Plagiarism is an interesting thing that can be good for a few reasons. First, plagiarism allows not only the writer, but also the reader to break out of the confines of academic assumptions. Second, plagiarism shifts the educational paradigm by allowing students to freely express ideas thus promoting a better form of critical education. Finally, plagiarism allows the breaking down of traditional academia and in turn promotes real life education about how research actually works. Allow me to propose a scenario: an article is published titled Why the United States should increase its presence in space and you read it but then see the byline, “Col. James Thomas US Air Force”. What is the first thought that jumps into your head? For me it is the following: “well, this man has some ulterior motive to promote this, he’s wrought within the military industrial complex…” and, I would say it is safe to say, most thinking people would run something similar to that through their brainholes. Now suppose the exact same article, title, text, and all was published in an alternate world except that this byline said “Dr. Joe Koehle Prof. Physics at Harvard”. Now what do you think of? The common response would be, “ this is a man of science, he probably doesn’t have a profit/power motive”. Thus, attribution and citations do have a very large impact upon how we view information. The appeal to authority or rejection of ideas based solely on their first explainer actually cheapens the search for truth because it leads to polarization in the pursuit of knowledge. A prime example in the 20th century would be the philosopher Martin Heidegger who just so happened to be a National Socialist. Heidegger wrote extensively on the study of “being” (ontology) and the self but far too many people when confronted with the book Being and Time see the byline and think “OH NO, HE’S EVIL THEREFORE THE IDEAS ARE WRONG!” This actually cheapens the search for truth and knowledge because potentially accurate explanations of the world are shut out based solely on the individual. However, if one were to reappropriate Being and Time, it would promote new ways of looking at the ideas espoused therein. Allow me to give another example, say I present an article to Jordan (a friend of mine who is a climate change denier) that is titled “Anthropogenic Climate Change and its Impacts” with the byline “Al Gore”. He will dismiss it. However, if I present the exact same article with the byline “Mitt Romney”, he will not. Of note here, I am not saying a third party should attribute work to others, rather, I think an individual should be able to reappropriate work themselves.