His theory is that if professors properly identify their sources, students by example will also credit sources when it is necessary. The attitudes of society are also fundamental factors in shaping how seriously students will take behaving ethically in the academic environment. Peter Shaw has pointed out that few plagiarists within the literary field have suffered from their exposure. He elaborates on perhaps the most telling example of the insignificance of plagiarism to many within the literary field, that of Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Even today, though, Coleridge is known to only a few outside literary circles as a plagiarist, and his plagiarism is treated by many within those circles as unimportant.
Double standards abound elsewhere also.
While professors and students may be severely punished for plagiarism in their research, the use of ghostwritten speeches by public figures is viewed by most as permissible. It's time we recognized that it's the cheater and those who help them, not the people who expose them, who are acting unethically. The student who is unwilling to let academic dishonesty go unreported understands the effect plagiarism has on our institutions today and the effect its acceptance can have in shaping our future ethical standards. I would prefer to know that the doctors, scientists, business leaders, politicians, lawyers and scholars of tomorrow had learned the material relevant to their field and not merely skated their way through college. People who are academically dishonest, whether they be the actual perpetrators or those helping them, sell themselves short, and they sell our future short.