DCP's ongoing problem with plagiarism

[Guest]

Peterson's defense may not hold up but it is at least a coherent argument, if one deduces a couple of implicit steps.

On the main charge of plagiarism:

1) Peterson implicitly admits, by never denying it, that what he wrote would count as plagiarism if it appeared in a book or article or term paper.
2) He contends that blog posts are different from books and articles and student papers, such that one is allowed to quote other people without attribution in a blog post. Therefore (Peterson argues) he has not actually committed plagiarism with his blog posts.

That main argument seems to be logically separate from some other parts of Peterson's response:

A) Peterson implicitly acknowledges that there could still be something wrong with posting unattributed quotes in a blog, if the blog author thereby conveyed the false impression that the quoted text represented their own original research. He contends that he has not committed this fault, because none of his readers will imagine that he is an astrophysicist.
B) He does seem to feel some moral imperative to modify another person's text if one uses it in a blog post without attribution. He also seems to feel that one should ideally cite a source if one relies on it exclusively in a blog post. But he seems to think of these principles as "nice-to-have" guidelines rather than strict requirements. If one falls short of the nice-to-have standard, admitting forgetfulness and adding a few extra words is enough to make it all right.

Personally I'd be willing to buy point A. I don't think Peterson was making himself out to be a scientist. And IF we're only talking about careless violations of nice-to-have guidelines as in B, then there's not much point in making a fuss. I also think it's useless to keep pounding the table about how what Peterson has done fits the definition of plagiarism, when he himself seems to acknowledge that Yes, it does (point 1).

The sole crux is point 2. Does plagiarism still count as plagiarism if it's a blog post?

I can think of two kinds of answers to that. One would be to see whether academic codes of conduct cover blog posts when they speak about plagiarism. If they do, then this is the point to emphasize. If they don't—if blogs are a gray area for plagiarism—then Peterson's defense might actually hold.

The other kind of answer would be to stop thinking in terms of plagiarism and look at the legal definition of copyright violation.

[_Doctor CamNC4Me]

PG,

What about Deseret News articles?

- Doc

[_Physics Guy]

Newspaper articles certainly aren't a gray area as far as I know. But has Peterson admitted (even implicitly) that he has copied stuff in them, the way he has for his blog posts? Some of his blog posts are pretty egregiously plagiarized and he doesn't seem to deny it, but rather to claim that it does not count in blogs. I haven't read his Deseret News columns much. Are they as egregious?

[_Doctor CamNC4Me]

I dunno. You tell me. I just picked some rando article of his, copied a paragraph that didn't really seem to have his syntax, pasted it into Google and came up with this hit:

Rando Des News article and parraph:

https://www.deseretnews.com/article/865 ... ament.html

Although no documentary evidence for the observance of the Feast of the Ascension (as it is also known) exists from prior to the fourth century, it was celebrated almost universally in the Christian church thereafter, along with Good Friday, Easter and Pentecost. St. Augustine attributed its origin to the apostles themselves; plainly its observance had become widespread long before his time.

as compared to this:

http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/01767b.htm

The observance of this feast is of great antiquity. Although no documentary evidence of it exists prior to the beginning of the fifth century, St. Augustine says that it is of Apostolic origin, and he speaks of it in a way that shows it was the universal observance of the Church long before his time. Frequent mention of it is made in the writings of St. John Chrysostom, St. Gregory of Nyssa, and in the Constitution of the Apostles. The Pilgrimage of Sylvia (Peregrinatio Etheriae) speaks of the vigil of this feast and of the feast itself, as they were kept in the church built over the grotto in Bethlehem in which Christ was born (Duchesne, Christian Worship, 491-515). It may be that prior to the fifth century the fact narrated in the Gospels was commemorated in conjunction with the feast of Easter or Pentecost. Some believe that the much-disputed forty-third decree of the Council of Elvira (c. 300) condemning the practice of observing a feast on the fortieth day after Easter and neglecting to keep Pentecost on the fiftieth day, implies that the proper usage of the time was to commemorate the Ascension along with Pentecost. Representations of the mystery are found in diptychs and frescoes dating as early as the fifth century.

