Should we ban term papers?

The title of this post is taken from a recent article I read at a web site called Cognitive Daily. It has a number of interesting articles posted almost daily relating to cognitive psychology and includes articles about language. Some of the articles I have enjoyed recently include one on how associating words with some aspect of survival makes them easier to remember. Another was about how recognizable different English accents are and included a link to an archive of accents created by George Mason University. And then there is the article about a piece recently published in the Washington Post advocating the abolition of term papers and embracing plagiarism as the wave of the future. More interesting to me than the original article were the comments posted about it. Perhaps the whole list of comments would make a good reading assignment for our ELP students....