Plagiarism and other Ethical Issues

Plagiarism

When writing case studies, essays or letters for submission, it is very important that you do not commit plagiarism. This is a type of academic dishonesty and a breach of ethical practice. The EBMG takes this very seriously and if you have committed plagiarism applicant may be refused registration, or their registration may be deferred.

According to the Merriam-Webster online dictionary, to "plagiarize" means:

to steal and pass off (the ideas or words of another) as one's own
to use (another's production) without crediting the source
to commit literary theft
to present as new and original an idea or product derived from an existing source

In other words, plagiarism is an act of fraud. It involves both stealing someone else's work and lying about it afterward.

All of the following are considered plagiarism:

turning in someone else's work as your own
copying words or ideas from someone else without giving credit
failing to put a quotation in quotation marks
giving incorrect information about the source of a quotation
changing words but copying the sentence structure of a source without giving credit
copying so many words or ideas from a source that it makes up the majority of your work, whether you give credit or not (see our section on "fair use" rules)

As a general rule, you can avoid plagiarism by using your own words to explain concepts and by adding references to all key statements in the text. For registration level work, we would not expect applicants to use direct quotes, but if you do then the quotation should be in inverted commas and you must reference the source with author(s), year and page number of the quote after it appears in the text.

There is more information about what plagiarism is and how to avoid it at: www.plagiarism.org

All case studies, essays and CPD forms are checked with a plagiarism-checker that looks for similarities to all other published documents before passing to the review stage. Any portfolio that is found to contain plagiarism will

Not be reviewed and fail registration or renewal
Be penalized a number of years in which they will not be able to re-submit
Have the line manager who signed the submission be informed of the reason for failure

Other Ethical Breaches

It is important that submisisons of work for registration and renewal reflect the standard of practice of the genetic counsellor. It is to be acknowleged that the acceptable standard of practice may vary from country to country but there are some underlying ethical principals that underpin the practice of genetic counselling in any country. Should a body of work be found to contain information that shows the genetic counsellor is not a safe practicioner or is in breach of the code of conduct the following will occur:

The work will be judged to fail, and the candidate informed of the reason
The candidate will be penalized a number of years in which they cannot re-submit, or be unable to renew
The line manager who signed the submission will be informed of the reason for failure