true about pluralistic secular democracies, even though it makes many liberals more uncomfortable than it should:
“Here are ours rules & expectations, and if you don’t like it, leave. But if you choose to stay & flout those rules, there will be consequences, potentially very harsh ones.”
Provided that law enforcement & justice systems operate fairly & with appropriate oversight (I know that’s a real issue in the US, and also to some extent across the entire freeish world), and that *all* such laws have reasonable & evidence-based foundations (e.g., no blasphemy laws, no revelation-based “morality” laws, etc.), it’s a critical part of building & maintaining a healthy society.
Otherwise the bad actors — or “defectors” as Bruce Schneier has called them in his superb game theoretical book “Liars and Outliers” — will run roughshod over the society through the loophole that exists due to society members misunderstanding the (non-existent) Paradox of Tolerance.
How about a writer who founded a new age cult on plagiarism? Yes the most prolific philosophical writer in the world L. Ron Hubbard started a lucrative “religion” called Scientology. Early on in the 50’s he did give some credit. Once he got rolling that stopped and he was dubbed “source” by his followers. All references to those he lifted from was removed from his books and gospel.
I worked with him directly so I got to see him operate. Amazing researcher and plagiarist. When I left the cult after 46 years I did research and the true sources of his “brilliant philosophy and story of the universe” were revealed. I spent over a quarter of a million on donations and services. I was one of many. Thinking I was receiving the secrets of the universe. What a fraud and criminal he was.
I’m a songwriter and composer. I make sure I give credit to my collaborators and those who inspired me. As Jessica wrote, writing is a lot of work. She deserves support. It’s a gift she gives us.
We, perhaps because of some atavistic flaw in the nature of human social impulses, look for the alpha silverback in our tribe. We need one, and if we can't find one we create one. And it may be a particular psychopathological flaw, a particular breed of narcissist catalyzed by insatiable need for dominance and power, for whom lies, deceit and often cruelty are simply tools, that gives rise to monsters and mountebanks all too willing to stand in for whatever the idealized "real thing" might be. I'm thinkin' Joseph Smith, too many televangelists to mention, the Kim dynasty of DPRK, Father Coughlin, D.C. Stephenson, king of the Indiana KKK, Charles Ponzi. Fred Phelps, and of course our current leader.
Damn , sir, I hope you are writing king and loud about the epic grift that is scientology. It has harmed so many, and the ugliness of the lives of those born into that cult is bottomless. Kids are still stick in it while current longtime member celebs and asskissers distance them selves from the lower ranks of it all. Sickening and any ex insiders should be writing every detail and warning the world about it. Thanks and respect to you for surviving it, and being able to look back and name its crimes.
I once wrote an introduction for a book, and a year later found my text almost word for word as part of an essay by a very well known person in the same field.
It was mind-boggling. I never would have thought she would do such a thing, it was clearly done on purpose (you cannot accidentally reproduce three pages of another person's writing).
I was a relative newcomer, she was very well established, well connected, and held powerful positions.
She had obviously counted on 1. nobody remembering my intro, and 2. getting away with it even if I or the author of the book found her out.
And she was right. Nobody noticed (as far as I could see), and we didn't call her out. It was just too monstrous to bear. I have thought about this ever since.
Here's my take:
Plagiarists know what they are doing. They show planning and try to evade being caught out. They use every asset, every connection, every bit of professional power in their own interest.
The plagiarised are left with a shattered 'Weltvertrauen', trust in their world, and a deep feeling of betrayal and humiliation.
The plagiarists are aware of this, too, and willingly accept the costs others have to pay for their actions.
This makes them sociopaths.
And, of course, like all sociopaths, they invest a lot in their safety and they all repeat what they are doing as long as they possibly can.
That's all.
Best to move on, in as much peace as we can save.
AI has been unleashed on us, the most stunning theft of intellectual property ever. Every utterance of an AI bot, even if not word for word is plagiarism with the ability to twist the truth and write thousands of articles in the time we humans write one. Please, don't use AI in your work.
"You can plagiarize a whole self." Willing to completely lose what makes you... you? That would be the ultimate horror. Reminds me of the protagonist (Tom Ripley) from the novel/movie "The Talented Mr. Ripley."
As you are probably aware, I am a Canadian specialist MD who immensely appreciates your work. You are correct. The amount of plagiarism in health care and many other fields is through the roof. So called scientific and health care research papers are getting retracted all over the place. It is terribly frustrating.:((
Because authentic writing is just too much work!
Ugh. When I was in grad school there was this guy, Bob (not his real name) who knew 1 critic, and bullshitted his way through everything else. Several profs were taken with him. Even after he disappeared for months. Then they found out he hadn’t been teaching his comp class. For months. A friend of his (who was not and had never been a grad student) was teaching it. They still didn’t boot him. He finally vanished completely, but I don’t know that they ever expelled him. But he was soooooo brilliant 🙄. It is infuriating.
This is the Age of Grifters.
I mean, the Liver King, of all people, convinced literally tens of millions of other people that he wasn’t on steroids and that they should buy his supplements.
I think that about says it all.