DCP's ongoing problem with plagiarism

[Physics Guy]

Purely as an aside from the topic of plagiarism by Peterson: whenever I read a new entry in this thread I wonder at least for a moment why plagiarism doesn't seem to come up on my academic radar as an issue much.

It does happen in physics. I once received a paper for review that seemed weirdly familiar, and found that I had recently reviewed the same manuscript for a different journal—submitted by different authors. The entire text was duplicated.

Mostly, though, I just don't think that people in physics value expressions in words very much. The content that matters is equations or measurement data. So I don't think there's much incentive to copy anyone else's prose, and I don't think people would care much if you did. Nobody pays much attention to that stuff. It's all about the equations and data.

It's certainly possible to duplicate somebody else's solution or proof, or copy their data, but proving that this has been done can be tricky, so normally people just note that whatever it is has been published before. Whether you copied your paper from them, or just re-invented their wheel for yourself, doesn't matter. Your results are not new, so you don't get credit for them. It's kind of a no-fault situation.

It's hard to find smoking guns for copying equations. People often use the same mathematical symbols. In principle a lot of variable names are arbitrary, and so I suppose that if somebody made some unconventional choices then it would be suspicious for another person to make the very same ones. If for some reason you used the letter B to stand for a temperature, and I did the same, that would raise eyebrows. If we both used T for temperature, though, that would mean nothing. T means temperature so often that it's a bad idea to use the capital T for anything else.

[Marcus]

I don't think it comes up on anyone's radar that much, certainly not in my field either.

Peterson is the most egregious example I've ever seen, by far, and his persistence in doing it, especially after being caught multiple times, suggests he really has some issues.

[Marcus]

I realized I didn't post the link to Peterson's latest plagiarism, I'll bump the post and add.

[Marcus]

Patrick Kavanaugh wrote a lovely book entitled Spiritual Lives of the Great Composers.

Many have found this inspiring, and have incorporated parts of his research into blog entry. For example, here is James-Griffiths' approach:

Spiritual Lives of the Great Composers
by Paul James-Griffiths | Aug 20, 2016 | Arts

In 2005 I began to research the spiritual lives of the great composers for the narratives of our concerts in Edinburgh, but I did not know where to start. I prayed for guidance and typed these words on my computer: Spiritual lives of the great composers. Lo and behold, a book appeared with that very title! After sending off for that book and reading it, this has now become the basis of the material about the composers’ spiritual lives in our concerts. My thanks go to the author, Patrick Kavanaugh, who has done the work already! The following excerpts from the famous composers are mostly taken from his work, The Spiritual Lives of the Great Composers, Sparrow Press, USA, © 1992.

https://www.christianheritageedinburgh. ... composers/

[bolding added.]

After properly attributing the source of his quotes, he then posts a selection.

There are other, less savory approaches, however. For example, if one were to directly take quotes out of Kavanaugh's work and copy Kavanaugh's footnoting of the sources, one could imply they had done the research without crediting the work of the researcher they quoted from.

As an example, take a look at the footnotes of this blog entry by Peterson about the spiritual lives of composers:

[1] Werner Wolff, Anton Bruckner, Rustic Genius (New York: E.P. Dutton & Co., Inc., 1942), 145. Redlich, Bruckner, Mahler, 37.

[2] Ibid, 104.

[3] Hans Ferdinand Redlich, Bruckner and Mahler (London: J.M. Dent Ltd., revised 1963), 37.

[4] Wolff, Anton Bruckner and Mahler, 150.

[5] Natalie Bauer-Lechner, Recollections of Gustav Mahler, trans. Dika Newlin (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1980), 47.

[6] Arthur M. Abell, Talks With Great Composers (New York: Citadel, 1994), 3.

[7] Ibid., 5.

[8] Ibid., 5-6.

[9] Ibid., 11.

[10] Ibid., 21.

[11] Karl Hoffmeister, Antonin Dvorak, Letters and Reminiscences (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood, 1970), 104-5. Kavanaugh, Spiritual Lives of the Great Composers, 154.

