Plagiarism stigma …

9 Comments »

• Peter says:

  20 November 2009 at 7:20 am

  The stigma goes on … (right on cue)

  Plagiarists ‘like drug cheats’

  A doyen of New Zealand literature has compared plagiarism to drug cheating in sport because of the unfair advantage it gives over contemporaries.

  Award-winning author and poet Vincent O’Sullivan, an emeritus professor of English at Victoria University, was reluctant to comment directly on the ‘Witi Ihimaera situation’ but said the drugs analogy was fair.

  ‘It’s a performance-enhancing technique that works at someone else’s expense,’ he said.

  ‘Apart from the personal ethical issues involved, plagiarism gives an unfair advantage over contemporaries and colleagues.’

  His comments follow further claims by Professor Keith Sorrenson, a University of Auckland emeritus history professor, that Ihimaera plagiarised his work in the award-winning novel The Matriarch and later apologised to him.

  Professor Sorrenson says the latest plagiarism row – in which Professor Ihimaera has admitted using unattributed material from 16 other authors in his latest book, The Trowenna Sea – showed he had ‘learnt nothing’ from the earlier incident.

  from NZ Herald 20/11/09

  The ‘drug cheat’ analogy is a good one — unfair advantage.
  As is the point (in the full article) that professors should be held to the same standard as their students.

  Professor O’Sullivan said accidental use of unattributed material was understandable, but university staff should be held to the same level of accountability as students.

• Chowbok says:

  23 November 2009 at 2:48 am

  One consideration is that University Professors are under tremendous pressure to “publish.” Is Witi any different? I doubt it. While I don’t excuse his behavior; that “pressure” to “publish” is not exerted on the rest of us – and so – we have time I think — and have that luxury of criticism. I’m not justifying his behavior but I am saying that there are probably some mitigating circumstances that are hidden from us.

• Peter says:

  23 November 2009 at 6:32 am

  @Chowbok Yes, I see you are coming around to my more sympathetic understanding of the awkward bind/waking nightmare Witi finds himself in (self-inflicted, of course).

  A fellow university professor, Margaret Soltan, who I imagine will be fully cognisant of the ‘pressures’ put it this way on her University Diaries blog:

  I thought the drug cheats thing a little strange, too. Though I see the idea. The plagiarist gets books out faster than his competitors because he saves all sorts of writing time…

  From my study of the subject, I’ve come to think that there are two kinds of plagiarists, haughty and pathetic, with Witi the pathetic type.

  The haughty plagiarist is a brilliant and accomplished person who just hasn’t the time — is just too important and special — actually to WRITE any more books. Other people do that, and the haughty person puts his name on the cover.

  The pathetic plagiarist has no faith in his ability to write well. At his core is a deep self-doubt; and the more success the pathetic plagiarist enjoys, the deeper his self-doubt becomes, and the more he plagiarizes. In other words, he has always felt himself to be a hoax, a fraud, and turns to plagiarism because he sincerely believes himself incapable of valuable independent work.

  The haughty = a ghostwriter/copywriter user. As in recent discussion:

  Copywriters
  If you don’t have the time or skill to write your own articles or press releases you can engage our copywriters to write the content for you!

  … if you haven’t got the time or the skills but still want to ‘build trust’.

  Pathetic plagiarists shoulder a different cross.

  A third category of plagiarist I would add, from experience, is the brazen IP thief (i.e. neither brilliant nor accomplished, just a cooked.)

  —

  UPDATE: Another excellent article by Maragret Soltan expands on her categories of plagiarist model, and (someone after my own heart) delves into the psychobabble (viz. “The pathetic plagiarist seethes with self-doubt”).

  Their midnight mischief dragged to the light of day, they [the pathetic plagiarist] can only stand there and apologize. Ihimaera says he’s going to buy back the entire first run of the book. His university and publishing house are still, as of this writing, in the fuss and prevaricate mode. But nothing can stop what’s been set in motion – the revelation of Ihimaera as a career plagiarist. His reputation has been trashed, along with the reputation of the university that continues to defend him. [emphasis added]

  Especially in high-tech surveillance times, pathetic plagiarism calls not merely for condemnation but for compassion. When, knowing how easily you can be caught, you still plagiarize, something’s wrong with you. When you know someone like the historian you plagiarized years ago is still out there, and you still plagiarize, something’s wrong.

  Do pathetic plagiarists want to be caught? Are they playing a high-risk, borderline psychotic game in which they dare the world to catch them out and destroy them?

  Worth reading here at insidehighered.com

• Chowbok says:

  23 November 2009 at 11:53 pm

  Sorry, but I think Margret Soltan doesn’t have a clue about what she is talking about.

  But, I do know that she thinks she does!

