Right-wing crank Mark Steyn plagiarizes his way through another exercise in formulaic hackery. Alas, he will not have died a painful and horrible death by page 2.
I'd flunk him, too, and I'd also report him to the academic integrity committee. He'd probably complain that I'm out to get him, though.
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Interesting.
Out of curiosity, I wonder what you think of what to me seems like a more substantive case of plagiarism that's way more serious than plagiarizing a blog post in order to write a critique of a popular book and happened this week, namely Ward Churchill. Churchill, an investigative panel at the University of Colorado found, not only plagiarized, but referenced works by himself written under a pseudonym as "independent sources," in effect using the reference equivalent of sockpuppets to make conclusions in a pattern going back to the very earliest days of his academic career.
See the full report.
And, no, I'm not defending Mark Steyn, but it seems to me that his transgression pales in comparison to Churchill's
You can add lying about it to the plagiarism charge against Steyn.
Orac,
I don't get your point. Comparing a widely published conservative pundit to a professor who was never accepted as a definitive voice from the left, save by Hannity et al, doesn't really mean anything. Are you trying to say that we should denounce *all* plagiarism? Each time I want to criticize, let's say, Ben Domenech I should bring up a liberal who has performed a similar transgression?
Any type of plagiarism is wrong. Show me a plagiarizer and I will denounce them. Similar to how every right wing idiot complains how left wingers aren't all the time denouncing the evils of "Islamofacism" instead of criticizing America. Sorry, I had just assumed that no one thought that terrorist bombings were ok, so I didn't think I had to remind everyone that I didn't enjoy September 11th every time I criticize Bush.
Throw Churchill out. Throw Steyn out. Get some serious debate and let's better the lives of everyone in the world.
I find Steyn's response(-by-assistant) to be the most odious aspect of the whole thing--"We deny everything, and shut up or we'll sue!"
Oh, FSM! I call upon ye to give the lying infidel Steyn a case of
unspeakably painful hemorrhoids, or food poisoning at the very least!
From the song "Floater" from Bob Dylan's album "Love and Theft"
"My old man, he's like some feudal lord, got more lives than a cat."
"I'm not as forgiving as I sound"..."sometime somebody wants you to give something up, and tears or not, it's too much to ask."
In Junichi Saga's book "Confessions of a Yakuza":
"My old man would sit there like a feudal lord"..."I'm not as cool or forgiving as I might have sounded"..."tears or not, though, that was too much to ask."
Saga's response?
"I'm flattered to learn that passages from one of my books apparently found their way into Bob Dylan's lyrics."
A lesson perhaps?
For some reason "plagiarism" doesn't seem to bother me as much as it does some other people.
It depends on how much is being copied and how it is used.
Sampling, the use of portions of prior recordings that are incorporated into a new composition has become an integral part of many genres of music. Writers also do this because there are only so many ways to say the same thing. For example, how many times do you think the phrase "the sun rose in the east over the calm sea..." has been used in pieces of writing? If I used that phrase in one of my stories, do you think it would be necessary to credit it to Ernest Hemingway? If I use the phrase "the wild heart of life..." would I have to credit it to James Joyce? I once drew the line when I decided not to use a phrase that I had seen in a story that described a dead person. The phrase was "the mortal ingredient was conspicuous by its absence."
You cannot apply academic standards of plagiarism, standards that would apply to university students to the general population. If you're writing a paper for college credit, it's clearly important that it be your own work and not copied from someone else. But those standards are less rigorous in the civilan world, where artists, writers and thinkers often share ideas, words and images. Plagiarism is a deliberate deception done for personal gain. Those criteria were not met in Dylan's case.
On the other hand, the well documented plagiarisms of noted persons are often overlooked if their overall contributions are thought to be of value and their opinions are held in high regard. I'm thinking in particular of a certain civil rights leader who is now dead, whose graduate thesis is claimed to be 52% plagiarized. So, the charge of plagiarism then becomes a weapon which can be used for political purposes against people whose ideas or opinions we dislike and a double standard of accountability is applied. Using plagiarism charges to further one's own political agenda is far more despicable in many cases than the actual acts themselves.
A lesson perhaps?
