Differentiating Research Design

Ethical Dilemma 2

The researcher’s action of copying sentences from another study and incorporating into the final written project report amounts to plagiarism. According to Fusch et al. (2017), plagiarism is akin to stealing and happens when an individual takes someone else's work and attempt to pass it off as their original work. In research, it happens when one knowingly uses another individual's work without giving them credit. Apart from being unethical, it is also illegal. In the current case, incorporating the copied sentences into the final report without acknowledging where the information was lifted from would compromise the credibility of the entire report and even bring about a conflict between the researchers and the authors of the materials from which the sentences were lifted from. Given the serious implications of plagiarism, it would be prudent for the researcher to come clean and admit that there are some sentences he/she directly copied from another study. The researcher should then go ahead and highlight the sentences that were directly copied. This way, it will be easier for the entire team to try and paraphrase the copied sentences. Additionally, the team will be a better position to acknowledge the source from which the ideas were borrowed from through in-text citation. There is also software that researchers can utilize to establish whether their final work is heavily plagiarized or not. It will be prudent if the researcher runs the entire work through a plagiarism checking program to identify incidences of both deliberate and undeliberate plagiarism. To avoid further plagiarism, the researcher must make sure that they give credit every other time they directly quote the spoken or written words of others, paraphrase other authors' work and, utilize opinions, theories or ideas that are not his/her. All these can be done through proper in-text citation and creation of a reference list.

References

Fusch, P. I., Ness, L. R., Booker, J. M., & Fusch, G. E. (2017). The ethical implications of plagiarism and ghostwriting in an open society. Journal of Social Change, 9(1), 4.