[12] Kavanaugh, Spiritual Lives of the Great Composers, 153. German in the Library

It looks like this entry was written by this person, but what they actually did was lift Kavanaugh's work and sources directly from kavanaugh.

Ftnote 1: Quote from Kavanaugh p 134.

Ftnote 2: From Kavanaugh pp 133-134.

Ftnote 3: Quote from Kavanaugh p 134.

Ftnote 4: Quote from Kavanaugh p 134, directly after the quote from f 3.

Ftnote 5: Quote from Kavanaugh p 136

Ftnote 6: Quote from Kavanaugh p 146, Kavanaugh's ftnote 17

Ftnote 7: Quote from Kavanaugh p 146, Kavanaugh's ftnote 18

Ftnote 8: Quote from Kavanaugh p 146, Kavanaugh's ftnote 19

Ftnote 9: Quote from Kavanaugh p 146, Kavanaugh's ftnote 20

Ftnote 10: Quote from Kavanaugh p 146, Kavanaugh's ftnote 21

Ftnote 11: Quote from Kavanaugh p 154, Kavanaugh's ftnote 14

And for the final footnote, DCP dispenses with the pretense of copying Kavanaugh's research and simply plagiarizes Kavanaugh outright.

Here is k, from p 153. The blue, as usual, indicates direct word for word copying by Peterson, within the entire section he plagiarized.

When writing about his colossal Mass in D Major, he characteristically proclaimed, "Faith, hope and love to God Almighty and thanks for the great gift of being enabled to bring this work in the praise of the Highest and in the honour of art to a happy conclusion." Then he added, "Do not wonder that I am so religious. An artist who is not-could not produce anything like this. Have we not examples enough in Beethoven, Bach, Raphael and many others?"s Dvořák's relationship to God appears to have been consis- tently reverent and personal. His principal biographer, Otakar Sourek, notes that an unchanging feature of Dvořák's nature was his "sincere piety." The composer loved reading the Bible and owned copies in English as well as in modern and ancient Czech. Dvořák's letters are full of spiritual observations, and his manu- scripts regularly began with the marking "With God" and ended with the benediction, "God be thanked." When he traveled, he wrote letters to his children encouraging them to go to church often and "pray fervently."10

https://www.google.com/books/edition/Sp ... frontcover

And here is Peterson, unable to put it in his own words:

His manuscripts regularly opened with the phrase “With God” and concluded with the benediction “God be thanked.” Commenting on his Mass in D Major, he exclaimed “Faith, hope and love to God Almighty and thanks for the great gift of being enabled to bring this work in the praise of the Highest and in the honour of art to a happy conclusion.” “Do not wonder,”he continued, “that I am so religious. An artist who is not—could not produce anything like this. Have we not examples enough in Beethoven, Bach, Raphael and many others?”[12]

In footnote 12, Peterson credits Kavanaugh, but doesn't quote him directly. He tosses up the adjectives and adverbs, rearranges phrases, and implies the footnote is for the quotes. In so doing he plagiarizes Kavanaugh's paragraph.

Peterson also directly lifts Kavanaugh's wording in his sentences preceding his footnotes 3 and 4.

This is only one of several entries Peterson made about composers. What are the odds every single one is directly lifted from Kavanaugh's research, just as this one is?

Edited to add:

Peterson's plagiarism, documented in this post, is at
https://www.patheos.com/blogs/danpeters ... ldren.html

[I Have Questions]

Peterson's plagiarism, documented in this post, is at
https://www.patheos.com/blogs/danpeters ... ldren.html

I think Peterson wrote the blog piece in a way that suggests it’s an extract or an insert for his “own” manuscript. Will he really go to the extent of publishing in hard copy such plagiarism?

[Gadianton]

I think it's clear in a cost-benefit analysis. As an apologist, messaging is more important that actual research, which is why certain people are never able to get anything done as researchers. It's not that a person is incapable of good research, but good research is hard to do, and research is of limited value in a field that's fringe. Form posing as substance may be the best compromise. Hey, look at all the footnotes, I'm a scholar, and I believe. That's the entire point.

