Bednar caught in conference plagiarism

[Marcus]

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?

yes, you do.

[Marcus]

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...

a.k.a., the Peterson School of Plagiarism technique and response. Except for the polishing up. Peterson's plagiarisms have always been more polished than his personal efforts.

[Moksha]

This story may have legs.

https://religionnews.com/2022/10/06/LDS ... id-bednar/

Elder Bednar is exempt from BYU's plagiarism policies.

[Dr Exiled]

It's the Mormon way to plagiarize. Joseph Smith started with plagiarizing the Bible when he wrote the Book of Mormon. He then continued with his supposed Bible translation unattributing it to Clarke. He took from Swedenborg and Thomas Dick, wrapping things up by making extensive use of masonry. Rumor has it that JC heavily borrowed from what he and Paul would discuss when they were in the pre-existence. Paul was pretty upset to find this out once he returned to the celestial realms. I bet if we looked at Elohim and His writings and compared them to what is in the celestial library we would be very suspicious indeed.

Living scripture Bednar is just following his plagiarizing masters. Time to give him a break and always stand when he comes into a room.

[dastardly stem]

Yes, I suppose one can likely get away with plagiarizing if after getting caught or having someone call it out, you fix it timely and offer the appropriate citations crediting other's work while pretending the citations were there all along. But is that really the honest approach? I mean I think I'd feel pretty foolish if someone caught me trying to pull that off, and my shame would likely only be worse if I witnessed other people defending what I did by virtue of the status they hold me to.

I find this whole episode awful.

[Dr Exiled]

Yes, I suppose one can likely get away with plagiarizing if after getting caught or having someone call it out, you fix it timely and offer the appropriate citations crediting other's work while pretending the citations were there all along. But is that really the honest approach? I mean I think I'd feel pretty foolish if someone caught me trying to pull that off, and my shame would likely only be worse if I witnessed other people defending what I did by virtue of the status they hold me to.

I find this whole episode awful.

I don't think Bednar is capable of the correct conduct here. They guy comes across as probably one of the most self-important apostles out there and I would guess he doesn't believe of repenting of anything said publicly, for authority sake. What can he say anyway? He should have properly attributed that part of his speech and was stupid enough to not do so. Perhaps he could blame a secretary but he is supposed to be living scripture and the apostles are supposed to be hyper-inspired at conference time. Failing to do a plagiarism check and being God's inspired servant/god in embryo don't go hand in hand easily. I'd love it if he could show a little contrition here but, won't hold my breath.

I bet he has a speech writer(s) and that might be where the problem lies. Maybe the speech was a rough draft that made it through to the big guy without the red draft stamp at the top? Maybe we will see some BYU professor(s) demoted for some "unknown" reason when this dies down? Living scripture cannot tolerate such incompetence of course.

[Rollo Redux]

I see that several footnotes in the LDS Church’s published text have attribution to Reid. Was this done after the fact?

[Rivendale]

It's the Mormon way to plagiarize. Joseph Smith started with plagiarizing the Bible when he wrote the Book of Mormon. He then continued with his supposed Bible translation unattributing it to Clarke. He took from Swedenborg and Thomas Dick, wrapping things up by making extensive use of masonry. Rumor has it that JC heavily borrowed from what he and Paul would discuss when they were in the pre-existence. Paul was pretty upset to find this out once he returned to the celestial realms. I bet if we looked at Elohim and His writings and compared them to what is in the celestial library we would be very suspicious indeed.

Living scripture Bednar is just following his plagiarizing masters. Time to give him a break and always stand when he comes into a room.

"Inspired sychronist" or "brickolage" as certain apologist like to spin it.

[Kishkumen]

Syncretist
Bricolage

[Dr Moore]

I see that several footnotes in the LDS Church’s published text have attribution to Reid. Was this done after the fact?

Yes, you can see the differences on archive.org. The footnoting was done after he was caught plagiarizing in both the spoken and written versions of his address.