Whether it’s undergraduate or graduate-level work, getting through a college program is no easy feat.
One person shared a student’s worst nightmare: their ex-advisor stole their graduate work, plagiarized it, and then tried to pass it off as their own.
It’s really troubling to think that this happened. What makes it worse is that it took four years for the truth to come out.
The person starts out by noting that their advisor is well-known in her field.
They had been working together for years, and the person had no reason to believe that Janet wouldn’t continue to be a great advisor.
The person says that they hit a point where they were ready to move beyond the work that had been done with Janet, and ended up pursuing a Ph.D. in a different country.
Janet encouraged this, and everything seemed fine… until one day the former student stumbled upon a paper that felt really familiar.
They quickly realized that the author of the paper was none other than Janet.
The person also noticed that all of their original work was in the research… but none of it was cited or credited appropriately.
So they contacted Janet, hoping to figure out what exactly was going on.
Janet chose to remain silent.
After taking this up with the institution that funded the research, the ball really started rolling.
It all ended up working out, and in the end, Janet lost her job.
Can you believe the advisor had the gall to flat-out steal from her former student? Luckily, this story has a solid ending.
Plenty of people wanted to share their thoughts on what happened here. Lot of people immediately dispelled the idea that the person’s reaction was petty.
Another person said that this behavior isn’t exactly uncommon.
Another person pointed out that the advisor definitely should have thought twice.
What did you think of what the advisor did?
Let us know in the comments!
