Woman Discovered That Her Former Master’s Degree Advisor Plagiarized Her Work, So She Took Revenge in the Most Satisfying Way Possible

Plagiarism is a serious offense that shouldn’t be taken lightly, especially in academia.

This woman shares an experience while she was pursuing her master’s degree.

She and her advisor worked together to complete her dissertation.

A few years later, she found out that her advisor published her work exactly as it is and without giving credit to her.

She did what she had to do to teach her ex-advisor a lesson.

Read the full story below and find out all the details.

My ex-advisor plagiarized my work, so I exposed her and that cost her job.
The initial reason for the revenge happened in 2013.
But the revenge only happened in 2017.
For context: Back in 2013, I was a graduate student pursuing my master’s degree.
That was my last year in the program.
We had 24 months to finish all the work and the dissertation.

Meet Janet…

My advisor was a professor who was very well-known and experienced on my field of work.
Let’s call her Janet (a fake name).
Janet and I had worked together with research since my college days.
As I became part of an undergraduate research with her.
At that point, we had been working for about four years.

This woman wanted to use their grant money for advanced methods.

And as any advisor-student relationship, we had our disagreements quite often.
Janet was used to doing her experiments a certain, archaic, way.
I knew there were better uses of our grant money,
And always tried to push toward a more advanced method.
Especially correlating data collection and statistics.

Her dissertation was approved with flying colors.

However, our relationship was always good.
I knew her husband and had been to her house numerous times.
She was a little set on her ways, but we managed to make good progress on our field.
Anyhow, by the end of 2013, I presented my dissertation to the department.
It was approved with flying colors.

Her dissertation was finally published.

My data still wasn’t published in any paper as I wanted to have more analysis in different areas.
I want to make a more robust and better paper.
With that said, my dissertation was published.
And by all reasons, that is my work and my experiments.

She decided to enroll for a doctorate degree.

After I got my MS, I decided to pursue a PhD.
While I was still going to work in the same field, I wanted to use different techniques.
And, thus, talked with Janet about going to pursue a PhD under a different professor in another university.
She always encouraged me to do better and look for ways to diversify my views.
I went ahead and contacted a professor outside my country in another university to pursue my PhD.
I got approved and soon moved away.
For the next two years, I still kept contact with Janet.
But on the third, she stopped responding.
Initially, I thought she had changed her e-mail or something.
But didn’t think much of it.

She came across a paper that is similar to her research.

Time flew by and in 2017, I was reading papers and writing my own.
I came across a paper that was strangely similar with my research.
Interested in it, I opened it up to read.
For my shock, it was a paper by my ex-advisor.
She was up as advisor and another guy who, from his curriculum, is her current master’s student.
Reading the title, I thought, “Hey, that’s neat. She continued researching it.”

Her ex-advisor plagiarized her work, and didn’t give any credit to her.

But boy I was wrong.
Reading the paper, I got increasingly angry.
That wasn’t a new research. It was my research!
My data was all in that paper, even my graphs and tables.
Initially, I thought, “Oh well, she’s also an author and if she is citing it, there shouldn’t be a problem.”
But unfortunately, that wasn’t the case.

My name was nowhere near that paper as they claimed that research as original.

She sent an e-mail to Janet, but she never replied.

Now, I was livid.
I sent an e-mail to Janet confronting her, which was never replied to.
However, I am not a pushover and will never allow people to claim my own work as theirs.
She made a mistake by using my data.
I’m a researcher.
I keep everything I ever worked on saved in external SSD’s encrypted and on my own possession.
All cataloged with date entries, and even had my own dissertation to prove my work.

She did what she had to do and sent an e-mail to the proper institutions.

In my country, research is financed by the governmental grants.
I wrote an e-mail to the Dean of the grant’s institution.
Explaining all the situation, with proof of everything.
I also sent an e-mail to journal in which that was published, contesting their paper and explaining everything.
It didn’t take longer than fifteen days for me to get a follow-up.

They cut Janet’s financial aid.

The institution responsible for the grant was furious.
They cut all financial aid for her and her student.
And made a formal requirement to the university, requesting her immediate termination.
The journal retracted the paper, and is now suing her for plagiarism.

She published her work as hr own and didn’t look back.

Now, after all these years, I learned that she was indeed fired.
And haven’t been able to work in the field ever since.
I never met her again and have no intention of ever doing so.
Now, my work is published and I’m recognized by my contributions in the field.
Maybe that was a petty thing to do.
But I couldn’t allow people to get away with claiming my work as theirs.

Let’s find out what others have to say about this.

This user shares their personal thoughts.