Bednar caught in conference plagiarism

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Dr Moore
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Bednar caught in conference plagiarism

Post by Dr Moore »

A pseudonym called GrahamPSmith posted the following. I couldn’t find the original, referenced post.
https://www.reddit.com/r/exmormon/comme ... ame=iossmf
Red highlight shows overlap. Green shows cited section.
903A94E1-FF4B-4BE1-A64F-E404D69414D9.jpeg
903A94E1-FF4B-4BE1-A64F-E404D69414D9.jpeg (241.1 KiB) Viewed 1013 times
Have to say, the degree of unattributed reuse appears out of bounds.
IHAQ
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Re: Bednar caught in conference plagiarism

Post by IHAQ »

This is the link to the Bednar Conference talk transcript.

https://abn.churchofjesuschrist.org/stu ... r?lang=eng
The custom in those days was for the host of a wedding feast—in this parable, the king—to provide garments for the wedding guests. Such wedding garments were simple, nondescript robes that all attendees wore. In this way, rank and station were eliminated, and everyone at the feast could mingle as equals.
As the king entered the wedding hall, he surveyed the audience and immediately noticed that one conspicuous guest was not wearing a wedding garment. The man was brought forward, and the king asked, “Friend, how camest thou in hither not having a wedding garment? And he was speechless.”13 In essence, the king asked, “Why are you not wearing a wedding garment, even though one was provided for you?”
The man obviously was not dressed properly for this special occasion, and the phrase “And he was speechless” indicates that the man was without excuse.
It's largely verbatim. Was Bednar in a rush to prepare something, anything, for Conference and simply presented John O. Reid's labours as his own?

Bednar does give a sideways nod to the author of chunks of his talk…
A Christian author, John O. Reid, noted that the man’s refusal to wear the wedding garment exemplified blatant disrespect for both the king and his son.
But that isn’t proper attribution for the large swathes of Reid’s work that Bednar copy and pasted into his Conference address.

Lazy. Misleading (which is defined in the Church as dishonesty).
Last edited by IHAQ on Thu Oct 06, 2022 9:13 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Bednar caught in conference plagiarism

Post by huckelberry »

Does the John Reed material have proper footnotes? It may be more interesting to know where his ideas came from. I missed seeing footnotes or any explanation of source in the article. ( plausibly reprocessed reworked material with an unknown actual source)

I mean where did this idea of sending out wedding garments come from?

Sometimes I get the feeling that religious explanations and inspirational messages and stories get reborrowed over and over till attribution becomes rather absurd.
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Re: Bednar caught in conference plagiarism

Post by drumdude »

Next conference they’ll just be reading straight from the evangelical American Family Radio lectures.
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Dr Moore
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Re: Bednar caught in conference plagiarism

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Marcus
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Re: Bednar caught in conference plagiarism

Post by Marcus »

cinepro tries some damage control, to no avail:
grahamPsmith wrote:I think that the evidence is that Bednar knew he was plagiarizing. He changes some of the sentences to read a little more polished than the original. Also, note that while the Church's printed version now uses quotation marks, those marks were not there yesterday, when I took screen shots of the published version and the footnotes. In addition, there was only one footnote to the original author yesterday. Today there are multiple. These facts give the lie to Church spokesperson, Doug Anderson's, spin that the original author was quoted and referenced on multiple occasions in footnotes. The changes also show that the Church has recognized that the original presentation was not appropriate.

Note that after-the-fact quotations and citations do not change plagiarism into non-plagiarism.

Any plagiarized use of material can be dressed up later with quotation marks and citations. Missing portions can always be handled later by ellipses and additions by square brackets.
https://old.reddit.com/r/Mormon/comment ... m/ird7pn0/
cinepro wrote: "when I took screen shots of the published version and the footnotes."

Do you have the screenshots?

