Plagiarism at student newspaper Dublin

A member of the editorial staff at the student newspaper The University Times, in Dublin, has plagiarized on a large scale. After finding out that something was wrong with a recently published article, the staff of the paper conducted a larger investigation. This opened a cesspit.

The paper is associated with Trinity College Dublin. In an editorial, the staff says:

This revealed that the editor in question has plagiarized multiple times over the course of the past twelve months by lifting sentences and paragraphs, sometimes verbatim or with minimal rewording, and sometimes significant chunks of articles and essays published elsewhere on the web. […] This incident is extraordinarily embarrassing for every member of the newspaper’s staff, and it has the potential to call into question the work of dozens of diligent, hard-working editors and writers.

The editor has been fired. Retraction Watch, a blog on retractions and fraud in science, writes that Irish institutions of higher learning are alarmed by plagiarism among students. A survey among students, conducted by The University Times itself in 2011, showed that 70% of the students were not aware of the rules on plagiarism at Trinity College.