literary
academic
other
related
Guide:
Plagiarism
&
Intellectual Property
related
Notes:
Essay Mills
Ghosting
|
other plagiarism
This note highlights some incidents of plagiarism in academic
and other writing over the past three hundred years.
It covers -
It
supplements discussion
of
issues, consequences and responses to plagiarism.
food
and fashion
Plagiarism by cookery authors illustrates expectations
about practice - "everyone does it and always has"
- uncertainties about acknowledgement. Few recipes are
truly original; citation of who provided the concept or
the expression are perhaps just as rare. It is unusual
to see an acknowledgement on a recipe by recipe basis
and many books, including those by well-known authors,
simply omit any reference to writing by predecessors.
Jennifer Stead revealed that famous cookery author Hannah
Glasse in The Whole Art of Cookery Made Plain and
Easy (1747) plagiarised the earlier cookbook The
Whole Duty of a Woman, and others. Fiona Lucraft
exposed John Farley for having appropriated some 795 of
the 800 recipes in The London Art of Cookery
(1807). Elizabeth David noted that Isabella Beeton's Book
of Household Management was substantially lifted
from Modern Cookery for Private Families by Eliza
Acton (1799-1859) and Maria Rundell's A New System
of Domestic Cookery. Lucy Lethbridge comments that
In
fact, Isabella Beeton had shamelessly snipped, clipped,
cut and lifted not only from Acton but also from Alexis
Soyer, Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, Antonin Carême
and many others. All it took was some tweaking and rearranging
of the originals and a journalist in her mid-twenties
could convey in print the brisk yet kindly voice of
a matronly, middle-aged woman who ranged over her subjects
with the authority that came from years of experience.
Nicola
Humble's Culinary Pleasures: Cook Books & the
Transformation of British Cuisine (London: Faber
2005) suggests that Beeton's heirs have followed her example.
In 2006 controversial UK fashion journalist Emily
Davies was accused of "borrowing, embroidering and
even inventing details" in her proposal for a memoir
- "an all-access pass to the world of fashion"
- that reportedly secured a $900,000 rights deal from
Simon & Schuster and Ebury Press. Ms Davies responded
that
Women's
Wear Daily [has] made extremely serious allegations
about me as a journalist. The allegations are that I
have plagiarised other peoples' work. There is not a
shred of truth to these allegations.
politics
and law
US Senator Joseph Biden made an unscheduled exit from
the 1988 presidential race after discovery that he had
"borrowed" much of a speech from UK politician Neil Kinnock,
echoing the practice 150 years earlier of future Tory
PM Disraeli. Biden was subsequently accused of lifting
words from speeches by Robert Kennedy.
A 2005 speech by controversial US politician Jim Gibbons
was built around borrowings from a 2003 address by Alabama
Auditor Beth Chapman, including a call for
those
liberal, tree-hugging, Birkenstock-wearing, hippie,
tie-dyed liberals to go make their movies and music
and whine somewhere else.
In the US debate about online plagiarism is a central
feature of the ongoing cultural wars, with jeremiads about
cheating by schoolkids and exposes that luminaries such
as Martin Luther King or John F Kennedy 'lifted' major
parts of their publications.
Russian Federation president Vladimir Putin's 1997 dissertation
on The Strategic Planning of Regional Resources Under
the Formation of Market Relations appropriated much
of the 1978 Strategic Planning and Policy by
US academics William King & David Cleland.
In 2006 Australian Federal magistrate Jennifer Rimmer
stepped down unattributed inclusion of a judgement by
Melbourne magistrate John Walters in a decision that took
over three years to deliver. Sydney University academic
complained in 2003 that a judgement by Justice Marcus
Einfeld reproduced Carter's work from Halsbury's Laws
of Australia without attribution.
In 2006 Chinese dissident Wang Tiancheng persuaded a Beijing
court to accept his lawsuit against Wuhan University law
professor Zhou Yezhong. Zhou had allegedly plagiarized
46 paragraphs in his latest law book and lifted text from
at least six scholars. That is consistent with a reported
survey by the Chinese Science Ministry claiming that 60%
of 180 doctoral dissertations featured unacknowledged
copying, with 60% of students awarded doctorates also
admitting to payment of bribes for publication in academic
journals.
Two US perspectives are Stanley Birch's 'Copyright Protection
for Attorney Work Product: Practical and Ethical problems'
(10 Journal of Intellectual Property Law, 2003)
and Lisa Wang's 'The Copyrightability of Legal Complaints'
(45 Boston College Law Review, 2004).
business and journalism
In 2006 Swanson's Unwritten Rules of Management,
a book of "homespun insights" by Raytheon CEO
and Chair William Swanson, was revealed to have cribbed
from The Unwritten Laws of Engineering, a 1944
text by California engineering professor W.J. King. Of
Swanson's 33 rules, 17 were in King's book, often word
for word. Swanson appears to have lifted a further four
rules from maxims published in the 2001 Wall Street
Journal by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld as 'Rumsfeld's
Rules'. Swanson's board docked his remuneration by around
US$1m.
Ben Domenech, founder of the radical blog RedState.com
and blogger for The
Washington Post, resigned in 2006 after claims of
plagiarism from figures such as P J O'Rourke. He had attracted
criticism for somewhat ungenerous views, for example characterising
Coretta Scott King as a "communist". Domenech
variously blamed an editor and his own sloppiness, explaining
that he may have mixed up his notes with articles from
other authors. He justified the passage that appeared
to be copied from O'Rourke by claiming the author gave
him permission. O'Rourke reportedly responded that he
had never heard of Domenech, did not recall meeting him
and "I didn't give him permission to use my words
under his byline, no".
More contentiously ABC's Media Watch criticised
high profile journalist Richard Carlton. Shock jock Alan
Jones has been recurrently accused, for example
of lifting text from BA Santamaria, Simon Mann, Chris
Taylor and Frederick Forsythe.
Seattle Times associate editor and business columnist
Stephen Dunphy resigned in 2004, explaining that "I
took careless shortcuts that in the end constituted plagiarism".
A reader had noted Dunphy's appropriation in January 1997
of seven paragraphs originally published in the Journal
of Commerce in 1996. Dunphy was also criticised for
'borrowings' from Barry Lopez's About This Life
in 2000, explaining
My only defense, and it is a lame one, is that it was
unintentional. I had worked on the story over a period
of several months with several long breaks. I lost track
of what I had from where. I have informed my editors
of my mistake. They have reviewed the situation and
taken disciplinary action in the form of a letter of
reprimand placed in my permanent personnel file. But
nothing can substitute for my own sense of regret. I
am embarrassed, mortified and committed a serious breach
of journalistic standards, especially embarrassing for
a journalist like myself with more than 35 years in
the business. But I would have felt worse if it had
gone unnoticed.
art
Award-winning Japanese painter Yoshihiko Wada lifted works
by Italian contemporary Alberto Sughi, with several of
his paintings derscribed as having "an extreme resemblance"
to Sughi's canvases.
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