Not so much a lesson, Charlie, as a litmus test.
For more info see here.
"For some reason "plagiarism" doesn't seem to bother me as much as it does some other people."
If you wrote something original that meant a great deal to you, something you really meant, something you poured your whole self into, and then found yourself left out of the debate because another person was getting the credit for your ideas and words, you might have a clearer idea of why plagiarism ought to bother you.
In the meantime, don't you realize that by your own declaration, you've undermined the value of everything you write? Plagiarism is both stealing and lying. Now no matter what we read with your name signed to it, we'll find ourselves wondering if that's a genuine reflection of your own mind and intelligence and thinking and word skills, or if you just stole it from a better writer and thinker.
I hope you reconsider your position.
"For some reason "plagiarism" doesn't seem to bother me as much as it does some other people."
"So, the charge of plagiarism then becomes a weapon which can be used for political purposes against people whose ideas or opinions we dislike and a double standard of accountability is applied. Using plagiarism charges to further one's own political agenda is far more despicable in many cases than the actual acts themselves."
Oh my Charlie. Why doesn't this surprise me coming from you? Yes that's right, damn those standards of honesty and originality. Just think, if it wasn't for such political agendas, ID/Creationists could actually get away with their garbage.
I don't like to defend Mark Steyn, but isn't plagiarism copying without citing the source? Steyn cites Pullman in his article.
Julia wrote:
"I hope you reconsider your position."
True plagiarism is certainly to be denounced. But I tend to set the bar a little lower than some other people. There is nothing wrong with taking an idea and reworking it in your own style.
"Is there anything of which one can say, "Look! This is something new"? It was here already, long ago; it was here before our time." Ecclesiastes 1:8-10
There is also nothing wrong with presenting facts that have been presented before. I wrote:
"At any place in a DNA molecule, either strand may be serving as the template. Some genes are aligned one way, some the other, and in a few cases, the same segment of double helix contains genetic information on both strands. In all cases, however, RNA polymerase proceeds along a strand in its 3' e 5' direction."
Someone found this on the web and accused me of "plagiarism":
"Note that at any place in a DNA molecule, either strand may be serving as the template; that is, some genes "run" one way, some the other (and in a few remarkable cases, the same segment of double helix contains genetic information on both strands!). In all cases, however, RNA polymerase proceeds along a strand in its 3' e 5' direction."
These two passages contain the same facts, presented in a different way. This is not plagiarism. There are only so many ways to say the same thing. Clearly, that's not a word for word copy of someone else's words. The punctuation is different, the words are different, only the facts are the same. And I think you will agree that facts are not subject to plagiarism standards, only the way the facts are expressed.
On the other hand, lifting whole passages and using them in your own work and passing them off as your own is definitely wrong. In fact, it is a violation of copyright law. You cannot, however, copyright ideas. They are there for all to share, interpret and rework in their own style.
Those two passages C Wagner posted look to me like an awfully clear case of plagarism. Merely adding a few words like "Note that" and "remarkable" do not make it not plagarism. May I suggest, Mr. Wagner, that you are setting your own personal bar rather too low.
You also have to make it clear what material has been copied and what it's been copied from.
If something is a direct quote, or even a paraphrase with some of the original wording preserved, you have to make it clear that it's not your own words. A citation won't necessarily accomplish that.
True. It's just that given the idea of formulaic anarthrous first sentences in the novels of Dan Brown (which Steyn correctly cites Pullman for), the idea of making a formulaic anarthrous sentence *about* Dan Brown's first sentence in "The Da Vinci Code" is pretty obvious, and all possible such parody sentences are going to be nearly identical.
For example, how many times do you think the phrase "the sun rose in the east over the calm sea..." has been used in pieces of writing?
Probably much more than "the sun rose in the west".
My gut feeling is that the context would then be important. If that was a satirical beginning to an otherwise serious pop thriller, it would be received very differently than if it were the beginning of a Dan Brown parody.
Charlie says, "I once drew the line when I decided not to use a phrase that I had seen in a story that described a dead person. The phrase was "the mortal ingredient was conspicuous by its absence."
