Portions of the Indiana University president’s 1996 doctoral dissertation appear to be taken word for word from other academic research, according to a tip whose contents were verified by The Chronicle.
In more than three dozen instances throughout her 174-page dissertation, Pamela S. Whitten appeared to borrow language without using quotation marks from at least 15 other research papers and books. Sometimes she cited the sources in-text but other times did not mention the source from which the text was taken. In some cases, Whitten cited papers and books referenced by the authors whose language her dissertation borrowed. There appeared to be no evidence that Whitten had copied another scholar’s idea without attribution, considered the cardinal sin of academic plagiarism.
In an email, an Indiana University spokesman wrote: “The document provided by the Chronicle recycles assertions made in August of 2024 that were investigated and found to have no merit by an independent law firm. These allegations are part of a continued effort to oppose the transformational leadership the IU Board of Trustees have charged the President and her team to pursue.”
The University of Kansas, where Whitten wrote her dissertation and earned her doctorate, did not return a request for comment.
Experts in plagiarism and academic integrity reached by The Chronicle said the examples constitute poor phrasing and improper citation and warrant a correction. But they disagreed on whether the alleged violations should be treated as severe plagiarism.
Whitten’s presidency has weathered many blows over nearly four years. Faculty critics have accused Whitten and her provost of not respecting academic freedom and shared governance. In April, Bloomington professors voted no-confidence in Whitten, provost Rahul Shrivastav, and Carrie Docherty, Bloomington’s vice provost for faculty and academic affairs.
During the 2023-24 academic year, the university removed a professor from the classroom after he booked a room for a pro-Palestinian event incorrectly, then canceled a planned museum exhibit by a Palestinian artist. Last spring, these stressors came to a head when students set up an encampment, and the administration called the police.
Claims about her dissertation may constitute a fresh challenge for Whitten, who earned her doctorate in communication studies. Her dissertation, titled “Transcending the Technology of Telemedicine: A Case Study of Telemedicine in North Carolina,” analyzes what telemedicine meant to members of an organization at East Carolina University’s medical school doing such work.
The first instance of alleged plagiarism comes on page five. Citing a 1961 paper by Cecil Wittson, Craig Affleck, and Van Johnson, Whitten writes, “Wittson and colleagues were the first to employ telemedicine for medical purposes in 1959 when they set up telepsychiatry consultations between the Nebraska Psychiatric Institute in Omaha and the state mental hospital 112 miles away.”
A passage in a 1995 paper by Douglas Perednia and Ace Allen, which cites the same sources Whitten cited, is only a few words different: “Wittson and colleagues were the first to employ IATV for medical purposes, in 1959, when they used a microwave link for telepsychiatry consultations between the Nebraska Psychiatric Institute in Omaha and the state mental hospital 112 miles away.”
Whitten cites Perednia and Allen’s sources instead of their paper in several other instances. On page six, she writes: “Grigsby and Kaehny (1993) recently reviewed telemedicine activities undertaken prior to 1993. With the exception of the 20-year-old telemedicine program at Memorial University Hospital of Newfoundland, none of the programs begun before 1986 has survived. Although data are limited, early reviews and evaluations of these programs suggest that the equipment was reasonably effective at transmitting the information needed for most clinical uses and that users were for the most part satisfied.”
Perednia and Allen’s original passage is the same, except for four words. In her in-text citation, Whitten lists sources found in Perednia and Allen’s endnotes.
“She’s citing a primary source, but is clearly pulling from a secondary source, which is not a good thing to do,” said Jonathan Bailey, the author of the blog Plagiarism Today.
Bailey said the problematic citations are compounded by inadequate paraphrasing which leaves a lot of the “original verbiage” behind. Other passages substitute more words and phrases than those referenced above.
Peter C. Hoffer, a history professor at the University of Georgia and an expert in academic plagiarism, called the alleged misuses “significant and ethically troublesome.”
“The practice of a scholar/borrower going from a target source to the target source’s own references is fine … but then the borrower must use language from the original source, not the target source,” he wrote in an email. “Here, the author is concealing the dependence on the target sources … but citing the target source’s references. That makes the author’s originality suspect. More worrisome from an ethical perspective is the borrowing of exact language from the target sources without quotation marks, concealing the extent and nature of the dependence on the target source. That is plagiarism.”
He added that while Whitten and the University of Kansas can redeem the dissertation by correcting citation and quotation problems, the university would, in his opinion, “be justified in rescinding the degree.”
But Perednia, reached by email, said he did not believe Whitten’s work constituted plagiarism. Whitten had access to the same research as him and Allen, Perednia wrote, and came to the same conclusions.
“There are only so many ways in which you can describe the facts that existed at that time,” he wrote.
But Allen, who worked closely with Whitten and is named in her acknowledgments, said in an interview that the language presented to him appeared to be copied.
“There’s no way that this is coincidence,” Allen said. “It goes on and on and on.”
Other authors contacted by The Chronicle ranged in their opinions. Reached via email, Alessandro Duranti, whose 1992 book is cited on page 21 of the dissertation, said a passage that uses similar language did not seem to qualify as plagiarism. Notably, Whitten cited Duranti in-text.
“What I saw is a standard practice of citing other peoples’ work,” he wrote. “I was plagiarized once and in a much more obvious and extended way.”
Bailey emphasized that most of the copied language appears in the introduction, background, and methodology chapters of the dissertation, rather than in the results and discussion. In other words, Whitten did not attempt to pass others’ ideas off as her own.
Another tip provided to The Chronicle anonymously suggested that text copying by Whitten may extend beyond her dissertation. A 2006 paper published by Whitten in the Journal of Telemedicine and Telecare copies two sentences without quotations from a frequently asked questions page published by the National Committee on Vital and Health Statistics, while citing it: “Because registries frequently collect information about patients after their initial registration, these data can be used to examine the natural history or survivorship of a particular group. Information in cancer registries can be used to examine whether certain underlying factors (risk factors) or treatment modalities influence length of survival (and quality of life).”
The Indiana spokesman did not immediately respond to an email asking whether this second tip was also “recycled” from the university’s previous investigation of the alleged plagiarism.