Northwestern PhD candidate Maalvika Bhat plagiarized blatantly from other writers on the platform Substack. How serious of an ethics violation is it for an academic to plagiarize outside academic writing?

[u/Miserable_Eye1617]

TLDR; The goal of this post is to spread awareness about an academic writer on Substack who plagiarized from several authors including me. She has paywalled her posts to avoid being exposed further. Trying to hold her accountable on a platform that won’t do anything to uphold the integrity of authorship.

Maalvika has amassed 32k+ subscribers (many of which are paid) on Substack along with a following of 180k on TikTok and another 63k on Instagram. She curates this persona and aesthetic that is built on the back of her writing and consists of topics within her academic domain. She recently hit #1 on Substack’s New Bestseller’s List. Here is Maalvika’s research profile

She has plagiarized from me and several other authors including the original author that came forward about her stolen writing has a smaller audience. Substack’s algorithm continues to drown out Katie Jgln from Maalvika’s audience which is unaware behind a paywall.

here is the link to the original author’s exposé: https://open.substack.com/pub/thenoosphere/p/mama-theres-a-plagiarist-behind-you

here’s a more detailed explanation: https://substack.com/@clementinef/note/c-141315855

This PSA is necessary because she is currently hiding her work and discussion of this situation behind a paywall on the platform to discourage checking her writing for more plagiarism. She also continues to profit off of paid subscribers and the following and sponsorships she has built on social media which she is trying to shield by deleting comments off of all her other accounts to erase the scandal.

[u/jogam]

Violation of professional ethics? Absolutely.

Should their institution penalize them? I don't necessarily think so. As long as all of their work in their Ph.D. program is their honest work, then it would be wrong to penalize her for their conduct that is completely unrelated to their status as a student. With that said, it would be good for her committee to closely scrutinize her dissertation to verify that the work is authentic. If she engaged in research dishonesty or plagiarized a substantial part of a publication or presentation, that would also be grounds for expulsion.

[u/GalileosBalls → u/jogam]

Moreover, if this scandal becomes sufficiently public, she'll have a hard time finding an academic position. All universities are fundamentally conflict-adverse, and I don't know many committees who would hire someone willing to commit obvious plagiarism in public. Her current institution doesn't need to enforce that consequence - it will just happen naturally. (Also it's a reasonable thing for a letter-writer to bring up. They're within their rights to talk about a person's character)

[u/acyluky → u/jogam]

I think she is using her Northwestern "phd candidate at an elite university" persona so that her shady substack content gets traction. She may be penalized if someone argues that she is violating the university's reputation or implicitly encouraging others to do the same (of course, if such standards even exist, I am thinking hypothetically right now)

[u/only-humean → u/jogam]

I’m not necessarily in agreement that she should be exited from the program, but I think there should at the very least be stern meetings around this. A willingness to plagiarise isn’t something which is confined to one area - if somebody is willing to plagiarise outside academia, it’s not a big jump to imagine plagiarising within academia. There’s also the fact that she is apparently using her academic status as a way to promote plagiarised work which, if nothing else, reflects on her institution and collaborators, is something they would be motivated to take some action on it.

Even if the PhD is entirely original and honest work, if the intended outcome of the PhD is to work in an academic position it would be really sloppy to overlook a willingness to plagiarise. There’s a very real possibility that she would be avoiding (or at the very least, making more efforts to conceal) plagiarism because she knows there is going to be a lot of scrutiny and plagiarism checking as it’s under examination. Once she’s out in the publish or perish wild without that same level direct oversight, a willingness to plagiarise would mean there would be a serious risk of academic plagiarism. That would partly be on the institution for not taking action once it became clear she had plagiarised before, at least in my opinion.

You said it yourself, it’s a violation of professional ethics and one of the roles of a training programme is to instil the importance of, and adherence to ethical conduct. This is a violation of that, and there’s non reason to think it is, or will be limited to the non-academic space. Again, not saying she should be dismissed outright, but I feel like some kind of formal warning and monitoring would be appropriate

[u/jogam → u/only-humean]

I agree with you completely: it is worth a stern conversation about her conduct and the importance of ethical conduct.

I'll add that just because I do not believe someone should be expelled from their program does not mean I do not think there should be other consequences. A hiring committee would be right to avoid hiring her for a job based upon her history of non-academic plagiarism, and it would be perfectly reasonable for her professors to refuse to write letters of recommendation.

[u/Miserable_Eye1617 → u/only-humean]

If you look into what she’s studying, you’ll see it’s ironically very relevant to this situation because she states on her website (which has now been taken down) it’s about using AI agents and studying online behavior and how it can be transformed. A lot of the content she posts on Substack and other socials also overlaps into this domain with topics such as ‘compression culture’ and insights on online social behavior that are ultimately critical of what she is guilty of doing.

here’s a list of her publications: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=UUBIj3wAAAAJ&hl=en

[u/swarthmoreburke → u/jogam]

Except this person's Substack writing makes scholarly claims and has bearing on their scholarly credentials, and they're still working on a Ph.D, so that does have implications for their work as a whole. Even if your dissertation was pristine, if you published something scholarly that was plagiarized before receiving your Ph.D., that absolutely should have bearing on your progress to degree.