We left for the weekend with a piece on a student’s editorial that was pulled from the school paper. From the student’s perspective, and from the principal’s response, it seemed the article was pulled because it defended evolution and failed to mention creationism.
Unfortunately, as reported today in the Roanoke Times, the article was plagiarized. According to the editorial, the principal didn’t know the editorial was lifted when he censored the article. Take away: good issue, but plagiarism is bad journalism.
Thanks to the National Center for Science Education for alerting us to the Roanoke story and its developments.
Update: plagiarism was unearthed in the fertile comment section of the blog phyrangula. As sunclipse points out (both are bloggers at scienceblogs.com), the comments section also unearthed plagiarism in a paper in the science journal Proteomics. sunclipse ends her piece with this gem:
Parents of America should take note. Strangers on the Internet are doing something much more frightening than soliciting photos of your children on MySpace. They’re making sure your children didn’t cheat on their homework.