Cooks Source managing editor Judith Griggs has just tanked her career with great energy and enthusiasm.
For folks who don't want to wade through the sea of links above, or the many more below, the basic story is this. A writer named Illadore on LJ (whose post is the first linked above, under "managing") wrote an article on the history of how apple pie has developed, which was posted on a web site for historical reenactors, back in '05. Recently, a friend pointed out that the magazine Cooks Source had the article, and asked her when she'd sold it. Illadore went, "Huh?" She figured she'd contact the Cooks Source folks and straighten this out:
So. I first phone the magazine then send a quick note to the "Contact Us" information page, asking them what happened and how they got my article. (I thought it could have been some sort of mix-up or that someone posted it to some sort of free article database.) Apparently, it was just copied straight off the Godecookery webpage. As you can see from the page, it is copyrighted and it is also on a Domain name that I own.
After the first couple of emails, the editor of Cooks Source asked me what I wanted -- I responded that I wanted an apology on Facebook, a printed apology in the magazine and $130 donation (which turns out to be about $0.10 per word of the original article) to be given to the Columbia School of Journalism.
Sounds reasonable to me, particularly since she wasn't asking for any kind of cash restitution for herself, but rather as a donation to a school which, presumably, teaches its students about copyright law. [cough]
Ms. Griggs responded (in part) thusly:
"Yes Monica, I have been doing this for 3 decades, having been an editor at The Voice, Housitonic Home and Connecticut Woman Magazine. I do know about copyright laws. It was "my bad" indeed, and, as the magazine is put together in long sessions, tired eyes and minds somethings forget to do these things.
But honestly Monica, the web is considered "public domain" and you should be happy we just didn't "lift" your whole article and put someone else's name on it! It happens a lot, clearly more than you are aware of, especially on college campuses, and the workplace. If you took offence and are unhappy, I am sorry, but you as a professional should know that the article we used written by you was in very bad need of editing, and is much better now than was originally. Now it will work well for your portfolio. For that reason, I have a bit of a difficult time with your requests for monetary gain, albeit for such a fine (and very wealthy!) institution. We put some time into rewrites, you should compensate me! I never charge young writers for advice or rewriting poorly written pieces, and have many who write for me... ALWAYS for free!"
So... right. Not only is anything posted to the internet automatically public domain (?!?) but Illadore should be paying Ms. Griggs for the editing! After all, Illadore now has a nice piece for her portfolio, so Illadore's come out ahead, right?
I think it says something about Ms. Griggs's knowledge of English and her editing skills (or research skills, since this is easy to look up if you can't tell from the context) that she was unable to recognize through a reading of the actual article she stole that the recipes were from 14th and 16th century cookbooks, and their language was perfectly appropriate for their time, and for the historical reenactor audience. Instead, it apparently just looked wrong to Ms. Griggs, bad writing that Illadore should've thanked her for fixing. Wow.
But seriously, this is a woman who is taking a paycheck for her work as a magazine editor, and she honestly -- really?? -- believes that anything posted to the internet is in the public domain? She's so sure she's right that she feels comfortable taking a patronizing tone with someone she's ripped off. Clearly it couldn't possibly be Ms. Griggs who's in the wrong here; that's completely outside the realm of possibility. Right? Right?!
This woman is in dire need a a few good smacks with the cluebat. Luckily, the internet is giving them to her.
Aside from the above links, on Making Light (in a nearly useless link because it's an open thread and only a few of the hundreds of comments are on this topic, and there's a sidelink but I can't link to that, but anyway) there are reports in comments of Ms. Griggs also having plagiarized Martha Stewart, Weight Watchers, The Food Network, CNN and WebMD (per James MacDonald, citing a Facebook page), Martha Stewart (again) and Cooks Illustrated (per Tom Whitmore, citing the Washington Post), and Disney (per Jon Meltzer).
Paula Dean (linked under "career" above) has been notified on her Facebook page of a recipe theft and has said that she's forwarded the matter to her legal department. You don't mess with Paula, folks, seriously.
I've also seen mention in several places that Neil Gaiman has Twittered about this, but I couldn't get his page to come up when I tried the link. Seems Mr. Gaiman's feed is even more popular than usual today for some reason.
Massive stupidity, seriously. This isn't some newbie webzine we're talking about here; Cooks Source is available online but it's also a paper magazine, supported by ad revenue, distributed on newsstands. How did someone this ignorant of copyright get to be the managing editor? And just how much do the people who hired her for that job regret it right now...? [Ahh, found out the answer to the second to last question at least -- Ms. Griggs owns the magazine. Well, there you go.]
I have to include the title to John Scalzi's post (which is linked under "tanked" above): The Stupidest Thing an Editor With Three Decades of Experience Has Said About the Web Today." Also BoingBoing's (linked under "energy"): "Today's Web Justice Driveby." Incisive commentary right there. [wry smile]
How about a quote from Judith Griggs's Twitter feed: "I don't know why everyone is so angry." Umm, yeah. That's kind of the problem, hon. [EDIT: Cindy Potts has pointed out that this Twitter feed looks like a spoof account. All I can say is it sounded like her. [wry smile]]
And the Bitchery has declared a Googlebomb of their definition of the new verb "to griggs" -- Judith Griggs. I'm contributing a link, because when you've been in the business for thirty years you get zero sympathy from me for not having yet learned the most basic laws that govern your industry. When you take money for your work, you're declaring yourself to be a pro and it's your responsibility -- nobody else's -- to have all your ducks in a row. Especially when you get snotty at other people over their supposed ignorance. [eyeroll]
Any bets on how long before Cooks Source is going to be out of business? If it were owned by some conglomerate, they could just fire Ms. Griggs, replace her with someone who knows what copyright means, and move on after some groveling. Given that it's completely her enterprise, though, I don't see it surviving. Maybe if it were only a bunch of blogs griping, but with the LA Times and Washington Post and who knows what other mainstream news sources picking it up, they're doomed.