He lifts other bits from the Catholic Encyclopedia article like:

it was celebrated almost universally in the Christian church thereafter, along with Good Friday, Easter and Pentecost. St. Augustine attributed its origin to the apostles themselves; plainly its observance had become widespread long before his time.

Ascension Day is traditionally (though not always) celebrated on a Thursday

and reworks it into a bit for his Des News article:

The feast falls on Thursday. It is one of the Ecumenical feasts ranking with the feasts of the Passion, of Easter and of Pentecost among the most solemn in the calendar

So, basically he googles a topic, finds an article, lifts a bunch of lines from the targeted article, reworks them a bit, adds in some scriptures and personal narrative, and voila... a published piece appears in the Deseret News without attribution.

- Doc

[_Physics Guy]

Hmm. The phrase "although no documentary evidence" is verbatim from the Catholic Encyclopedia article, and so are the words "prior" and "exists". Apart from those six duplicated words Peterson's sentences on this subject appear to be unique to him. Pasting them into Google yields his DN article as the single hit. I agree that the coincidence of these six words in this case makes one go "Hmm", but can we really sustain a charge of plagiarism with just six words, when these words are a pretty direct way of expressing a simple fact?

Nailing Peterson for getting his facts from one source without acknowledging it, as opposed to copying text, is even harder in this case, I think. There are only a couple of facts involved in this example. A professor who had read widely in church history could well be able to recite this much information just off the top of her head, as common knowledge among experts like her. If she puts these familiar details into a newspaper article, does she have to cite a source for them? If I wrote a popular article on some well-known bit of basic physics, I wouldn't append a bunch of citations starting with Newton. I expect there are lots of basic things that are beneath being cited for experts in other fields, too. At some point original contributions get absorbed into the bedrock of human knowledge and everybody just uses them. The original contributors aren't being slighted: they've attained exaltation.

Peterson is a professor who might plausibly have read an awful lot of this kind of stuff. So one might suspect that he is only posing as an expert, by leaning heavily on the Catholic Encyclopedia as a single unacknowledged source. If he insists that he really does just have this kind of stuff at his fingertips, though, what would a jury say? I think they'd have to let him off on this one. And if Peterson's DN articles routinely have bits like this example, then he may be sailing a bit close to the wind but perhaps he gets away with it.

This latest blog post example, in contrast, has more cribbed facts and a lot more copied words. The only issue is whether it counts as plagiarism when it's in a blog. That's the only defense Peterson himself has made.

[_Doctor CamNC4Me]

basically he googles a topic, finds an article, lifts a bunch of lines from the targeted article, reworks them a bit, adds in some scriptures and personal narrative, and voila...

I mean, I can google dozens of examples from his DN articles where he does the quoted thing above. You can also do it for his MI pieces, his blog posts, and, I suspect, his published material. He's not some braniac computer where he has this vast repository of knowledge in his dome that somehow magically amalgamates into a mosaic of material from various authors.

He's simply adept at what I call 'transactional knowledge' which is described in the quote above. He's a serial plagiarizer because he doesn't attribute the pastiche to anyone but himself. He's literally stealing intellectual property and passing it off as his own.

That's theft. That's plagiarism. How in the world people can defend this is damned mysterious to me.

- Doc

[_fetchface]

I'm not going to insist that no short string of words can match another short string of word from another work without attribution.

I am, however, going to insist that it is obvious that Peterson copy-pasted entire paragraphs of another's work into his blog and then made some additions and deletions. Then he passed that off as his own work without citing the original author. It is obviously plagiarism.

He seems to think that plagiarism is okay in a blog post? I do not think it is okay. Quoting and attributing is fine but plagiarism is dishonest and therefore not acceptable under all but a few circumstances.

[_Maksutov]

Perhaps he thinks it's okay because so many famous authors have done it. Not that he should be held accountable to the standards of the "world" when the cause of the Lord is being served.

[_Lemmie]

Peterson's defense may not hold up but it is at least a coherent argument, if one deduces a couple of implicit steps....

The sole crux is point 2. Does plagiarism still count as plagiarism if it's a blog post?

The policy of the site from where Peterson last plagiarized was very clear:

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[bolding added]

[_fetchface]

I mean, I can google dozens of examples from his DN articles where he does the quoted thing above.

If you can dig up an example from a published article that's as extensive as the one from the blog, that'd be an interesting thing to discuss.