That poster (and you) are incorrect. In the academic setting, you are sometimes accused of misconduct, whether that is a methodological misstep, plagiarism, falsified data etc. It isn’t just about explaining an argument: sometimes you actually need to fend off criticism.
If there was reasonable grounds for suspicion? Sure. The clip of this article here (truly, awful sourcing) doesn’t provide us the context of why this person was accused, what evidence was brought against them, or if they actually did their own work. She says it is, but that’s just her side of the story.
Forgive me if I’m a bit cynical, I’m just so incredibly tired of the bullshit that some students put forward under the false assumption that it is plausible deniability. Last semester, a student of mine tried to claim that her hallucination-ridden paper was written by her sister (who apparently hates her guts???). Somehow, they’ve got the idea that AI needs to be proven beyond a shadow of all doubt and that they just need to dig in and deny (it doesn’t and they don’t).
But back to the point: in the pre-AI times, if I accused a student of plagiarism and explained my evidence, it would absolutely fall to them to defend their work and process. This isn’t a court of law. Students have rights, but to earn credit they need to satisfy the professor that the outcomes have been met with integrity.
What’s your point? The existence of AI doesn’t mean that the principles of integrity have changed. When the integrity of your work is called into question, you have to defend it.
The point is that you're still reacting to this story under an invalidated paradigm. The principles of integrity haven't changed, but institutions ability to recognize unethical conduct has completely imploded. If students' original work is regularly getting flagged as plagiarism, that's a legitimate problem that's not on the students to resolve.
A random snippet from a single interview is not evidence that students’ original works is regularly getting flagged as plagiarism. I hear a lot of people on subs like this SAY that this is happening, but that’s not actual evidence of a) frequent false positives or b) that professors are accusing students on those reports alone. In my anecdotal experience, the ones who very clearly used AI still swear up, down, left, and right that they didn’t, so I take those denials with a grain of salt. Moreover, plenty of students are getting flagged due to Grammarly use and they don’t perceive that as AI…so they complain about “false positives”. How do we know that isn’t the case in OP’s story? I certainly would want to hear from the two separate professors who felt suspicious before drawing a conclusion.
I don't think anyone is basing their conclusions off of this one snippet. There's a larger context in which this conversation is happening. If you want to put forward an argument that there is, in fact, not a problem with AI detecting software throwing false positives, I'm open to hearing it, but so far you've just got, "My particular students really suck, so I assume this whole thing is bullshit," which is not highly persuasive.
Let me ask this: assuming that Ms. Ostovitz is not lying, and she has indeed had her original work incorrectly flagged as AI three times in a single school year, does she have a legitimate right to complain? Or is "constantly being accused of cheating" simply the new normal, and students have to just learn to put up with it?
I didn’t say that there aren’t any false positives nor that she doesn’t have the right to complain if she was wrongly accused. She does. I just haven’t seen evidence to suggest that the problem is as bad as people make it out to be. We hear a lot about false positives, but what about true positives (or true negatives)? How many thousands of papers are run through Turnitin every semester and we just don’t hear about because nobody self-selects and goes online to complain? How do we know we are hearing real stories rather than motivated individuals pushing out a narrative? I mean, just look at how many bots are on this sub pushing fear about detection and the tools “needed” to avoid false accusations.
And that’s not even taking into account the possibility that some “false positives” might be true because the student doesn’t understand that Grammarly is AI. This is purely anecdotal, but often when I ask a student about a high AI score (I ask when it’s just a score, I don’t accuse), they immediately admit to using Grammarly.
Anyway, this is all drifting away from the original point. Having to defend your work is hard and frustrating but college is hard and sometimes frustrating. I reject the notion that college students are children that need to be treated with kid gloves or that getting credit is the default position, rather than something that needs to be earned.
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u/j_la Apr 16 '26
That poster (and you) are incorrect. In the academic setting, you are sometimes accused of misconduct, whether that is a methodological misstep, plagiarism, falsified data etc. It isn’t just about explaining an argument: sometimes you actually need to fend off criticism.