Professors at Boston University and all other research universities are expected to adhere to strict standards of academic ethics, and with a few notable, embarrassing exceptions, the peer review process and the oversight of scholarly journals keep professors from committing the serious transgressions of academia.
Journals like Science, which recently helped expose South Korean researcher Hwang woo-suk’s fraudulent research into stem cells, obviously cannot monitor what goes on in the classroom. Nevertheless, professors should still adhere to certain guidelines when citing materials during lectures.
Professors lecturing for 50 or 110 minutes will necessarily draw upon the work of others in their field, whether it’s a recent article on global warming or the latest criticism of William Shakespeare. Oftentimes, however, students are unaware when their professors have moved away from their own observations or common knowledge to the work of others. A lecturer who quotes a few lines from a text without telling his or her students is doing them a disservice — and, while violations are probably few and far between, all professors should take steps to avoid such behavior.
Professors should make it a point to tell students when drawing on major accomplishments from fellow members of academia. In addition to drafting a list of required readings for a course, professors should also create a bibliography of works they plan to refer to in lectures. If students want to know more or are conducting research for an assignment, they could begin their research with this bibliography.
It would be unreasonable to ask professors to cite every little fact during class; to do so would disrupt the flow of the lectures and only end up putting more students to sleep than many professors already do. But it is not an undue burden on professors to ask them to let students know where the information being taught is coming from. It is only a matter of courtesy.
As the academic community struggles to establish safeguards against ethical misconduct, professors should pay attention to an oft-neglected part of their jobs: teaching. Failing to cite significant information during a lecture is not as big an offense as plagiarism, but students attending a world-class institution and expecting world-class professors deserve better.