Ok, I need to scream into the void about this so here we go. I'm in nursing school, and I just got flagged by Turnitin AGAIN.
I'm already a registered nurse with a bachelor's degree, and I'm just trying to finish my master's online. Last quarter, I was accused of using AI to write a paper. They told me it was 100% AI-generated. I was this close to being expelled from my school, but then, to try to "prove" I used AI, they plugged it into another detector which said it was human. Cool. I sent multiple emails explaining that neurodivergent people are commonly falsely flagged as AI, gave statistics, and gave information from Turnitin themselves where they say don't use it punitively (which is probably why they ran it through another AI checker)… and I ended up being ok.
Well, it just happened again. This time "70% AI," so my teacher is unable to grade it and I have to set up a meeting. This time I came prepared.
- I have the document metadata showing I worked on it for 4 hours and saved 40 times.
- I have my browser history showing me looking up scholarly articles and citing that data in my paper.
- I even plugged it into a different AI checker, which said it was human, and sent that to them.
For context, I'm a professional writer. I'm an investigative journalist for fun, so writing and research is quite literally what I do. And the subject matter of the paper is something I've written on professionally (which I also have a link to if needed later).
I sent lots of proof… but I'm STILL going to have to sit in a meeting and defend myself like I did something wrong, while my actual work, original investigative reporting that has documented real human rights abuses, gets ignored because a probability score said I sounded too clean.
Vanderbilt literally turned Turnitin's AI detector OFF because it was producing too many false positives. There are lawsuits from autistic students because of this.
If you're a student reading this, save EVERYTHING. Version history, browser tabs, drafts, screenshots, your search queries, your file metadata. The burden of proof is on you because the system has decided that's how it works now. If you're a teacher reading this, please for the love of god don't trust these scores. They are guesses used as "proof" meanwhile there was a 54% discrepancy between two different AI checkers.
I am so tired of this. End rant. If anyone has been through this and has tips for the meeting I'd genuinely love to hear them.