Quick comment 丨 Zhai Tianlin "harmed" graduates? Don't let the "bad" papers be checked

What kind of end can a "non-repetitive" thesis put on campus life just to cope with graduation?

In 2019, actor Zhai Tianlin's academic misconduct incident punctured the painting skin of the paper framer. Some netizens took his published papers on the Internet to "check the weight" and found that the proportion of paper text reproduction reached 40.3%. In the graduation season of that year, major universities strictly investigated the repetition rate of papers, and the topic of Zhai Tianlin's "harm" of 8.3 million graduates was on the hot search.

Two years have passed, and it's graduation season again. At present, what is the scene of the paper review? Media investigations have found that the investigation has become a business that sits on the ground and starts at the starting price, the price rises fiercely, and the students become fat sheep to be slaughtered. In a search on an e-commerce platform, the master's and doctoral dissertations are checked, and the price is generally around 500 yuan, and the most expensive is even sold to 1800 yuan. There are also merchants that provide paid "weight reduction" services to help students successfully pass the school's audit.

It is undeniable that the original intention of the paper review is to severely punish academic misconduct, "zero tolerance" for plagiarism and embezzlement of other people's intellectual achievements, and maintain the dignity of education and scholarship. However, it should be a weapon to purify the academic ecology, how can slaying a dragon not become an anti-change dragon? What good things do to bad things?

Graduates have been checking the paper for a long time, and the groove point is mainly in determining that the repetition standard is too "mechanical" - wenshizhe paper writing inevitably needs to cite the original point of view, and some netizens said that the agents, manufacturers, formulas, and instruments in the paper will be considered "repetitive", and some people have changed "absolute ethanol" to "100% alcohol" in order to cope with the weight check.

If you judge whether the graduation thesis is good or bad, do not care whether it is seriously investigated, independent thinking, do not care whether there is a unique insight, enlighten the society, only care about "heavy or not", it is easy to go to the other extreme, in order to fight against rigid standards, thesis creation may become another kind of "washing competition". Some opportunists have found loopholes in the double-check system, using means such as keyword synonymous substitution, changing sentence patterns, paragraph segmentation, semantic paraphrasing, deleting repetitive parts, and english-Chinese translation, etc., and have instead become "masters of successful thesis writing".

The purpose of re-checking is to reverse plagiarism, but the re-checking business has become a cat-and-mouse game of anti-"anti-plagiarism". I can't help but think, what is the original intention of thesis writing?

Some time ago, two academic papers that brushed the screen also had a mirror of the original intention of retrieving academic research. A can be described as the "most hardcore" paper in history, the beginning is a domineering sentence "this article does not need to refer to any literature", netizens see that the author of the paper is Mr. Qian Weichang, the comment area has expressed "disrespect" and "mechanics grandmaster Taidou, everyone is referring to him". There is also a master's thesis, the author was watched by a large number of netizens for his research on erotic underwear.

In the sea of smoke and smoke, the reason why such a paper surfaces is that it is unique and original, representing the author's strength of independent thinking and dedicated research. Of course, for the graduates of this master's degree, most of them are still in the stage of knowledge accumulation, and it is indeed difficult to ask them to write a thesis that "does not refer to any literature", but it is difficult to frame a "non-repetitive" thesis, just to cope with graduation, and what kind of end can it bring to campus life?

There is also a point more critical, some colleges and universities in the review of dissertations rely too much on technical means, there is a suspicion of "lazy government", as long as the paper can be checked, some are obviously "washed" patchwork of articles, some teachers may also turn a blind eye. Over time, the thesis became the "emperor's new clothes" that students put on before graduation.

The graduation thesis is not only for graduation, but also to witness the learning results and the best answer to campus life. In the final judgment of whether a paper is qualified, a more reasonable standard should be set to avoid too single evaluation criteria covering everything. At the same time, the paper checks the chaos, and cannot become an unregulated customer-killing business. "The avenue is not smooth, the trail will be rampant", the school should also provide more convenience to students, do not let students be repeatedly checked and the business is woolen.

Red Star News special commentator Bai Jingjing

Edited by Zhao Yu

Red Star Review Submission Email: [email protected]

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