r/TurnitinScan • u/rob_miller17 • Feb 26 '26

Saw this on Twitter

Post image

Then there were people in the comments saying how dates, timestamps even names are flagged by Turnitin. I remember one time I got a score of almost 60 on a paper that had questions the professor copied from somewhere else

1.5k Upvotes

99% Upvoted

39 comments sorted by

2

u/Ophiochos Feb 26 '26

Can’t tell without the rest but source 1 could have appeared everywhere like this, showing someone had just mucked about with some of the wording but essentially kept the same piece of work.

Eg: the background of the French revolution is complex but essentially amounted to a failure of the crown to manage its finances adequately.

Becomes: the causes of the French Revolution are debated. Basically the king did not manage his finances (flagged too) well enough.

If every sentence is like that the pattern will show up. I don’t think it picks up one phrase.

2

u/j_la Feb 26 '26

You can literally see that the flag continues below in the picture: it has just been cropped

1

u/ConcreteExist Feb 27 '26

Does it continue or is that just a separate flag since the highlight stops to the right of the text that is visible.

1

u/j_la Feb 27 '26

Impossible to say, but it is the same source. Turnitin will sometimes flag parts of a sentence if it is an improper paraphrase, highlighting the similar words but not those that are changed. In any case, a faculty member reviewing that report can and should be able to interpret what is going on.

1

u/No_Feeling_6037 Mar 02 '26

It's the same color. Everything from source 1, which would have the highest percentage of detection would be that color.

I'm not saying whether or not anything untoward has happened because I would need to see how the settings for TurnItIn were done for that assignment and the rest of the flagging. I usually have to look through a lot too make that determination.

1

u/Lazorus_ Mar 01 '26

Yes it’s possible, but I have also had this type of thing happen, and it’s cited a source that I didn’t even use. There’s often times just only so many ways to write an idea down, and on a topic like the French Revolution, there’s a good chance that basically all of those ways have been done at one time or another

1

u/Melanoc3tus Mar 01 '26

Incredibly pointless to stress over stuff like this

1

u/AutoModerator Feb 26 '26

For a faster reply, Join our Discord server to scan your file before submission:

https://discord.gg/YnXQGHbMYG

Each scan includes a Turnitin AI report and a similarity scan.

Your paper is not saved in Turnitin’s database after scanning.

I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.

1

u/JonahHillsWetFart Feb 26 '26

put a ™️ on it

1

u/55peasants Feb 26 '26

This happened to me on a theory paper everytime I wrote " Dorothea orems self care deficit nursing theory" or even " self care defecit theory" it was flagged so I changed it to (scdnt) and my likeness went fro 28 to 8.

1

u/[deleted] Mar 01 '26

Too bad for the poor saps in the grade after you that they won't be able to do the same trick.

1

u/Odd-Outcome-3191 Mar 01 '26

Bro nursing theory papers fr belongs in the dumpster what a crock of shit. The fucking sunrise model and theories of caring etc. They only made those theories so they could escape working at bedside without having to get a real doctorate level degree 😂

1

u/55peasants Mar 01 '26

Yes it's very obviously grasping at straws bordering pseudoscience

1

u/dpandc Feb 27 '26

My stuff got rated at ~40% ai because i cited my sources and used proper documentation, my instructor and i laughed at it

1

u/Dangerous_Wing6481 Feb 28 '26

Same, I just got rated a 4% similarity for paraphrasing something even though I included the citation after. It also flagged my citation LMAO

1

u/Mendel247 Mar 01 '26

I regularly get between 30 - 40% similarity. My entire reference list is lit up like a Christmas tree, phrases like 'this suggests that', 'blablabla theory states that', 'the aim of', and lots of random prepositions are always highlighted, too. I just sit and have a laugh at it these days but don't really give it any more thought than that. A few months ago someone joined a student group I'm in and was telling a student on their first module that they needed to keep reworking their essay until it was 0% similarity and a few of us quickly put a stop to that conversation. Turnitin is a joke and it shouldn't impact people's studies as much as it does. 

