Over the last few years, I notice (though it might be anecdotal since I haven’t done a thorough review) that the less original content is present in a poster or talk, the less likely someone is to acknowledge that their work is a remake and seems to simply skip proper referencing. This year, I have seen a perfect (and I mean it!) remake of a work we have published three years ago. The talk did not even had a single reference, not just to our work but to any works…
These talks or posters are basically presented as original, totally new. Is this a failure of the supervisor when attributing the topic or that of the student for failing to do a proper literature review?
Ruminating... 
What did the student say when asked?
(I think it’s pretty important to ask them if something like this happens, might be parallel creativity with lack of literature review skills, might be a misunderstanding of science, might be a bad supervisor, might be outright plagiarism to get a “cheap” PhD, etc. pp. — but whatever the reason is, better confront this sooner than later.)
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I was unable to catch-up after the session (had to be in another session afterward) and did not meet afterward either. I did send a soft e-mail indicating that he might be interested by a 2011 publication and gave the details. I did not got a reply however…
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In my opinion, both are guilty. At first the advisor who gave that project to a student without a good search in the literature, and then the student, who should definitely stumble on the paper during his thorough literature search.
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