If avoiding plagiarism is the only reason you decided not to use that clause (not phrase), a lack of integrity is only one of your problems.
Susannah wrtote:
"If avoiding plagiarism is the only reason you decided not to use that clause (not phrase), a lack of integrity is only one of your problems."
I asked my daughter, who has a PhD in English from Duke University and who is an English Professor at a college in the East and she informs me that it is BOTH a phrase and a clause. It is a phrase because it contains two or more words in sequence that form a syntactic unit that is less than a complete sentence. It is a clause because it is a group of words containing a subject and a predicate and forming part of a compound or complex sentence, but not a complete sentence.
Nevertheless, I misquoted the phrase/clause. It reads:
"About two hours later I saw an excited crowd besieging the front of a drug store. In a desert where nothing happens this was manna; so I edged my way inside. On an extemporized couch of empty boxes and chairs was stretched the mortal corporeality of Major Wentworth Caswell. A doctor was testing him for the immortal ingredient. His decision was that it was conspicuous by its absence."
from "A Municipal Report" - O Henry
What a great story!
If you're interested, you can go to my website and read some of my stories:
http://www.charliewagner.com/stories.htm
To say nothing of "the," "he said," the letter e, etc.
My impression is that plagiarism is in need of a more specific and formal definition, and has been since I first encountered the concept in school standards. While it's pretty easy to agree on what constitutes an egregious violation, there are a lot of borderline cases. If one is called on to cite a source for every single clause that might have been reproduced in some form, in some other writing, somewhere, the result would be a work that's more citation than literature. I would contend that unless it's a direct quote, very close paraphrase, or the major point of your work or that of the author you one is borrowing from, the same "this is silly" standard would apply to citation requirements for borrowed ideas less than a paragraph or so in length.
Charlie Wagner and Azkyroth, you both seem to be under the impression that plagiarism is largely subject to personal interpretation. If your plagiarism involves copyright violation (as it probably would unless you are copying from, say, a personal communication, and perhaps in that case also), then you don't get to declare a definition. The federal copyright laws provide very "specific and formal" standards.
Certainly one can lose a copyright lawsuit for "borrowed ideas less than a paragraph or so in length." Certainly, Mr. Wagner, you can lose a copyright lawsuit for your version of the DNA quote. It won't matter where you set the bar; it will matter only where federal law sets it. In some cases, to win such a suit it isn't necessary for the original author to show that a single word has been copied; there only has to be enough in the content, organization, and/or style to convince the court that the second author must have relied on the original.
I urge you both to investigate copyright law before one or the other of you loses your life's savings in a court judgment.
There are two problems with the Steyn "borrowing" from Pullum. First there's the obvious use of the same examples. It should be easy to find other examples in Brown's writing if the stylistic errors are consistent and frequent. Second, he flat out ripped off Pullum's style of critique. The first is lazy and maybe even trivial, but the second is why academics and writers and other people not necessarily in those two categories hate plagiarism. It's the theft of someone else's creativity and passing it off as your own.
Is the attack political? Maybe. You couldn't prove it by me because I'd never read him before, but Steyn definitely needed to be called on this. As was the deceased civil-rights leader referred to above. Still I bet the latter has contributed more to our culture and society than Mr. Steyn.
My impression was that this is a discussion about plagiarism as a matter of academic and personal integrity, with is very much a matter of personal interpretation (or a forged, rather than dictated, consensus thereof). Copyright law is completely irrelevant to that discussion at hand, unless one subscribes to the vacuous assumption that laws as they exist either perfectly reflect ethical imperatives or define them. And I can and will develop my own definitions and standards according to the dictates of reason and ethics; if laws exist which contradict them I will reexamine them and, upon finding them sound, make every reasonable effort to see that those laws cease to. The dictates of reason and ethics demand no less.
My point was that borrowing at that level was trivial and not a subject of reasonable objection in most circumstances (borrowing a summary conclusions or thesis paragraph, for instance, would be an exception). I said nothing about the legality of the practice. But since you brought it up, and claimed that borrowing style, organization, or content (general ideas?) may constitute copyright violation (which you procede to conflate with plagiarism), where is the line to be drawn? Do you mean that if I responded to you in as patronizing a fashion as you responded to my original comment, you could sue me? Or would I also have to display a similar reckless disregard for the topic and intent of the piece I was responding to and an inability or unwillingness to differentiate between legal and ethical issues?
