The Learners' Den

It is very common these days for students and respected scholars to steal other people's work, ideas or arguments and publish them as their own without giving due credit to the original authors. Our desire for undue recognition or to be seen as intellectuals has also led us to copy and paste copyrighted materials. Perhaps this is happening because of our little or lack of understanding of the extent of this crime. Therefore, as you will see shortly, this article will explore what plagiarism means and how we can help tackle it in our academia. Image: VectorStock First, let's deepen our understanding of the word plagiarism. This term was derived from the Latin word "plagiarius," which means "kidnapper." As early as the first century, famous poets accused fellow poets of "kidnapping their [poem] verses." That's when the term first came into existence. According to Stanford University, it is the "use of another person's original work witho...

I know this may not be a relevant topic to what is happening in Nigeria right now. But we cannot deny the fact that hunger is ravaging the foundation of our societies. This is worrying considering that the world population is projected to reach over 9 billion people in the coming decades. That means we need to produce more food than at any time in history. As a science student, I firmly believe that science deserves as much attention as we give to politics and other trivial issues. Because we can find so many solutions to our problems, including hunger, through science. Booming rice farm 📸: Pexels But let's get back to basics and understand what genetics and genetically modified organisms are all about. First, genetics is a branch of biology that deals with " heredity " and other forms of " variation in living organisms ," be it plants, animals, and microbes. Second, genetically modified organisms are organisms in which their genetic material is manipulated to ...