UNC-Chapel Hill Vice Chancellor Resigns After Admitting Plagiarism

Last week, the United States Office of Research Integrity (ORI) made its first finding of 2022, and it was a voluntary settlement agreement between themselves and Terry Magnuson, a researcher at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill. 

The issue was straightforward, according to the ORI, Magnuson had submitted an application for a grant in March 2021. However, the grant application contained significant plagiarized text from three online articles and another paper.

According to the ORI, Magnuson “knowingly, intentionally or recklessly plagiarized” text from those sources and then submitted to the ORI as part of the grant application.

As part of the settlement, Magnuson will have his research supervised until January 2024, and he will have to submit a supervision plan for the ORI to approve before he can begin any new work. 

The story captured headlines last week, most notably, with Retraction Watch picking up the news. 

However, the story took another twist over the weekend as Magnuson announced that he would be resigning from his position as UNC-Chapel Hill’s vice chancellor for research. In a lengthy statement, Magnuson said that it was crucial for him to be above reproach in his position, as he would be overseeing incidents of research misconduct at the school. 

Magnuson will remain a member of the faculty and will continue working in his lab. 

All in all, this seems like a fairly ordinary case of plagiarism well handled. Magnuson has admitted to wrongdoing, accepted his punishment and, quite wisely, agreed to step aside from his position overseeing research integrity.

However, there is still one element of this story that is worth discussing, and it comes from Magnuson’s own statement.

Overall, a Positive Story

For the most part, Magnuson’s story is about as positive as any plagiarism story can be. Magnuson acknowledged the wrongdoing, accepted a reasonable punishment from the ORI and stepped down from his position to avoid it overshadowing his work in research misconduct.

Most importantly, all this happened within the space of the week and was as transparent as realistically possible.

However, Magnuson’s explanation of the plagiarism leaves me concerned. 

In his statement, he says that this proposal was originally filed in 2019 and, despite the proposal doing well, it wasn’t funded then. Though he was initially going to abandon it due to the pandemic, he decided to refile it at the encouragement of others at his lab.

However, he said he did so on a tight deadline and with a myriad of other things going on at the same time. As such, he copied and pasted elements from other sources as placeholders and then lost track of his editing as he picked up and put down the application several times.

According to Magnuson, that is why the material is in there.

According to Magnuson: 

“I inserted them into my document as placeholders with the intention of reworking the two areas where the techniques —which are routine work in our lab — were discussed…”

Terry Magnuson

In short, Magnuson said that he copied and pasted the text into the work with the intention of “reworking” it so that it wouldn’t be verbatim. This is, without a doubt, sloppy writing and, to borrow from the ORI, reckless.

This is not how any piece should be written, let alone a grant proposal, and the fact that this may be an approach he and his lab took with some regularity has me deeply worried.

Writing in a Cleanroom

To be clear, I have no way of knowing what Magnuson’s normal practice is for writing grant applications, nor do I know what others at his school and lab do. Furthermore, I am not a grant writer. 

However, that doesn’t change one simple fact: As a writer, I know that this kind of authorship routinely leads to plagiarism, whether it is intended or not.

For years, I’ve been touting the idea of writing in a cleanroom. It’s a very simple idea, but the basics are that your notes and outside materials are never placed in the same document that you are actively writing in. Anything you do bring in is immediately cited, even if it is just a rough draft.

That is very much the opposite of the approach Magnuson took. His approach was to paste everything and edit out the plagiarism later. However, that relies on the author remembering what is and is not original and being perfectly thorough in their edits. As Magnuson has shown us, you cannot count on that, no matter how experienced you are.

The truth is this, if you want to avoid plagiarism, citation and attribution need to be part of the writing process, not the editing process. You simply cannot count on a later version of you being able to perfectly removed the copied text.

To that end, Magnuson’s case is a warning for everyone: No matter how much you write, no matter how experienced you are, you still need to write in a cleanroom environment. Becoming complacent with attribution can make anyone into a plagiarist. 

Bottom Line

To be clear, overall, this case was handled very well, and I include Magnuson in that. The ORI’s findings were reasonable, the settlement proportionate, and Manguson’s decision to step down was extremely wise.

However, the case is ultimately a warning. The ORI was very clear in its findings, Manguson “knowingly, intentionally or recklessly plagiarized.” It’s very likely that he didn’t do it knowingly or intentionally, but hearing him describe the process, it was indeed very reckless.

But the issue isn’t that he forgot to make edits, it’s that he put himself in a position where, without those edits, the piece would be dinged for plagiarism. 

The job of the writer, in any field, is not to simply avoid plagiarism, but to never be at risk of it. For many, this requires a change not just in the way they write, but the way they think about citation as a whole.

To that end, this story is a stark reminder of why that is important for everyone, regardless of their experience.