Writer's Block: A charming defense

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Paper Mills

See, wouldn't my title have been better than "The Shadow Scholar" for this article by an anonymous writer whom students pay to write their papers for them? I saw the link on Pharyngula. It's an interesting read. I was aware that this happened but not that these places actually write entire PhD theses for people. I notice the author doesn't even mention science. They could write review papers, that's easy enough, but I don't see how they could write a thesis based on the student's research. Right? Or maybe the student could throw the data at them and they'd actually do the statistics and interpretation of results for you? I like to think that wouldn't be possible. I hope my work can be distinguished from that of someone who has no expertise in my field and is just paid to write papers on whatever subject comes up, based on what they can find on Wikipedia and Google. I'm not surprised that subjects like Business and Sociology are susceptible to that, but surely not STEM subjects. The author did say they don't do assignments involving math. It bothers me that an instructor probably can't tell the difference between my paper that I spend weeks on and a paper someone's paid to write in two days. Obviously the author of this article is extremely intelligent and hard-working. That softens the blow a little.

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