Rational Wiki wrote:
Never assume malice when stupidity will suffice.
Never assume stupidity when ignorance will suffice.
Never assume ignorance when forgivable error will suffice.
Never assume error when information you hadn't adequately accounted for will suffice.
Xenophon wrote:Lemmie wrote:Lol. He gives himself FAR too much credit. I don't know about all the other people who've reported his plagiarism, but I've never used anything more than Google Search and the odd lunch break. It's a lot easier to pick up on his plagiarizing than he realizes.
I think that bit comes from DocCam's most recent post on the subject:DocCam wrote:I just wish I had access to that site academics use to check for plagiarism. I'd be nailing his ass to the wall regarding his academic publishing. I have no doubt he's published plagiarized material on a professional level.
Hey may have then extrapolated that others (who are in academia) may have been using said tools. That's my guess anyways.canpakes wrote:How can he be unaware that he's selecting and copy/pasting Wikipedia content, then rearranging some of the wording? That seems like a pretty obvious, intentional and self-generated 'influence'.
IDK, they way he describes pulling what he posts makes some sense to me. I have tons of documents/notes/pdfs/compilations of writings and studies, particularly related to my work. Some of these notes go back many years and I don't always keep up with sources, as these are primarily notes and thoughts for myself. If I had to file a minimum of 400 words every time I posted I might be tempted to just copy and paste.
Again, I'm not excusing the behavior, I think you should always attribute everything that isn't your own writing. Maybe it is because I don't know DCP as well as others here, but I typically run with a modified Hanlon's Razor in these kinds of situations:Rational Wiki wrote:
- Never assume malice when stupidity will suffice.
- Never assume stupidity when ignorance will suffice.
- Never assume ignorance when forgivable error will suffice.
- Never assume error when information you hadn't adequately accounted for will suffice
When I copied and pasted the material into a blog entry, it never entered my mind that it came, substantially unchanged, from somebody else.
that passage from Professor Buskirk would almost certainly never have been incorporated intact into the final product. It was there as a reminder to me of an argument or a point that I wished to make, and as direction to a reference that I would have consulted before sending anything off for publication.
Others among the “manuscripts” that I’ve cited — notably, the one on science — are really files more than manuscripts proper. That is, they contain some short original passages, but they’re mostly full of notes, quotations, close paraphrases, suggestions for (my own) further reading, specimens of arguments, one-word or one-phrase reminders of topics that I want to treat or of potential challenges that I should address, and so forth.
A small handful of zealous and industrious critics have discovered that there are unmistakable similarities between some of those notes and certain sources from which I’ve plainly drawn them. Yep. That’s why I call them “notes.” They’re not finished works.
When and if the science manuscript (for example) is ever completed for publication, those notes will have been re-ordered, considerably supplemented or overlaid with yet further materials (some from items already read but not yet excerpted, some from books and articles still on my to-read list), and heavily re-written, and very few of the lengthy quotations will survive untrimmed.
I concluded my recent post “Some dispatches from the front lines of my unceasing war against science” with what I describe as “Raw and largely unprocessed notes from a manuscript.”
Those notes are, it turns out, a very close paraphrase of a passage in an article published back in 2005 by Allen Buskirk — then teaching at BYU, now at Johns Hopkins University — in the FARMS Review, which I edited. (I commend the article to your attention.) I was genuinely surprised to see that.
I’ve explained in another post the nature of the manuscript — or, much better, the file — from which I drew those notes. Presumably, I entered the material from Allen Buskirk’s article into that file back around 2005, when (or even before) the article was published.
Why didn’t I enter his name? I have no idea. It’s been nearly thirteen years. Perhaps it was something as simple as being interrupted by a telephone call and forgetting to do so. When I copied and pasted the material into a blog entry, it never entered my mind that it came, substantially unchanged, from somebody else.
Xenophon wrote:You have raised some excellent questions, Lemmie. Ones I obviously can't answer as they belong to DCP.
Personally I don't know why you wouldn't think to include the sourcing. I'm not published so I can't begin to imagine what taking notes for that kind of process looks like. I was just hoping to share some anecdotal evidence about how some people record information. I've never once thought to paste the notes of mine directly to anything, including this site, so I've no insight into the reasoning why you would.
Hopefully my words weren't taken as any defense of plagiarism, just an attempt at a different perspective on motivations.
Lemmie wrote:If, as he states, his notes contained a "direction to a reference," then why, when he put it in his blog, didn't it "enter [his] mind that it came from somebody else"?
Lemmie wrote:Sorry, I didn't mean to imply I was addressing my questions specifically to you!
Lemmie wrote:As usual, I appreciate hearing your measured take on a situation.
Xenophon wrote:If the "Mea Culpa" blog is any indication I think we are at a stale mate here. I doubt any of DCP's fans will see any of this in a negative light and I doubt DCP's explanation will suffice for the folks here. Who said I wouldn't get to experience the Mopologetic wars of old
[emphasis added]DCP, after oct. 9 2017 plagiarism was noted, wrote:Postscript: Some of my more obsessive and personally unpleasant critics have found a new passion, gleefully accusing me of plagiarism. They point to undeniable similarities between some of what’s written above and a 2002 column by Charles Krauthammer that I had completely forgotten.
These are very old notes. That’s important: Not merely that they’re old but that, as I said above when I first introduced them, they’re notes. This particular manuscript — it’s actually just a computer file — has lain dormant for many years, and it’s nowhere near being in its final state. For the most part, it’s not even continuous prose. And it’s not organized according to any outline nor in anything like the way it will be when it’s finished (should it ever be finished). It’s made up of isolated quotations, links, notes, paraphrases, reminders to myself, and so forth. I’m blogging parts of it as a way of dusting it off. Is it ready for publication? Emphatically not. Do I consider blogging the same as publishing? Emphatically not.
This sort of zealous public faultfinding grows tiresome. It’s wearisome to have one’s reputation assaulted constantly, and anonymously. (On the particular board where this is going on, it’s been going on for approximately ten years. Day after day, week after week, year after year. On any given day for a decade, roughly ten percent of the threads displayed on the board’s front page are dedicated to me. The word weird doesn’t begin to describe the phenomenon.)
I’m not very optimistic about change, though.
“Charity . . . is kind; . . . doth not behave itself unseemly . . . thinketh no evil; rejoiceth not in iniquity” (1 Corinthians 13:4-6).
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/danpeterso ... 9GUbKr1.99
Since we firmly believe that plagiarism in scholarship must be disclosed and openly discussed, in this case not least in order to prevent the further dissemination of other researchers’ intellectual property under the [wrong] name..., we were determined to publish our findings.
http://www.nnrh.dk/NNRH-hp/40.Cases.of.Plagiarism.pdf