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Plagiarism 101

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February 15, 2010

There has been plenty of excitement recently concerning the resignation of Gerald Posner from The Daily Beast as a result of a plagiarism scandal.  Here’s how Posner described it in his own words:

Last Friday, Jack Shafer in Slate ran an article pinpointing five sentences from one of my stories in The Daily Beast, which I admitted met the definition of plagiarism and I accepted full responsibility for that error, an incident I called “accidental plagiarism.”  On Monday, he had found other examples, and although I disagreed with some of his characterizations, I again accepted full accountability.

When The Daily Beast had asked me last Friday if there were any more problems than the five original sentences highlighted by Shafer, I had confidently told them, “No.”  It was not because I had subjected my own articles to so-called plagiarism software, or because I was in denial about any deliberate plagiarism.

*   *   *

This afternoon I received a call from Edward Felsenthal, the excellent managing editor of The Daily Beast.  He informed me that as part of the Beast’s internal investigation, they had uncovered more instances in earlier articles of mine in which there the same problems of apparent plagiarism as the ones originally brought to life last Friday by Shafer.  I instantly offered my resignation and Edward accepted.

This event created quite a stir in the blogosphere, where plagiarism is commonplace.  Although most bloggers follow the “fair use” standard, which allows for quoting a limited portion of published material only when identifying the original publisher of that material (attribution), a good number of bloggers are more than sloppy about it.  In the case of the Associated Press, they don’t want you quoting anything.  This is due to the nature of their business model.  There is no single publication called “The Associated Press” nor is there any single Associated Press website that runs all of its stories.  The AP makes its money by selling its stories to media outlets for republication under an AP byline.  I recently adopted a policy of simply pointing out that “Jane Doe did a story for the Associated Press concerning XYZ” with a link to the story.

Gerald Posner admitted that Jack Shafer of Slate exposed what Posner described as “accidental plagiarism”.   On February 11, Shafer responded by presenting an argument that Posner is a “serial plagiarist”.  Shafer went on to explain how plagiarism not only causes harm to the author of the poached writing — it also causes harm to the readers:

In an essay published by Media Ethics (fall 2006), Edward Wasserman attacks the wrong of plagiarism at its roots.  Most everybody concedes that plagiarism harms plagiarized writers by denying them due credit for original work.  But Wasserman delineates the harm done to readers.  By concealing the true source of information, plagiarists deny “the public insight into how key facts come to light” and undermines the efforts of other journalists and readers to assess the truth value of the (embezzled) journalistic accounts.  In Wasserman’s view, plagiarism violates the very “truth-seeking and truth-telling” mission of journalism.

From The Atlantic Wire website, John Hudson implied that Jack Shafer didn’t have any particular vendetta against Posner; Shafer was simply sticking to his mission of exposing lapses in media ethics:

Shafer has made a habit of pushing journalists to be more accurate and responsible from his post at Slate’s Press Box, a column devoted to media criticism.  Voices like his are increasingly crucial as journalistic mores shift, with Shafer both demonstrating and explaining how Web writing can work.

Nothing beats a good scandal — but when the scandal involves a scandal-breaker, there seems to be a bit of karma happening.

At the ScienceBlogs website, Razib Kahn characterized the Posner situation as more a problem of being pathologically dumb than being a pathological plagiarist:

The Ben Domenech case actually shows that yes, internet-age plagiarists can be pathologically dumb.  There are plenty of cases of small-time plagiarists; my friend Randall Parker of FuturePundit was pointed to another blogger who was copying his posts almost verbatim.  Small potatoes.  But if you’re a professional journalist, you’re going to get caught if you have any prominence if people can compare the text on the internet.

I think catching people plagiarizing like this is a good sign that there are some mental peculiarities at work here; cognitive biases if you will.  This isn’t cheating on college papers, unethical as it is, this is being unethical for short-term gains when there’s a very high probability that you’ll be caught and humiliated in public in the long-term.

Being called unethical is something that Posner had probably been expecting — but being called dumb has to really hurt!



