Army War College Revokes Sen. John Walsh's Degree

[Crabby Appleton]

Source: ABC News

The U.S. Army War College revoked Democratic Sen. John Walsh's master's degree after an investigation completed Friday concluded he plagiarized a research paper required to graduate, a college spokeswoman said.

The Carlisle, Pennsylvania, college assigned an academic review board to the probe in August after The New York Times published a story showing Walsh borrowed heavily from other sources for the paper he wrote in 2007.

Walsh was pursuing a Master of Strategic Studies degree at age 47, a year before he became Montana's adjutant general overseeing the state National Guard.


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Read more: http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory/army-war-college-revokes-sen-john-walshs-degree-26108518

[sharp_stick]

1. Way to fuck up your career

asshole. I can't believe someone can be stupid enough to actually try to pull this kind of shit off.

[craigmatic]

6. This shit doesn't even matter. All he had to do was say he cited it wrong but that doesn't mean he's

a bad person or a bad senator. Then he should've stayed in the race but he didn't because red state dems don't have any balls. If I was him I'd still be in the race and I'd probably be winning too. If he couldn't take scrutiny he shouldn't have took that job in the first place. His real flaw was giving up too easy.

[lpbk2713]

10. He must have had a lot of faith in the good ole boy system.

He might have expected them to keep his dirty little secret a secret.

[bluestateguy]

2. It's a rare and extraordinary thing for a college/university to do

But the courts have said that they can revoke degrees obtained by way of fraud and plagiarism.

In the rare times that it does happen, the plagiarism is usually very egregious, over many pages with lots of outright copied material. This is well beyond just a couple of missed footnotes or borrowing an idea of another scholar without attribution.

[louis-t]

3. Was one of his professors Rand Paul?

Jeez.

[Journeyman]

4. "The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources." ~ Al Einstein . . .

"For all my best is making old words new,
spending again what is already spent."
~ Bill Shakespeare

"Uh, deep down, I gotta admit, I'm somewhat of a dumb ass."
~ Johnny "Rockets" Walsh (D-MT)


What I don't understand is why this dumb ass can't give his replacement Democratic candidate, Amanda Curtis, his campaign coffer so she can have at least a ghost of a chance. And if he doesn't give it to her (or the party), does he get to walk away with the $1.7 million campaign bank account?

[redruddyred]

5. wait...

why were they investigating him, and doesn't everyone plagiarize anyhow?
like it's something that they tell you not to do but is statistically unavoidable.

[craigmatic]

7. He doesn't have the heart to fight. nt

[MADem]

9. Because people like to dig into the backgrounds of public figures. When they find huge chunks

of "lifted" material, it can't be ignored.

He should have used footnotes and paraphrased. Then, he'd be fine. That's attribution, not plagiarizing.

[redruddyred]

11. how do we know he didn't use footnotes?

the whole idea of plagiarization is so nebulous anyhow. the whole thing reeks of political payback.

[blackspade]

14. No, not really.

Nebulous only to people who don't know how to write....

[redruddyred]

17. people do think up similar ideas independently you know.

did leibniz plagiarize from newton? etc.

[MADem]

23. People don't think up similar ideas word-for-word, and phrase-for-phrase, and sentence-for-sentence.

That's what I think the problem is, here.

[redruddyred]

25. in that case, it seems pretty clear-cut

tho why they had to wait so long to figure it out is beyond me.

[MADem]

26. No one was looking for such a thing when he wrote it. That was seven years ago.

If you're going to be a public figure, you've gotta figure those OPPO researchers are going to be combing over everything from your grades in grammar school to videos of you in your high school play.

Remember how they tried to make a stink about a typo (waaah, she spelled something WRONG) in Michelle Obama's senior thesis, or something?

They go over everything. Every so often, they hit paydirt. This time they hit a mother lode.

I don't think I could do OPPO research for very long--your goal is something that is career - destroying.

[redruddyred]

27. I don't, but then, that's really not the sort of thing I pay attention to.

the fact that no one was looking for it when he wrote it signals to me that probably it wasn't the sort of blatant plagiarism which would have raised flags during original grading.

also: people spend money on this? wtf.

[MADem]

28. His prof likely "ass"umed the guy was of good character, and he probably managed to find

a source that flew under the radar. Also, this was seven years ago--the programs they had to suss out cheaters weren't as good.

It depends on who his thesis advisor was--if he got a uniformed advisor, they're often nitpicky about bullshit but really POOR when it comes to mentoring anyone crafting a thesis.

The civilian profs at those institutions are much, much better--they take a more academic approach to strategic thinking and they actually take the time to read all the books. It would be a brave soul who tried to put one over on one of those guys.

Some courses are better than others. They do teach you how to think on a number of levels, to keep several balls in the air at the same time.

It is an educational block one must check if one wants to break into senior officer and beyond territory.

[MADem]

22. If he did, he wouldn't have a problem.

Plagiarizing is the act of lifting the work of another and passing it off as one's own.

If there was attribution, there wouldn't be a problem.

Now, if someone copied "War and Peace" in its entirety and footnoted Tolstoi at the last paragraph, that wouldn't fly either, but I don't think that situation applies here. This guy apparently swiped large chunks of the work of another.

[former9thward]

15. No, "everybody does not plagiarize anyhow."

Your post says everything about you. Don't project on the rest of us.

[redruddyred]

18. honestly, the entire concept of plagiarism scares me.

asides from clear-cut cases of copying someone else's work word-for-word, how do I know what I have written hasn't been said before? esp at the undergrad level. it's an easy claim to make and a difficult one to disprove.

[former9thward]

19. Usually plagiarism is not just one sentence.

It is a series of them. Given the context of the subject you are writing about it becomes statistically impossible that it was not plagiarized. There is software out there that can look at papers and see if there is plagiarism.

[redruddyred]

21. yeah, there's one on google.

that seems like such a weird and arbitrary requirement for good academic scholarship. esp considering that so-called plagiarism is more or less a requirement for real-world creativity.

my 10th grade english teacher had one of those programs which I thought hugely amusing as she only assigned us 2 essays throughout the entire year. she couldn't be bothered to teach us to write, but had to be absolutely sure that we weren't unintentionally copying someone else's work.

my final report was unreadable as I'd cited every other sentence.

[MADem]

8. Jesus--paraphrase and use footnotes. That's THESIS 101.

What an idiot. No one CARES if your list of sources is as long as your thesis, so long as you attribute.

War College is Not That Hard. It's so easy that a lot of attendees get a second advanced degree WHILE ATTENDING.

[catnhatnh]

12. Okay-now we're half way there...

Now, was he promoted after receiving the degree and if so should he not also be demoted? What other advancements did he get based on his stolen "scholarship"? As much as I hate when a republican does this I get twice as pissed when it is a democrat.

[blackspade]

13. Dumb fuck....

[Thespian2]

16. University of Houston

Back in the early 70's, an English professor plagiarized a book he published. Mostly taken from a female graduate student's master's thesis. After a full and thorough investigation which proved that he had plagiarized from his former student, the university did nothing at all. Don't you just love Texas?

[AnalystInParadise]

20. So how does that have any bearing on the state of Texas?

I would have said don't you just love the University of Houston.....

[Thespian2]

24. Could be

that the people protecting the plagiarist were Texans.

[redruddyred]

29. as someone who has experienced the two firsthand

I can personally certify that they both suck epically.