<p>So he faked some information? Is that what we are talking about? (Why would an Italian gaming site be relevant to anything?)</p>
<p>It sounds to me like the professor suspects the student of scholastic dishonesty – of submitting a purchased term paper in which he didn’t even realize the sources had been fabricated.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>What is your son’s explanation for this website being used as a source in his paper? Why did he think it was a legitimate source?</p>
<p>I suspect the professor handed out written instructions about what counted as acceptable sources, and what would happen if a student used illegitimate ones. I suspect the consequences are right there spelled out in black and white. They usually are, for this sort of class.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I like this theory! I have been grading term papers for several decades, yet I could not wrap my head around the initial story. Your guess makes sense to me. It would explain the failing grade, the weirdness of citing “an Italian gaming site” in the first place, and the fact that other sources were not sufficient. It would also explain why dad doesn’t really have the whole story either.</p>
<p>But I think dad is gone and we will never know 
as he posted this on the other thread he started in the cafe:</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I think “dad” was “son” and the paper, if it existed, gave off the same not-quite-right vibe.</p>
<p>^ Yeah I wondered that too. Especially how he signs off, trying too hard to sound like an adult, lol.</p>
<p>“If I was writing a professional report at work and my employer found one of my sources was an online gaming site or an otherwise unreliable/frivolous source, my report would not only be tossed into the trash, I’d be immediately fired for turning it crappy work”</p>
<p>That’s not been my experience. Young lawyers write memos and portions of briefs all the time. I’ve written them and I’ve supervised them. If I were supervising a first-year lawyer who wrote an otherwise strong memo correctly citing 5 relevant, controlling cases and then one off-the-wall unreliable source like Wikipedia, I’d roll my eyes, give the associate a talking-to, and tell him never to do that again. Maybe your field is less forgiving than mine, but the law firm world is a pretty tough place, and even so, firing someone for one bad cite would be seen as brutal. I’ve never heard of that happening at any firm.</p>
<p>I’m with Hanna. Being fired is not a good analogy to failing a course. If the student had been expelled from college, I think it would be comparable, but I wouldn’t imagine firing anyone – even an experienced litigator – for minor slip in an otherwise well-written and well-researched application. It’s really expensive to do that!</p>
<p>This story still seems a little fishy to me. I can understand someone using a source like Wikipedia; I personally don’t condone it, but I can understand how someone might do that. I don’t really understand how the student would have even found an Italian gaming website, much less confused it for a source that even pretended to be authoritative (at least Wikipedia calls itself an encyclopedia!) If the OP really is gone, I guess we’ll never know the truth.</p>
<p>Not to nitpick but this what the OP said
Not that it was an Italian gaming site. (BTW, I don’t think that makes it a lot better. ;))</p>
<p>What kind of website “affiliated with an Italian gaming site” could possibly, under any stretch, be thought of as a reasonable source for a history paper? </p>
<p>It sounds to me like the student either bought the paper as some suggest, or stuck some random foreign language site in the bibliography to pad it. Either is academic dishonesty. I also suspect that the paper was terrible, with or without the questionable cite.</p>
<p>Quite frankly, if the student had a A in the course going into to paper, I think the prof would have passed him with a D. There has to be much more involved here. VERY suspicious.</p>
<p>It’s possible to come up with a scenario where almost any web site would be relevant to a history paper – for example, if the paper made an argument about how topic X is sadly misunderstood in modern America, then a pop-culture site referring to topic X would be a perfectly good source to support that. In my field, many academic articles have one or two cites to something non-scholarly to illustrate some problem or pattern the article will then address. So, say, an article arguing that American rape law is an extension of Y philosophy might start by describing the way rape was depicted in a particular movie.</p>
<p>But I agree, the story is very strange.</p>
<p>I’m with bluealien01 on this one:</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>And what if the paper was on Italian gaming?</p>
<p>I also don’t see why any source should automatically be excluded from citation. For instance, if I were writing a paper on the hysteria surrounding college admissions, I might cite a few ‘legit’ sources, but then I might take a quote or two from a couple of hysterical CC posts as examples.</p>
<p>Edit: Oops…I guess Hanna said the same thing just above.</p>
<p>The OP said in the other thread on Parent Cafe that the paper was about Viking battle styles. I still do not understand the Italian gaming site though. Does the OP mean a site about sports in Italy, a site like AOL Games or a site about gambling?</p>
<p>I would suspect the latter, but I don’t know what that has to do with the paper topic.</p>
<p>That actually makes sense to me. “The Vikings pioneered the X battle strategy, which proved critical to their success in conquering Britain, and continues to influence modern strategic thinking as seen in contemporary battle-themed games like Y and Z [cite web site where players fight X-style virtual battles].”</p>
<p>I don’t think that a professor would automatically failing a student over something like that, if that’s the full story. At worst, that sounds like an unnecessary digression depending on the focus of the paper but if the paper was otherwise good I think he would have probably just lost points or something. This is why I think this story is kind of confusing.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Depending on the course, the professor might have additional requirements on what’s an acceptable source. I agree that a blanket prohibition on a source is usually heavy-handed but if the professor wanted them to focus on more academic resources and the student pulled up something from Perez Hilton’s site or quoted extensively from Snooki’s lectures then obviously there’s a problem. There are some professors that don’t even allow Internet sources at all, regardless of their relevance or their quality (ie, you can’t even use an Internet version of an academic journal that the university subscribes to; you have to go and find the paper copy).</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Maybe it’s the high school teachers/profs I’ve had, but writing an essay relating a scholarly topic with modern pop culture to that extent would be unacceptable unless the student has had the prior approval. Something which doesn’t seem to be the case judging by what the OP related. </p>
<p>This prior approval is critical IME considering how some teachers/Profs and classmates would regard allowing a student to reference pop culture/pop sources to that extent to be a sign the class/Prof wasn’t “serious” and the course in question was a “joke” designed specifically for stereotypical jocks/slacker students. It seems that the OP’s professor was operating with the same academic ground rules as nearly all of of the Profs I’ve had. </p>
<p>
</p>
<p>While I had no professor who banned internet versions of reputable online news sites and journal articles, I did have a few who banned all internet sources outside of those two categories in lower-division courses because the Prof didn’t want students citing online encyclopedias* or dubiously placed online resources that anyone can put up with little/no effective accountability.</p>
<p>Was never an issue with me or most college classmates…especially when we were college seniors because by then…we had learned enough about sourcing to get a good feel for what’s scholarly/relevant to the assignment/topic and what’s not.</p>
<ul>
<li>For example, wikipedia is a good place to start gathering and verifying sources, not as a source in itself. I’ve have had to correct many elementary errors wikipedia articles related to Chinese history, computer technology, and other topics. Errors which anyone who has had a basic 101-level knowledge should have been able to catch with ease.</li>
</ul>
<p>
</p>
<p>I agree. Honestly, a lot of the best Wikipedia articles have extremely extensive print and web sources anyway; it might be a good idea to just use those sources anyway.</p>
<p>I can’t believe that a college senior wouldn’t have the hang of handling sources by the end of their last semester of university. I can believe if it was a freshman, in high school. Maybe.</p>