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School's back! Need an essay on prostate cancer for a class? You can buy one here!

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Posted 8/10/2021 4:32 PM (GMT 0)
While recently searching some back-to-school topics, just out of curiosity, and then some PCa points as well, I stumbled on to something that sort of involves the both of them, and which I found rather surprising. I think you may too.

Some college students, when faced with having to write an essay for a class, will engage in the unethical practice of paying someone to write that essay for them, and then turning in that essay as their own. Back in my college days we called that "cribbing."

From a website, good reasons why cribbing is a bad idea:

"If you have been contemplating using a website that offers college essays for sale, here are a few points to consider: (1) Moral considerations. Despite many very good arguments that can be made to the contrary, you will find that faculty administrators still view the act of ordering a custom essay online as plagiarism. You may face severe consequences if your instructor finds that you have submitted a purchased essay. (2) The importance of developing your writing skills. By not doing the work yourself, you may be missing out on the chance to freshen up your academic skills that you are more likely to apply in the real world. (3) A better work ethic. Doing your own work will keep you from becoming lazy. In addition, it is impractical to think that you can outsource all your work as you advance. If you buy custom essays online, you may be setting yourself up to enter the workforce unprepared."

Despite that, even a quick search of the web reveals that there are lots of websites out there that are offering such already-written, ready-to-download essays on innumerable topics to college students, or anyone else, for the right price.

So what has this got to do with PCa? Well, while doing the aforementioned searches on school and PCa, I came across an essay-mill site where, for a $29.95/month subscription fee, you can choose among five hundred essays, of varying lengths, on PCa:

https://www.bartleby.com/topics/prostate-cancer-essay#google_vignette

Of course I had to wonder, why so many (500???), but then I suppose medical students can crib essay assignments too, but at their own peril if their professors find out.

I guess some things never change. In college decades ago, one could hire a guy with time and a typewriter to knock out an essay on whatever, while today all it takes is a credit card and an accommodating website.

But mentioning the site with the 500 PCa essays for sale seemed like it was worth a thread, since it was so unusual!

(MODS: I'm assuming this thread is not in violation of the forum rule on plugging commercial websites, since, on the contrary, I would urge anyone NOT to do business with such as the one linked above. But lock if you disagree).
Posted 8/13/2021 1:01 PM (GMT 0)

I recently saw a feature on this.

The actual writers for these essays and research papers were actually living thousands of miles away in impoverished areas of Africa.

In an ironic twist, writing research papers for wealthy college students was actually becoming a source of income.

The number of essays and research papers available for "sale" on the internet was astounding --- on every topic imaginable.

College professors were shown putting more "authentication" procedures in place, due to the rise in cheating ...

I was thinking of those little blank "blue books" --- with lined paper ----handed out IN CLASS by some of my college professors ---- and then you had an hour or two to write an essay in class, under the watchful eye of the professor.

I also remember staying up late into the night, typing papers in college. I got a new electric typewriter for high school graduation, and felt very fortunate to have one. Times have changed!

In the news feature I watched, it was sobering to see how RAMPANT the cheating options had become ----enhanced by downloadable essay and research papers for sale on the internet.

CYCLONE --- # Iowa State University
Posted 8/14/2021 4:27 PM (GMT 0)
The university that I currently attend uses something called “Turn It In” that scans all submitted essays and appears and then delivers back a score that indicates the probability of it, or portions of it, being less than original content.

I, of course, write my own research papers (art history) and I never received a perfect score from Turn It In. The number is always small, like 1% or 2% which tells me that, as original as I write, someone has plowed the same ground and come to similar conclusions and the use of wording.
Posted 8/14/2021 6:47 PM (GMT 0)
VinceinMT -

I guess I'm not surprised that there are apps now that can analyze submitted essay papers as you describe, and draw conclusions as to their originality (or lack of it).

It reminds me of the area known as "forensic linguistics," which involves examining the text of a document known to be associated with a, so far, unknown criminal, and comparing it with texts known to have been written by several different suspects. According to forensic linguistics, the suspect whose writing style most closely matches that of the criminal text is likely to be the criminal.

As far as I could tell by some searches, such conclusions are not yet admissible in court (the analysis is still a bit too subjective, from what I read), but there seem to have been cases where such an approach did indeed prove useful.

For example

"The most well-known case where law enforcement used forensic linguistic experts was the Unabomber. After sending or placing several bombs in universities and airlines, the serial bomber sent a very long manifesto called Industrial Society and its Future to several publications demanding it be published. When they obeyed, a man named David Kaczynski read the manifesto and found it disturbingly familiar; the word choices and philosophy resembled those of his brother Theodore Kaczynski. There were particular phrases David recognized as Ted’s, including a reversal of the common saying “have your cake and eat it too;” Ted preferred to say “eat your cake and have it too.” These were unique enough to be instantly recognizable, but were not the only indicators. Forensic linguists analyzed the document, comparing the phrasing of the manifesto’s philosophical statements to that of documents provided by David, and later, further documents found in Kaczynski’s cabin. They concluded that the documents had all been written by the same author."

Source:
https://www.crimemuseum.org/crime-library/forensic-investigation/forensic-linguistics-and-author-identification/

Other websites I visited claim that forensic linguistics has a real future, because so many more crimes these days are being committed online, which means there is the possibility that there could be a trail of written texts of one form or another (emails, attachments, comments, etc.) available to be analyzed, and the results made available to the authorities.

So perhaps it could be argued that in addition to having physical DNA, someday it will be proved that people also have a kind of "writing-style DNA," and someday the tools for examining writing-style will be as reliable as the ones now used for physical DNA.
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