UPenn: investigate your current and accepted students for plagiarism in college apps

UPenn: investigate your current and accepted students for plagiarism in college apps

Started
May 16, 2022
Signatures: 10,566Next Goal: 15,000
Support now

Why this petition matters

We are a group of parents, students, teachers, and researchers who are fighting for justice and integrity in academic research and the admission process for highly selective universities in the United States. It has recently come to our attention that two siblings from Cupertino, CA have published plagiarized and fabricated research papers with their peers over the years, writing on topics as far-ranging as communications, neuroscience, psychology, dental science, and criminal justice. Both siblings have been accepted to the highly-selective 7-year bio-dental program at UPenn (one is a current student, another a high school senior who has been accepted).

 

Please see this document for more details.

 

In a related case, a group of high school students from the San Francisco Bay Area, including one of the siblings mentioned above, had co-authored a now-retracted paper plagiarizing an original research article regarding the reliance on technology by children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and the attitudes of their parents to their children’s technology use. Not only was the students’ paper found to have 75% similarity to this paper, it had involved surveying the parents of children with ASD as human subjects. The students had claimed to have collected the data for this paper from AMAZE, whose identity is unknown. Research on human subjects is highly supervised by institutions and the federal government, and it is not clear how these students had gone about obtaining the necessary approval by the Institutional Review Board to carry out their studies. If the students had indeed surveyed the parents for their “research” in one way or another, they deserve to receive an explanation as to how these student authors interacted with the children and their parents during the course of the research.

 

We are equally enraged, saddened, and disheartened by this reality that some students go so far as to publish fabricated papers in predatory journals in order to enhance their applications for highly-selective universities. Their actions are disrespectful to the researchers who dutifully conducted and published their research, and they are also robbing the opportunities for education at top-tier universities from other high-achieving students who have carried themselves with high integrity throughout their studies. In the case of the retracted paper, it is reprehensible that teenagers plagiarized a paper about developmental disorders in children and framed it as their original work, presumably for their own benefit as they seek admission to the highly selective universities.We are asking for the responsible parties to take the following actions:

  • admit their wrongdoings and apologize to the researchers whose work they have plagiarized and published as their own. We also ask the same of all her peer co-authors.
  • The Admissions Office at the University of Pennsylvania–to investigate this matter and issue a statement acknowledging their oversight in admitting the siblings.
  • AMAZE, the entity listed in the retracted paper from which the students claimed to have collected the data–to come forth and explain what the students in question have done with children with ASD and their parents. 
Support now
Signatures: 10,566Next Goal: 15,000
Support now
Share this petition in person or use the QR code for your own material.Download QR Code