I plagiarize, you plagiarize, he plagiarizes, we plagiarize, you plagiarize, they plagiarize form the present indicative tense of the grammar most commonly used in Italian academia, says Francesca Patanè

Any resemblance to real persons is not purely coincidental...

In this case, “repetita non iuvant”, in the sense that this type of drill doesn’t bring benefits. At least it shouldn’t.  Actually, if we were living in a serious country, it would destroy hundreds of academic careers.  Instead, here, in Italy, they flourish because of it. They are established by it. Why? – Did you understand that I am talking about plagiarism? – The often clumsy and impudent activity of copying somebody else’s work is used to manufacture otherwise nonexistent publications in order to become the winner of personnel hiring derbies (concorsi) in Italian universities, otherwise inexorably lost.

These individuals, ladies and gentlemen, often are our Italian university professors.

Don’t you shoot me, please. I didn’t say it. The cycled and recycled papers say it. And, before ours, many newspapers have exposed it.

Hence, don’t get upset, dear Italian professors: I am only restating the obvious truth. There is nothing that you can do. I personally trust anonymous letters when they come supported by irrefutable evidence such as the documents I made available to all readers in the previous issue of “Ateneo Palermitano” (No. 59).

Two papers, published in different years and outlets, with the same text (except for some examples and a minor reshuffling of the plagiarized version), with two different titles (but does the work of the selection committees consist only in reading the titles?), and – hear hear! – different authors too: Roberto Pini, Michele Raffaelli, Alessandro Barbini and Andrea Peruzzi in the original 1999 version (the plagiarized one); Gristina L., Ferrotti F., Poma I., Sarno M. in the badly copied version of 2001.

Looking at version number two, my first thought goes to first names: I must guess them.

L refers to either Lucio or Landolfo? And F? Either to Filippo, Fabio or Ferdinando? “I” could stand for Isidoro, it is the first name that goes through my head.  And M? M as in Marco?  As in Michele? As in Marcello? As in Maurizio? (Question: people who plagiarize, are they less guilty if they hide behind an initial?).

When it comes to plagiarism, in some cases, first names that are written only with the initial may become useful: they favor the three-card game of a con artist.

Not clear? I’ll try my best to explain.

If, for example, my name is Mario Rossi (constant target of casual examples) and – either by luck or by relatives – I have the opportunity of recycling a paper authored by a person with my last name but different first name and identity, what do I do?

I play the three-card game, exactly.

Abracadabra and, for example, Rossi E., who, let’s say, stands for Ermenegildo (my father, grandfather, brother, cousin either once or twice removed, or simply a casually homonymous individual), by charm becomes Rossi M.: myself, that’s it.

And voilà! My beautiful paper is reborn with fresh ink.

What about the Selection Committee that must evaluate my paper in order to verify my efficient professionalism? Like the three little monkeys: it does not see, hear, and talk.

And, please, don’t split hairs! Rossi is Rossi, is there any doubt? In short, an initial is only a letter of the alphabet, a typo perhaps, who knows? Actually, he who knows also understands and for those people who do not know it is preferable to keep their ignorance.

These individuals, ladies and gentlemen, often are our Italian university professors.

Examples? Served immediately (but you can also find a wide selection of documents on your own).

Take the senator of Alleanza Nazionale (a right wing political party) Giuseppe Consolo.

In the year 2000 he participates in a national job selection for full professor at the University of Cagliari, Sardinia. And he submits, as his own papers, legal texts written by somebody else. Judge Roja focuses his attention on a book published in the year 1999 and titled “A No-Confidence Motion Against a Single Minister Within the Authority of Parliament,”  “which contains – according to the indictment – the literal transcription of whole sections taken from the works of Sicardi, Olivetti, Chiola, and Cicconetti”.

Consolo was sentenced to six months in jail and a one thousand Euro fine (from “La Nuova Sardegna,” January 14, 2005).

Another example? The shocking case that made no “history”.

