Can authors from certain origins really not know about the gravity of plagiarism? With respect to some cultures, in particular Asian ones, one often hears statements such as the following:


  In this country, copying is regarded as flattery and thus people do not know the evils of plagiarism.


or (taken from here):


  In some traditional cultures in Asia and the Middle East, for example, college students are expected to quote or paraphrase the best known political or religious authorities without attribution because readers, especially professors, are expected to know what texts are being circulated. Indeed, it might be a serious insult to the teacher if the student writer formally cites the text being borrowed.


Such statements may nourish prejudices or lead to it being considered an extenuating circumstance that a plagiarist comes from a such a country (see, e.g., this answer or this case).
I wonder whether this phenomenon really has the extents that would justify the latter, more specifically: Is it conceivable that somebody makes it to the point where they author a paper or a PhD thesis without knowing that they must not plagiarise? Or: Can authors really commit plagiarism out of inexperience on this level?

Note:


I am primarily interested in anything going beyond personal experience (there are individual statements in this article). A scientific study would be ideal, but is probably not the only possible way to fulfill this criterion.
This is not directly about how the respective academic cultures nourish plagiarism and what aspect of the culture is behind this.


As all the answers so far have ignored this: I am not asking whether cultures differ in their attitude towards plagiarism – they clearly do. I am asking whether these differences reach a certain level.
I am not here to create or perpetuate stereotypes. I just want to make an attempt to explain it.

Yes, in my personal experience, in Asian countries, scholars fail to understand the basic concept of plagiarism. Let me give a background of myself, I finished my undergraduate in India and currently a graduate student in USA.

In almost every American University, there are clear rules imposed on assignments and laboratories. There are certain honor codes and honor committees which oversee the description and prevention of plagiarism. Plagiarism check software are utilized too. 

However, in India, howsoever unbelievable it is, there is no concept of weekly assignments in most (just a qualifier) of the Indian universities. At most, students are required to complete one (or two) assignment in a semester. The assignments also happens to be most boring ones. For example, "write report on recent trends in "Biomedical Instrumentation"". Unfortunately, even in those assignments, the grading patterns are usually (again, just a qualifier) binary, i.e. you get full credit if you submit the assignment and zero credits if you fail to do so. Thus, there is no mechanism to evaluate the thought process, the research skills and plagiarism related issues. 

However, the concern is, when even most of the professors fail to adhere to plagiarism rules. The reason being the professor evaluation schemes utilized in most (you know, it is a qualifier) of the universities. You are supposed to come up with these many conference papers and these many journal papers for doing fairly well in yearly evaluation. No emphasis on the quality of publications is established. To take advantages of such a sad situation, several conferences pop up from nowhere giving professors opportunity to meet the evaluation requirements. Some of these conferences are pathetic. How pathetic? You can submit a single page paper, for starter; You can submit paper as late as just a week before the conference. And what else is incredible, the conferences bear tags like "IEEE International Conference on _______ _______ and ______". Really? Yes, I know it's sad, but it's true.

These are what I believe the main reasons of why Indian scholars are so much at risk of plagiarism.