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A Wake-up Call From Dennis Blair

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February 19, 2009

Although President Obama has been criticized for many of his appointments, the selection of retired Admiral Dennis Blair as Director of National Intelligence appears to have been a wise choice.  Blair graduated from the United States Naval Academy in 1968.  He attended Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar contemporaneously with Bill Clinton.  (However, I doubt that Blair was standing next to Bill when the former President “didn’t inhale”.)  Blair retired from the Navy in 2002.

On Thursday, February 12, Blair appeared before the Senate Intelligence Committee and surprised his audience with his new threat assessment.  As Tom Gjelten reported for National Public Radio:

National Intelligence Director Dennis Blair’s dramatic report last week — that the economic crisis is now the United States’ top “near-term security concern” — caught some members of Congress by surprise.  But it makes sense.

The global economic downturn could easily change the world. Previously stable countries could become unstable.  The geopolitical lineup could shift sharply, some countries becoming more powerful while others get weaker.  Allies could turn into adversaries.

Pamela Hess of the Associated Press provided this account of the hearing:

Blair’s 49-page statement opened with a detailed description of the economic crisis.  It was a marked departure from threat briefings of years past, which focused first on traditional threats and battlefields like Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan.

“The primary near-term security concern of the United States is the global economic crisis and its geopolitical implications,” he said in a written statement for the committee.

Blair cited the inability of other nations to meet their humanitarian obligations and hostility toward the United States for causing this crisis as potential causes for unrest, as this AFP report disclosed:

“Statistical modeling shows that economic crises increase the risk of regime-threatening instability if they persist over a one to two year period,” Blair said.

“Besides increased economic nationalism, the most likely political fallout for US interests will involve allies and friends not being able to fully meet their defense and humanitarian obligations.”

*   *   *

“It already has increased questioning of US stewardship of the global economy and the international financial structure,” Blair said, with trading partners already upset over a “Buy American” provision in a US stimulus bill.

Rosalie Westenskow of UPI noted Blair’s concern that the impact of climate change, coinciding with the economic crisis, could provide a troublesome combination to facilitate government instability:

“The impacts (of climate change) will worsen existing problems such as poverty, social tensions, environmental degradation, ineffectual leadership and weak political institutions,” Blair told senators last week.

As temperatures rise, scientists predict natural disasters like floods and drought will also increase and government instability worldwide is likely to follow, he said.

On February 17, during an interview in Tokyo with Martha Raddatz of ABC News, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton ratified Blair’s concern about the security threat posed by the global economic crisis:

“Yes, we have to look at this as part of our threat matrix,” the secretary of state said.  “I know some people have criticized him and said, ‘what does the economy have to do with terrorism.’ That’s a very short-sighted view.  I think what director Blair was saying is that we get fixated sometimes on the headlines of dangers, and that is not in any way to underestimate the continuing threat from terrorism, the instability in the Middle East and Afghanistan and Pakistan and elsewhere.”

“But this economic crisis, left unresolved, will create massive unemployment,” she said.  “It will upend governments, it will unfortunately breed instability, and I appreciated his putting that into the context of the threat matrix.”

It’s nice to know that we have an intelligence director who is not wedded to the Bush administration’s fixation on September 11 -style attacks.  As this February 16 editorial from the San Francisco Chronicle pointed out:

The new threat isn’t as easy to identify – or vilify – as al Queda, but that doesn’t mean it’s any less serious.

*    *    *

No one knows what form the next wave of instability will take. The United States must start making preparations now – by shoring up our own flailing economy and supporting our allies as much as we possibly can.  Blair’s warning shows how dangerous it will be for Washington to continue battling along the same tired ideological lines that it has for the last several weeks.  This economic crisis could be putting more than our wallets at risk.

Of course, we don’t really need another reason to stay awake at night and worry.  Fortunately, we now have someone in a crucial position, capable of identifying and focusing on new threats.  Thanks for the “heads up” Admiral Blair!