Of course, this raises the question about what the point is. If everyone is worried that Reid wasn't being properly attributed, then doesn't adding the footnotes solve the problem and make everyone happy (if they were originally missing in the printed version)? He's properly attributed now, and will be for years to come as the online version of the talk remains as the final record of what Bednar said.
GrahamPSmith wrote: Yes, I do have the screenshots. The problem is that the changes weren't made until after Bednar was caught.
cinepro [score hidden] an hour ago
Cool. Can you share the screen shots? I'd be curious to see them.

[–]GrahamPSmith [score hidden] an hour ago
I just posted them here:

https://www.reddit.com/r/exmormon/comme ... man\_doug/


[–]GrahamPSmith [score hidden] an hour ago
Also, I posted the screenshots yesterday before the changes were made here:

https://www.reddit.com/r/exmormon/comme ... _official/

[permalink]
https://old.reddit.com/r/Mormon/comment ... m/irde6vl/
And another try:
cinepro wrote: Here's the printed version of the talk. Is there anything that isn't properly footnoted? Footnotes 12, 15, 16, 18 & 19 cite the Reid article. There are also a few other books that are footnoted but not explicitly called out in the talk. He doesn't specifically mention where all the Reid sections are from. Is that the problem?

https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/stu ... r?lang=eng
IHAQ
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Re: Bednar caught in conference plagiarism

Post by IHAQ »

So this seems to be the sequence of events:

1. Bednar gives a talk at conference which includes huge swathes of someone else's words, thoughts and opinions (often verbatim) but presents that work as his own.

2. The Church publishes the talk.

3. Bednar's pliagerism is spotted and publicised within discussion forums and is picked up and reported on by journalists.

4. The Church quietly adds attributions to the published talk to make it seem that proper attribution had been given all along.

5. A Church spokesperson doubles down on Bednar's dishonesty and pretends the footnotes were always there.

Do I have that right?
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Re: Bednar caught in conference plagiarism

Post by Dwight »

I'm interested in this on two levels, the plagiarism, and then how good was the scholarship of John O. Reid. Is his explanation actually legit and/or how much is his own interpretation or assigning meaning that wouldn't have existed before. Perhaps the latter part I am giving too much of an opening for. I also like the defense that this was a religious setting and not an academic from the spokesperson as though that makes it better. The religious setting should in theory be even better than a mere worldly academic setting.

This has flavors of on my mission one of the APs once did a mission conference talk about the crucifixion. It was clear he had gotten his hands on some book from a Christian bookstore that he used for his talk. There were details that were fanciful, like Romans did X when they crucified people, but they did this twist to make it worse for Jesus cause of who he was. The saddest part is that his talk didn't even jibe with Mormon theology that the atonement was Jesus suffering in the Garden of Gethsemane not just him suffering and dying on the cross.
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Re: Bednar caught in conference plagiarism

Post by Dr Exiled »

I think I have the correct apologetic here:

These are obviously God's words and it took one of His anointed to figure that out and bless us with them. Otherwise, walking scripture, amazing super-duper Bednar wouldn't have said it. I guess the real question is will the Christian guy humble himself and confess to plagiarizing and stealing God's words? And he did it without the proper authority that Bednar obviously has as a special witness to a name. So take that anti Mormon, always half empty, scum!!
Myth is misused by the powerful to subjugate the masses all too often.
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Re: Bednar caught in conference plagiarism

Post by Marcus »

Dwight wrote:
Fri Oct 07, 2022 7:54 am
...and then how good was the scholarship of John O. Reid. Is his explanation actually legit and/or how much is his own interpretation or assigning meaning that wouldn't have existed before. Perhaps the latter part I am giving too much of an opening for. I also like the defense that this was a religious setting and not an academic from the spokesperson as though that makes it better. The religious setting should in theory be even better than a mere worldly academic setting.

This has flavors of ...
Shades of Cinepro's strategy. :roll: please start a separate thread for this separate topic.
Dwight wrote:
Fri Oct 07, 2022 7:54 am
I'm interested in this on two levels, the plagiarism...
that's what this thread is about.
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