June 13, 2006
What Plagiarism Isn't
With al-Zarqawi dead, Bush in Baghdad and a botched Fitzmas bringing nothing but trickling, impotent gloom, the Left needed something to brighten their day.
Plagiarism or sloppy cut-and-paste? That's what blogger Rude Pundit is asking about two passages in Ann Coulter's white-hot book Godless, which has already had its share of criticism over its content.Pundit's evidence:
Coulter, Chapter 1 of Godless: The massive Dickey-Lincoln Dam, a $227 million hydroelectric project proposed on upper St. John River in Maine, was halted by the discovery of the Furbish lousewort, a plant previously believed to be extinct.
Portland Press Herald, from "Maine Stories of the Century": The massive Dickey-Lincoln Dam, a $227 million hydroelectric project proposed on upper St. John River, is halted by the discovery of the Furbish lousewort, a plant believed to be extinct.
Coulter: A few years after oil drilling began in Prudhoe Bay, Alaska, a saboteur set off an explosion blowing a hole in the pipeline and releasing an estimated 550,000 gallons of oil.
The History Channel: The only major oil spill on land occurred when an unknown saboteur blew a hole in the pipe near Fairbanks, and 550,000 gallons of oil spilled onto the ground.
In the first pair of sentences about the Dickey-Lincoln Dam, Coulter's copy is almost word-for-word the same as the copy from the 2000 Portland Press list, with the only difference being a minor shift in verb tense (present to past, "is" to "was").
But is copying an item from a list plagiarism? Even with the list item being copied nearly word for word, the case for calling this plagiarism is questionable at best. Why?
If you look at the various definitions of plagiarism, the underlying theme is the concept of the theft of creative work or ideas from another person. Some people define it is a willful reproduction of the work of another, while more stringent standards hold it to be any reproduction of another's work, willful or subconscious.
Regardless of details, the key to plagiarism is the theft of a creative work or ideas. Does a list item meet the standard of "a creative work or ideas" needed to support a charge of plagiarism? Despite the almost verbatim copy, I'd argue that it most likely does not.
The claim that the second passage contains evidence of any plagiarism at all is frankly nonsensical.
The line from the History Channel and from Coulter's book are only similar in they discuss the same event, where a saboteur blew up a pipe in Alaska spilling 550,000 of oil.
By Rude Pundit's unsustainably broad standard, no two people could write about the same event and cite the same facts (or even different descriptions of the same place, as Coulter cites the location as "in Prudhoe Bay" and the History Channel says "near Fairbanks") from that event without one plagiarizing the other.
To quote Thomas Jefferson, "He's most likely completely full of crap."
As are his too-broad charges of plagiarism.
(h/t Allah at Hot Air)
I confess I enjoy seeing the left swish about like a frog in a pot of water being slowly heated.
Posted by: Zhombre at June 13, 2006 04:54 PMThey are utterly unable to attack her ideas so what elee do they have left.
Posted by: Stephen Macklin at June 13, 2006 07:21 PM"the key to plagiarism is the theft of a creative work or ideas"
No, the key to plagiarism is being up front about where you copied the data from, in a footnote or endnote. You can get away with copying quite a lot of stuff; just as long as you acknowledge the source in an endnote, it's not plagiarism.
Good practice is to always acknowledge information you've taken from somewhere else, even if you've paraphrased every word, so that people can chase up the original source to verify its accuracy. This is just one of those quaint old habits the "intelligentsia" has picked up over the years, and tends to get ignored by people who for some reason like to attack academics.
It's not the scandal of the century. But the standard of political discourse in America is pretty low right now, and it's worth pointing out where it fails.
Posted by: Mat at June 14, 2006 01:26 AMThe word for word copying of a single sentence in a paper, two pages long, would call for a docking of 10 points for "not cited." Two of these would call for a 0 on the paper.
It's plagiarism if it's not cited, whether it is a list or not.
I do not think the second example is plagiarism, even if she got the word saboteur from that source. Use of a single word does not constitute plagiarism, unless the first author invented it.
But, as we saw with Red America, even a metaphor is sufficient that it can be termed plagiarized if the original work is not cited.
Plagiarism doesn't always amount to much. The CEO who plagiarized a 50s engineer's work and Kerry didn't get any backlash from their plagiarism, while Red America and my students lost a lot. (A job and a grade.)
The Harvard sophomore is more questionable. Did she have to return her $500,000 advance? I don't know.
But, yes, I do think that a single sentence from a source, even in a list, is plagiarism.
Posted by: Suzi at June 14, 2006 04:21 PMTheoretically it is not plagarism, which refers to copying more than a sentence and has to do more with how something is written than with what is written.
However, in a book with annotations, it should have been marked with a tiny number referring to the endnotes.
After all, it is stating a fact, and needs annotation to where Coulter got those facts.
I've seen the same sentence with one or two words changed in multiple works. If something has been said many times, how many times can you change the wording without seeming to be like something alread written.
You who think it is plaguerism, please write up what happened on 9/11 in time order. I've seen dozens almost word for word. It is history!
Posted by: Rick at June 17, 2006 06:01 PMAt best Rude Punidt is a bad comedy loung act with lots of four letter words to keep the drunks awake. At worst it the essence of loberalism. Incapable of a counter argument they behave like a bunch of wolrd socilists who set cars on fire and break windows in Seattle when a bunch of bankers come to town for a meeting. COULTER has them unhinged and on the run
Posted by: JOE at June 23, 2006 07:53 PM