I have complaints enough about the general tone of the post and the implication that a person could only on the basis of sheer ignorance come to a conclusion not mirroring your parroting of societal and legal orthodoxy. Aside from those, I find your implicit endorsement (failure to protest an unreasonable or unjust condition or action is an implicit endorsement, especially when one's failure to protest is not extorted) of such predatory and childish abuse, as you describe, of any law quite disturbing--let alone one that was nominally intended to encourage artistic and literary creativity before the RIAA and their ilk turned that into a bad joke. And I'm still not entirely sure where you got the idea that this was a relevant response to my comment. Should I expect to be bludgeoned like this every time I take a position, on a matter of principle, that runs contrary to a narrow, anachronistic, legal-opportunist interpretation of societal standards?
And I urge you to cultivate a habit of responding to other commenters' actual points, in a relevant and equally courteous (patronizing != courteous) fashion, and learn to differentiate between legal and ethical issues, before you make an ass of yourself.
Oops.
"My impression was that this is a discussion about plagiarism as a matter of academic and personal integrity, with is very much a matter of personal interpretation (or a forged, rather than dictated, consensus thereof). Copyright law is completely irrelevant to that discussion at hand"
On the off chance that you'll see this late post, I'll say that I misinterpreted the context in which you were speaking. As PZ referred to failing someone on the basis of the plagiarism involved and sending him to an "academic integrity committee" (both activities with significant legal implications), I was seeing the legality of the actions as a primary focus of the response thread. I'm sorry to have misunderstood you.
Fair enough; in light of that I apologize for lashing out like that, particularly if you weren't under the impression that I was necessarily ignorant, or intending to patronize me. Call it a pattern-matching error. x.x
Jonathan Badger, about "all parodies will be identical", let's see what I can do for a parody sentence. Using the chart Mark Liberman so helpfully presented, we can try to make a less plagiarffic sentence. I will assume that taking words from DB is parody and from GP is plagiarism, except for using the name Dan Brown. Words DB didn't use in bold.
Renowned novelist Dan Brown staggered through the mind-boggling unoriginality of his first sentence.
Seems possible to make a less copied parody sentence (granted that "opening sentence" sound sbetter than "first sentence", but also granted that I am not getting paid to write this column where Mark Steyn was). I don't have any of Dan Brown's books, or I'd try to find other examples of it that he could have used instead of the exact same ones GP did.
It's not the *form* he used but the words. And the idea of taking almost all of GP's ideas and presenting them as his own.
It just seems to me that if that was Steyn's motivation, why would he bother to cite GP in the first place? After all, if he never mentioned GP he could even claim that he came up independently with the observation himself and that GP was just some looney blogger. Look, I understand that GP doesn't like Steyn; I don't either. But it's just that I doubt GP would accuse, say, Naomi Klein of plagiarism if she had done the same thing in one of her articles.
Well, since Naomi Klein didn't plagiarize, and Adam Steyn did, that particular hypothesis of yours will unfortunately have to remain untestable.
However, if your implication is that GP lets leftists off the hook, I would think his prominent link from the "Some Striking Similarities" to this piece by Mark Liberman on plagiarism by Molly Ivins would tend to refute that wider assertion.
Ok, without a scorecard, and hopped up on nasal corticosteroids and albuterol, I'm starting to confuse the players, so I'll back up a bit and clarify.
Of course, we are talking about Mark Steyn; I got his first name wrong above.
And Mark Liberman is the author of the "Some Striking Similarities" (SSS) piece, so he did write the piece about Molly Ivins, rather than just linking to someone else's.
So Jonathan, correct me if I am wrong, but when you said you "doubt GP would accuse", you meant Liberman, right, since he was the author of the SSS piece, not GP. So I think the refutation of your assertion that he lets leftists off the hook--and please correct me if I am misreading your implication--is even stronger than if it had been GP, since he did write about Molly Ivin's plagiarism himself, plus he linked to it prominently in the Steyn article.