Last name: Zamagni, first name: Stefano, profession: university professor and economist of international fame, reference number one: Vatican adviser for economics and social justice, reference number two:  friend of another university professor, Romano Prodi (current Prime Minister), economist of national “famine” (you read correctly… with all the taxes that he has smacked on us…).

In the year 1982, Zamagni publishes a paper, “Methodological Fundamentals of the Austrian School”: twenty-nine pages seven of which literally translated, without quotation marks or italics, from “On Austrian Methodology,” published in 1977 by the American philosopher Robert Nozick.

Zamagni’s justification: “In a scientific paper there always exists an element of joint work. There is a phase of knowledge transmission, a moment during which it is neither possible nor relevant to define who first said what”.

Which, in other words, means: why should I bother to think, if somebody else has already thought it before me? “Let’s share it” and forget about it (it is irrelevant that the “sharing” is known only to the person who plagiarizes and not to the plagiarized author…), let us shuffle the deck and be friends, in the name of a brazen-faced intellectual honesty.

Books that are as quickly assembled as dishes in a fast food, pre-cooked and pre-packaged: a peculiar Italian habit. A multi-decennial tradition of plagiarizing national and international publications (but in Zamagni’s case also of whole pieces from articles published in “Il Sole 24 Ore” newspaper), a rooted practice that finds its strength in a uniform behavior, accessory and guilty, jointly liable and fawning in respecting the “law” of silence.

In this manner, one justifies “friends” because today it happened to you, tomorrow it will be my turn… Academic “omertà” (silence), institutionalized “mafitudine” (from Mafioso behavior), “malauniversità” (from “bad university”), just to return to our leitmotiv.

To conclude: trouble shared is trouble halved. So much so that even people who should condemn actually abstain.

Back to Zamagni’s case. Sixteen eminent Italian economists write to the Italian Society of Economists to ask for an investigation and a committee encharged with establishing the truth.

The Society’s Executive Committee refuses flatly and the official requests are replaced by anonymous letters.

Finally, the Society takes up an official and revealing position through its spokesman Pietro Alessandrini, a member of the Executive Committee: “we think that there is no need for a pronunciamento”.

The Italian professors who plagiarize are so many that rarely are they either punished by academic authorities or stigmatized by their professional societies. “Italy is completely out of control – declared to the THES (The Times Higher Education Supplement) the representative of an English publishing house who lives in Milan – there are examples of books’ entire sections lifted, translated and presented as original material”.

These individuals, ladies and gentlemen, are often our Italian university professors.

To whom, in truth, the most modern software anti-plagiarism could render life a little more difficult. But, what can you expect?  We are in Italy: here, a possibility is different from an opportunity.

I cannot (don’t want to) believe that the “Gentlemen of Bad Copying” displayed this deeply rooted habit only because of incompetence (even though it is not difficult to encounter ignorant, conceited and arrogant professors): I prefer to think about a generalized mental laziness, an academic coma induced by insufficient oxygenation of the intellectual-cerebral cortex due to a multi-decennial lack of updating.

Hence, at this point, the question is direct (that is, addressed directly to them): dear Italian university professors, aren’t you ashamed?

With this bad trend, if all the “clean” profs (and there are some, believe me) went around with a sandwich poster – Plagiarism? No, thank you. Academic Mafia? No, thank you – I would not be surprised.

In the end, somebody ought to do something: we are an international disgrace, a shame that can be called a swindle, when those fake personal publications become personal merits in fake “concorsi”…

Your Honors, Magistrates, Judges, Public Prosecutors, Lawyers, … and all the people in charge, if you are there, please knock… Possibly on their heads.

Note: This article was published by JUST Response on January 3 2007–  exactly 10 years after the THES frontpage leading article Court threat to plagiarists first brought the Italian plagiarism problem to international public attention. Francesca Patanè was born in Catania, Sicily, and currently resides in  Palermo. She runs Ateneo Palermitano, a monthly periodical of university information which she founded in September 2001.

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