by KYW's Dr. Marciene Mattleman

Most colleges and universities bring up the issue of plagiarism at or even before freshman orientation. Some institutions have students sign a pledge, and in cases where using the work of another has been found, there’s a threat of punishment.

The Chronicle of Higher Education reports on another issue and a surprising one - instances of plagiarism by faculty that have been found in the biomedical field by researchers at the University of Texas.

When scanned by a new search program, eTBLAST, more than 70,000 article abstracts appeared “disturbingly similar” to other published work.

The researchers examined 2600 of these abstracts by hand and found what appears to be 73 instances of outright plagiarism with a few articles in elite journals.

Other examples looked like double publishing, where an author publishes the same paper in two different journals.

Aside from the ethics involved, double publishing can be dangerous. By reporting more than once on a clinical trial, it could appear that more patients have undergone treatment.

Hopefully, this new search tool will help stop these practices.