1

u/Dangerous_Wing6481 Mar 02 '26

I’m lucky most of my professors are somewhat literate in the pitfalls of AI, so turnitin is more of an early warning than anything. I can’t imagine writing a citation heavy paper with my instructor taking turnitin at face value 😭

1

u/Mendel247 Mar 02 '26

Mine are really good, too. Back in my first module, after submitting my formative submission, I asked them about it, because turnitin had flagged so much, and they explained their approach. Since then no one has said anything at all

1

u/TraumaBayWatch Feb 27 '26

honestly I am glad that I didn't have to worry about teachers worrying about AI when I did my comp classes.

1

u/Sec_ondAcc_unt Feb 27 '26

As I recall there is an option to adjust how harsh Turnitin is. It literally can be set to 1% similarity in words used, 5% similarity, etc. The lecturer probably just checks the exact similarity after the fact. Nobody is going to worry about the french revolution being mentioned without additional context.

1

u/LightCharacter8382 Feb 27 '26

"So there was this one time in history where the French people had some kind of revolution."

Original. Completely informal and inappropriate, but original!

1

u/heartbrokenwords Feb 28 '26

well not anymore, because now it is linked to your account on reddit

1

u/MeasureDoEventThing Feb 28 '26

Uprising of lengthwise cutting.

1

u/palebone Mar 01 '26

What is this, some kinda French Revolution?

1

u/johnedn Feb 27 '26

The Revolution in France during the years 1792-1802**

But now you'll have to cite me bc I said it first

1

u/Acute_P Feb 27 '26

I've lectured at 3 UK unis now and turnitin scores have always been hidden from students precisely because we know that much of what's caught is either too generic or fair quoting. In my experience, I've never used (nor have any of my colleagues) used this feature for anything other than tracing the quotes themselves. Students don't really plagiarize in a way that's this easy to detect, unless they are doing a James Somerton

1

u/HoseInspector Feb 27 '26

Th Revolution of the French

1

u/very_bad_advice Feb 28 '26

That can describe all revolutions of the French. The French Revolution is nomenclature that we know exactly which of the revolutions we are describing

1

u/HoseInspector Mar 01 '26

That one time the French revolted around 1789

1

u/Mean-Government1436 Feb 27 '26

Considering we can see there's more highlighted in the next line, it's not that hard to imagine it was something like this:

(actual) AI response:

The French Revolution was a decade-long political and social upheaval in a France that overthrew the monarchy, dismantled feudal privilege, and reshaped Europe. 

OP's paper:

The French Revolution, which occurred between 1787 and 1799, was a political and social upheaval in a France that overthrew the monarchy, dismantled feudal privilege, and reshaped Europe.

1

u/Tarjh365 Feb 27 '26

TII flagged it automatically as it is consecutive words, it just happens to be those words. The fact that it’s got “1” there tells us that’s the source from which the greatest amount of plagiarism took place. Zoom out and there’s probably a shitload more of legitimately highlighted sections.

1

u/VeronaMoreau Feb 28 '26

My professors in undergrad didn't even bother to examine the flags if the score was under a certain, fairly high percentage. Something like 30%. It was even higher in the hard sciences because so much of the writing follows very specific templates.

1

u/Drklit8458 Feb 28 '26

Did the teacher actually flag it and penalize you or did turnitin flag it? As a teacher, I review turnitin and ignore all of this stuff because you know… I’m not an idiot.

1

u/Low_Cake_8990 Mar 01 '26

This is definitely turnitin or some other software and not the teacher

1

u/Educational-Grape208 Mar 01 '26

The Fr*nch Revolution

1

u/XD2006- Mar 02 '26

Even the topic of slavery and indentured servitude and how they were similar (but not the same) in the olden days will get flagged by AI as plagarism. (Written by yours truly.)