“Can you stand by the work? Are you proud of the work?”
What does academic integrity look like when artificial intelligence can produce a polished manuscript—but the human author may never have done the thinking behind it?
In this special Editor’s Choice episode of JCMS Author Interviews, Dr. Kirk Barber welcomes Professor Sarah Elaine Eaton for a lively conversation about post-plagiarism and the future of learning, authorship and medical publishing. Dr. Eaton is a professor and research chair in the Werklund School of Education at the University of Calgary, an internationally recognized authority on academic ethics, and editor-in-chief of the International Journal of Educational Integrity.
Building on our recent episode with Professor Steven Shaw on cognitive surrender, Kirk and Sarah explore how we can work with AI while retaining responsibility for the knowledge—and the claims—we put our names to. Prof. Eaton explains her post-plagiarism framework and why human accountability remains essential, however much of the writing we delegate to a machine.
Their discussion tackles the pressures to publish, the challenges of peer review, fabricated research and the potential consequences for patient care. They also consider how educators can assess real understanding when polished writing no longer reliably demonstrates learning.
Along the way, Sarah shares how she redesigned a course to value the messy process of thinking and problem-solving, and tells the remarkable story of a doctoral student who used AI avatars of his examiners to prepare for his oral defence.
It’s a thought-provoking conversation about using AI to deepen learning, maintaining professional judgement, and preparing the next generation for a future already taking shape.
Explore Sarah’s post-plagiarism framework and its six tenets at postplagiarism.com.
Related listening: Episode 105 with Professor Steven Shaw on cognitive surrender and artificial intelligence.
This episode is supported by an educational grant from Sun Pharma Canada through the CDA Corporate Supporter Program.
For more conversations from the Canadian Dermatology Association, listen to Dermalogues, our dermatology residents podcast hosted by Dr. Kerri Purdy.
Visit dermatology.ca for more information.
CDA podcasts are produced by David McGuffin and Graham McGuffin of ExploreProductions.ca
