DCP's ongoing problem with plagiarism

[_Lemmie]

Dr. Peterson has now added a note to his post about Katharine Smith:

"These notes are based on a reading of Kyle R. Walker, 'Katharine Smith Salisbury: Sister to the Prophet,' in Mormon Historical Studies 3/1 (2002): 5-34. Mormon Historical Studies is the journal of the invaluable Mormon Historic Sites Foundation."

And a note to his post titled "Notes on 'simple' life":

"(Preliminary notes drawn from the cited pages of Denton’s Evolution: A Theory in Crisis and from Dean Overman’s A Case against Accident and Self-Organization, pp. 23, 32-24)"

Unbelievable. Peterson's solution to his previously argued "unintentional" plagiarism is to change the affected blog entries into intentional plagiarism.

from U-Wisconsin's plagiarism guide referred to above, there is a section on paraphrasing and plagiarism, obviously geared to young, incoming students who need to have it spelled out to them. It contains an excellent description of why Peterson's solution is turning his blog entries into intentional plagiarism:

Paraphrasing is often defined as putting a passage from an author into “your own words.” But what are your own words? How different must your paraphrase be from the original?

The paragraphs below provide an example by showing a passage as it appears in the source, two paraphrases that follow the source too closely, and a legitimate paraphrase.

<snip>[after showing a passage [see link below] that is copied in a manner identical to Peterson's technique of changing a few synonyms, verb tenses, adding a preposition, minor rearranging, etc., it continues:]

Why this is plagiarism:

This paraphrase is a patchwork composed of pieces in the original author’s language (in red) and pieces in the student-writer’s words, all rearranged into a new pattern, but with none of the borrowed pieces in quotation marks.

Thus, even though the writer acknowledges the source of the material, the underlined phrases are falsely presented as the student’s own.

https://writing.wisc.edu/Handbook/QPA_paraphrase.html

[bolding added]

[_Xenophon]

I'm not in academia so anybody with the expertise feel free to set me straight on this. Why wouldn't you just say "Taken/Copied from Kyle R. Walker Mormon Historical Studies" instead of this "notes based on" business?

It seems to me if the purpose of him blogging these "notes" is to give him an avenue of keeping his blog populated and allowing him to sort through/organize the notes he has (Peterson's claimed reason for doing this), then admitting that they are straight copies is better for him in the long run. It removes all threat of unintentional or intentional plagiarism and lets future DCP know that he needs to do some serious editing before publishing.

[_I have a question]

Unbelievable. Peterson's solution to his previously argued "unintentional" plagiarism is to change the affected blog entries into intentional plagiarism.

Is it unbelievable?

[_Lemmie]

Unbelievable. Peterson's solution to his previously argued "unintentional" plagiarism is to change the affected blog entries into intentional plagiarism.

Is it unbelievable?

I stand corrected. It is, sadly, all too believable.

[_Res Ipsa]

This just keeps getting weirder and weirder. Have any of you academic types ever seen a citation to author’s own notes based on a reading of a source? The situation Peterson is facing is hardly unusual: finding something an author says that the author has properly cited to the work of other sources. There at least two straightforward way of handling this. First, you can quote and cite the author you are reading, including the citations to the other authors in the text of the quote or in the footnote. Second, you can pull the works that the authors you are reading cites, read them, and either quote or, if you are using your own words, cite to them.

We run into this all the time when preparing legal briefs. A case will cite other cases for the proposition you want to make. The absolutely wrong (and unethical) way to handle this situation is to use the language of the first case but cite only the cases it cites. That’s stealing.

Peterson can cure his theft by restoring the citations to exact quotes and properly citing he source, by describing the point he wishes to make in his own words instead of the words of another, or by cracking open the primary sources and properly quoting or referencing them. Instead, he makes up some half-assed new form of citation that does nothing to clarify which words are his and which belong to others. Weirder and weirder.

[_Lemmie]

You are really twisting my words around and I don’t appreciate it. You are just tagging the worst possible scenario on this.

Liz, for the last week, you have made more than 60 posts on my thread, where you have made dozens of irrelevant and unsupported accusations such as this from your last post:

And since so many people are chomping at the bit to see that Dan gets his comeuppance,

and this...

Most everyone else was just gleefully seeing how many violations could be piled up.

and this....

...getting your jollies off of someone else’s mistakes or pain.

and this....

Since most here hate him, anyone who even attempts to defend him in any way will be dog piled and maligned right along with him.

So again,

...at a certain point, being a contrarian simply for the sake of being a contrarian, even when one is technically ON-topic, counts as "trolling." And trolling is a derailment...[meant only] to distract and annoy the opening poster (in my reasoned opinion).

Please leave your irrelevant and unsupported accusations off my thread, and stay on topic.
------------------------------------------------

Once again, back to the topic....

I'm not in academia so anybody with the expertise feel free to set me straight on this. Why wouldn't you just say "Taken/Copied from Kyle R. Walker Mormon Historical Studies" instead of this "notes based on" business?

It seems to me if the purpose of him blogging these "notes" is to give him an avenue of keeping his blog populated and allowing him to sort through/organize the notes he has (Peterson's claimed reason for doing this), then admitting that they are straight copies is better for him in the long run. It removes all threat of unintentional or intentional plagiarism and lets future DCP know that he needs to do some serious editing before publishing.

Good point. From a practical standpoint, however, his blog entries as they stand are pointless with regard to any future publication. They are not an interim step, in that before he can put the necessary quotation marks around others' words he would have to go back and restore all the synonyms he painstakingly changed, or else have a paragraph so cluttered it would be unreadable.

Peterson can cure his theft by restoring the citations to exact quotes and properly citing he source, by describing the point he wishes to make in his own words instead of the words of another, or by cracking open the primary sources and properly quoting or referencing them.

Agreed, that would be how I would define correcting the plagiarism.

Instead, he makes up some half-assed new form of citation that does nothing to clarify which words are his and which belong to others. Weirder and weirder.

And weirder. Maybe ego is involved, but at some point, he has to realize that what he has on his blog now can easily be interpreted as many instances of fully intentional plagiarism.

[_Xenophon]

Good point. From a practical standpoint, however, his blog entries as they stand are pointless with regard to any future publication. They are not an interim step, in that before he can put the necessary quotation marks around others' words he would have to go back and restore all the synonyms he painstakingly changed, or else have a paragraph so cluttered it would be unreadable.

^^^Better point, you and RI both. I didn't think about having to restore the text to the original form in order for it to be a direct quote (this is why I leave the academia to you folks). I suppose I'm just not really used to having to back into a solution to this particular problem.

Peterson can cure his theft by restoring the citations to exact quotes and properly citing he source, by describing the point he wishes to make in his own words instead of the words of another, or by cracking open the primary sources and properly quoting or referencing them.

Agreed, that would be how I would define correcting the plagiarism.

I think we have the winning solution.

[_Servant]

Plagiarism has always been a problem in Mormonism. Ask Isaiah.

[_Morley]

Thank you, Lemmie.

[_Tator]

Pasterson is not going clean up his mess for two reasons: first is his ego and the second is he is too lazy.