• Peter says:

  25 November 2009 at 5:00 pm

  Another day, another outraged academic. And I can see her point…

  Valerie Grant: Creative theft has found its way up to the highest level

  By Valerie Grant PhD, honorary senior lecturer at the Psychological Medicine faculty of Medical and Health Sciences, University of Auckland.

  Opinion | NZ Herald | Wednesday Nov 25, 2009

  It is outrageous that a professor of English has been awarded one of the top prizes in New Zealand for creative art, after there has already been full exposure of the extent to which he has plagiarised others’ work.

  The fact that he is a professor of English makes it all the more reprehensible. He, more than anyone, should be aware how difficult it is to create a beautiful sentence. He should know from experience how much time and effort goes into doing so.

  And isn’t the prize for “creative” work? How can he be awarded such a prize when the work is clearly the result of someone else’s creativity?

  Full article (worth reading) here.

  So, the stigma rolls on — proving that Margaret Soltan was right about at least one thing: her comment that Witi’s “reputation has been trashed”.

• Peter says:

  3 March 2010 at 1:55 pm

  Oops.

  Author’s PhD claim denied by Victoria University

  An American author, whose book on the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima has been controversially dumped by its publisher, does not hold a doctorate from Victoria University as he claims, the university said today.

  Charles Pellegrino’s The Last Train from Hiroshima had received strong reviews and had been optioned for a possible film by Avatar director James Cameron, but the book’s publisher Henry Holt and Company has told Associated Press it will no longer print, correct or ship copies of the book.

  Doubts were raised about the book a week ago after Pellegrino acknowledged that one of his interview subjects had falsely claimed to be on one of the planes accompanying the Enola Gay, from which an atom bomb was dropped by the United States on Hiroshima in 1945.

  Since then the publisher has been unable to confirm the existence of two other men mentioned in the text, a Father Mattias who supposedly lived in Hiroshima at the time of the bombing, and John MacQuitty, identified as a Jesuit scholar presiding over Mattias’ funeral.

  Now Pellegrino’s own background has also been questioned.

  His website http://www.charlespellegrino.com, lists him as receiving a PhD. in 1982 from Victoria University in Wellington, New Zealand.

  But the university said today that he had no such degree.

  “He doesn’t have a PhD from Victoria,” a spokeswoman told NZPA. …

  http://www.stuff.co.nz/entertainment/books/3395164/Authors-PhD-claim-denied-by-Victoria-University

• Peter says:

  5 March 2010 at 7:51 am

  Gee, wouldn’t these guys actually KNOW? …

  An organisation of World War II veterans is unhappy with James Cameron’s support for a discredited history of the atomic bombing of Japan that the director has optioned for a possible film.

  Members of the 509th Composite Group, which consists of veterans and relatives of those who carried out the 1945 attacks, said in a statement on Thursday that many aspects of Charles Pellegrino’s The Last Train from Hiroshima are “complete fiction and cause great damage to true history.”

  Publisher Henry Holt and Co, responding to concerns raised by The Associated Press, earlier in the week announced that it had ceased publication of the book. The AP questioned the existence of two men in the book: Father Mattias (the first name is not given), who supposedly lived in Hiroshima at the time of the bombing and committed suicide, and John MacQuitty, identified as a Jesuit scholar who presided over Mattias’ funeral. Holt said this week that Pellegrino did not offer a satisfactory answer.

  http://www.stuff.co.nz/entertainment/books/3406405/Cameron-book-defence-upsets-vets

• “If book publishers are supposed to be the gatekeepers…” @ The Paepae says:

  9 March 2010 at 9:50 pm

  […] raised in a comment here, this story of a fabricated Enola Gay memoir, an imaginary PhD supposedly issued and withdrawn by […]

• Peter says:

  9 March 2010 at 10:01 pm

  “Baseless and defamatory” to say Victoria University ever awarded him a Ph.D. … let alone stripped him of it over ‘evolutionary theory’

  Questions were raised about “Last Train” only after it was published and readers complained. The publisher said it would issue corrected editions, removing references to Mr. Fuoco. But then Holt started examining tips it received about the possibility that other people in the book did not exist, and also began looking into a controversy over Mr. Pellegrino’s Ph.D., which he refers to prominently on his Web site (charlespellegrino.com) and in his author’s biography in the book.

  Mr. Pellegrino said he had been awarded the doctorate at Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand in the early 1980s and then stripped of it a few years later because of a disagreement with department members over evolutionary theory. “It got to be a very hot and nasty topic in 1982,” Mr. Pellegrino said in a telephone interview.

  On Thursday, Pat Walsh, vice chancellor of Victoria University, said that Mr. Pellegrino’s claims were “baseless and defamatory” and that the university never awarded him a Ph.D.

  http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/09/books/09publishers.html?pagewanted=all