[Marcus]

I think it's clear in a cost-benefit analysis. As an apologist, messaging is more important that actual research, which is why certain people are never able to get anything done as researchers. It's not that a person is incapable of good research, but good research is hard to do, and research is of limited value in a field that's fringe. Form posing as substance may be the best compromise. Hey, look at all the footnotes, I'm a scholar, and I believe. That's the entire point.

That's what really bothered me about being a Mormon when I left. So many Mormons seem to be accepting of dishonesty, or immoral action if it targets the 'nonmember,' because to many Mormons, nonmembers aren't really real people. Midgley is a great example of this, albeit on the extreme end. Eventually, for some Mormons this seems to translate into being above the law. I think Peterson really sees himself as a superior being and therefore his use of a lesser being's works through plagiarism is really just him bringing good information forward, in a righteous act. It really would not be justifiable were he to try to explain it to someone outside his Mormon circle, but then, he doesn't venture outside his Mormon circle, except to condescend.

In the end, to get back to the topic, his attempts to publish may never be forthcoming, because no publisher, Mormon or not, is going to publish plagiarized material, if their own reputation is going to be on the line. I predict any books Peterson might publish will end up being self-published, for this reason.

[I Have Questions]

I don’t think he will ever get around to publishing anything. He will always portray that he’s got multiple writing projects on the go, and is so busy with this and that…etc. He will always just be working on publishing something…and on making sure everyone knows he’s working on publishing something. But he’s a blowhard, not a completer/finisher.

I’d add that at this stage, he’s probably too scared of being caught red-handed by people on this board to actually send something to print.

I try — rather inconsistently, I admit — to use this blog as a mode of storing and sharing notes from my reading, and I’m going to do that yet again in this case.

https://www.patheos.com/blogs/danpeters ... -life.html

I can think of many appropriate places for storing notes for a writing project. An online blog, owned by a third party that can shut you down in the blink of an eye, and whose content is owned by them, is not one of them. No scholar would entrust their writing notes to this storage solution.

[Doctor CamNC4Me]

Imagine posting that on a blog… on a computer.

-_-

- Doc

[Physics Guy]

Posting notes in the way Peterson does is actually a really dangerous way of compiling notes on which to base a book of one's own. He posts slightly reworded quotations without proper attribution. And his own writing projects are evidently extending over years.

I've been writing some things for years, too. That's okay, but it does bring a problem with notes. If I find some old notes of mine from a few years before, and they sound good, I'm going to want to assume that I composed them myself and paste them into my draft. If I made notes the way Peterson does, that would lead to me submitting a substantially plagiarised text to a publisher.

Maybe if I knew that I had often been posting slightly jumbled paragraphs from other people, without noting either the exact original phrasing or the page numbers in the original works, then I would know that I couldn't just do that. Hopefully I would know, in that case, that if I found a nice passage in my notes, I wouldn't just be able to plug it into my draft. Instead I would have to go and check through the books that I had been reading at the time I made the note, to find the not-quite-but-very-close original versions of the paragraphs in my notes, so that I could properly quote them and cite them.

If I kept my writing notes in that way, and then actually did get around to trying to use those notes for my own writing, I would really kick myself hard for keeping my notes in such an inconvenient way. "Why, oh why," I would ask myself, "did I share and store my notes in a way that doesn't seem to be saving me any time now at all, but rather to be making it harder for me to write this book of my own? Not only are my notes insufficient as a compilation of things to quote and cite in my own book, because I haven't quite quoted exactly and haven't recorded the page numbers. Even worse, knowing my habit of inexact and unattributed quotation forces me now to question every single paragraph that I find in my notes, even ones that I did write entirely myself, because I can never be sure that I didn't copy and slightly re-word them, from somewhere.

"Why, oh why, did I not take the slight extra trouble, then, of properly quoting and citing? That would really have helped me to write this thing now. What I did instead was so unhelpful in my own writing project. Why, oh why, did I do it that way?"