The reality is dawning upon me that I’ve been a plagiarist for the past couple of years. I didn’t know the extent of the problem.
The evidence is considerable. I feel somewhere between a criminal and a cheat. I’m desperately sorry. I’d like to be able to redeem myself, but know it will take time.
There is much research about the process of how otherwise competent doctors start descending into malpractice. In hindsight, I was the journalistic equivalent.
I ran an isolated solo practice and did it very part-time. I had little contact with peers and undertook no ongoing education or mentorship. My only formal training was a brief stint in broadcast almost a decade ago.
I started pursuing journalism after two years working as a junior doctor, just before the time came to commit to a speciality. I loved the power of stories to illuminate issues, to give a shared sense of belonging.
I returned to medicine to train in psychiatry, but continued to write sporadically. Rapidly, my articles that combined my professional and ethnic background received much attention and I contributed regularly to Fairfax.
I started to collate my research through the wonders of cut and paste, not recognising the inherent risk. At some stage I started thinking laxity about minor attributions that supported my arguments was not that important. It began with a few words and progressed to entire lines, all with a simple click of the mouse.
I knew it was wrong, but did it anyway. It was bred out of a desire for greater efficiency. A simple set of apostrophe marks would have sufficed and would have illustrated my research, but it didn’t seem to matter. Everything got published. So began the slippery slope.
The combination of dangerous process and complacency about attribution meant my writing was an emerging train wreck. What I had lost sight of was the magnitude of the violation, that in this parallel craft the boundary I had just crossed was the biggest taboo.
It remained occasional, like a footballer fumbling the ball more often, but working in isolation I had no reason to doubt my performance.
When the full extent of my plagiarism was laid bare, even I was shocked. How could it have come to this, entire paragraphs lifted word for word? What began as complacency had progressed to a cavalier recklessness. These were acts of a clouded mind whose judgment was clearly impaired by spreading itself too thinly. I had lost sight of the fundamental discipline of attribution. As my editor quipped: “If you are a plagiarist, you really aren’t a very good one.”
The seriousness of my transgression was suddenly much clearer. I was like an addict forced to look in the mirror and survey the wreckage, measured in reputational damage and a rising media career cut short prematurely. As a loving husband, a devoted father of young daughters and doctor tending to vulnerable, troubled minds, this, the first question I had ever experienced surrounding my professional integrity, felt initially like a mortal wound.
It was important to read widely, adapt and borrow, but I had well and truly overstepped the rules in doing so.
For someone with a medical degree, I was just plain stupid.
For psychiatrists, such problems also begin with small misjudgments, such as accepting presents from patients or interacting with them on social media.
Such behaviour is hotly debated and policed among colleagues. Seemingly trivial, they are seen as early signs of a dangerous decline into the worst possible taboo: having inappropriate relationships with patients.
Many media practitioners forget that their world is not unlike other professional groups in that there is a shared body of learning, best practice, a system of ethics, rituals and taboos.
The skills and boundaries required ongoing care, discipline and reinforcement, even more so when outsiders and part-timers entered its orbit.
In an age of the ubiquitous media maker, a fierce aversion to plagiarism was a sharp marker of professional identity.
As is much clearer to me now, this is appropriate given the ease of both its execution and detection, not to mention the huge risk media organisations bore for intellectual property theft.
If it was in medicine, I might have been deregistered, such was the gravity of my mistake. The outcome is similar in journalism, but informally.
The rules are unwritten and more like a tribal code in which I had lost membership. You live and die on reputation.
I know from my work as a psychiatrist that crises, both professional and personal, are important to help us reconnect with purpose and reflect on personal vulnerabilities. I am now more aware that journalism, not unlike medicine, is a craft that requires discipline, care and rigour.
Tanveer Ahmed is a psychiatrist who was a regular contributor to The Sydney Morning Herald until last month, when the newspaper ended his tenure.
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