Not that I'm crying over it. This is an example of blatant ignorance and arrogant stupidity. Good riddance.
Angie
Showing posts with label plagiarism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label plagiarism. Show all posts
Thursday, November 4, 2010
Sunday, October 11, 2009
Another Plagiarist
LJ User Gwendolynflight, over in the Merlin fandom, decided that she didn't want to do the work to learn to write and refine her technique and develop her own style. She wanted hugs and pats and e-cookies for her wonderful writing right now. So instead of writing a novel of her own, she grabbed a copy of Jordan Castillo Price's first PsyCops book, Among the Living, did a bit of editing to change the names and the setting and such, and posted it to her journal as a Merlin fanfic. And of course, she got a lot of applause and e-cookies for it, because it's a very good story. (Jordan isn't a particular friend of mine, I don't even have her journal friended, but we both publish with Torquere Press and I have Among the Living -- it's a good read.)
Of course someone figured out what was going on -- 'cause there are fanfic readers who also read original m/m books, who knew?! -- and after some incredibly lame excuse-making, the plagiarist took the story down. But check out this screencap and read through the comments. :/
I love the part where Gwendolynflight assures a commenter that "it is completely and fully beta'd." Umm, right, because the real writer polished it, then sent it to a publisher where a line editor and a proofreader went over it. [eyeroll]
And then lower down where she actually admits that the story is a "fusion" with Price's PsyCops series. o_O This is where I get the idea that she's actually just that stupid, rather than a bold-faced thief. Not that being a moron is an excuse, but you know, it's something different to smack her for.
Then a few comments later where she's talking to a reader about how dark the story is, and mentions that Book Two is particularly dark, and she's glad that isn't turning the reader off. So she fully intended to go on doing this, through the whole series? Once she'd ripped off all the available novels, since she seems to think she's doing absolutely nothing wrong, I wonder whether she'd have had the balls to, like, write to Jordan and nudge her about hurrying up on the next installment. :P
Finally, about 2/3 of the way down, LJ user Throwawayreview calls it what it is and clues poor Gwendolynflight that this isn't a "fusion," it's not fanfic, it's plagiarism. And of course Ms. Gwen has all sorts of excuses, because plagiarism is "a social concept" and not absolute. And later on she says that "plagiarism isn't an inherent moral wrong - it's an issue firmly bound up in economic and patriarchal issues." Umm, right. It's a weapon of the Patriarchy. So her stealing the actual words of another woman writer and posting them as her own and accepting praise and credit for writing the words another woman actually wrote, is actually Ms. Gwen sticking it to the Patriarchy. Wow, good to know. [eyeroll]
Note that Jordan has no problem with fanfic. She said, in her reaction to this situation:
I'd also like to say that fanfic is an entirely different thing. If a reader said, "Wouldn't it be funny if Victor and Jacob got a flat tire...?" and wrote that story, using my characters and storyverse but their own plot and words, that would be fanfic. I've written half a million words of fanfic; it's how I learned to write, for good or ill. This re-tooling of Among the Living was not fanfic.
So this isn't a case of one of the uptight pro writers trying to stomp on the poor fanficcers. Actual fanfic would've been fine. Copying a whole freaking novel (with plans for the second one) and swapping out the names and places and a few police procedure details, but keeping the other ninety-some percent of the original author's verbage is not fanfic, in any way, shape or form. Gwendolynflight is one of the people who gives all fanfic writers a bad name. She's one of the people whose actions convince the New York publishers and the Hollywood producers, and their writers and their lawyers, that we're all a bunch of pathetic, talentless thieves who are too lame to write our own stories and get credit and praise and e-cookies for our own work, so we steal from them and pretend their work is ours and claim credit for the wonderful writing we didn't do. That's what they think of all of us, and one of the reasons they think that is because there are people who do it in exactly that way. Because that's pretty much what's going on with Gwendolynflight.
She's gone into hiding now -- her journal's been completely locked down, although it hasn't been deleted. I'm kind of disappointed by that, because it means she might slink back out from under her rock at some point. I'm sure she has her own little group of friends who are all rallying 'round her now, giving her pets and hugs and feeding her chocolate and assuring her that she did Absolutely Nothing At All Wrong, and that all those evil mean people are just being so meeeeeean to her, isn't it just terrible?! Those bitches!!
But you know, this isn't the sort of person fanfic fandom needs, any fandom. And if she were eventually to pick up her dolls and flounce away and find a new hobby, I'd be just as happy.
Angie, who's in no mood to give this idiot any slack whatsoever
ETA: LJ User Pecos pointed this out, from Gwendolynflight's LJ profile:
This journal is primarily for whinging about school and/or teaching, and for posting the fanfic and fanvids which i occasionally, sometimes, rarely produce. You know, every once in a while.
This woman is a teacher. O_O
Of course someone figured out what was going on -- 'cause there are fanfic readers who also read original m/m books, who knew?! -- and after some incredibly lame excuse-making, the plagiarist took the story down. But check out this screencap and read through the comments. :/
I love the part where Gwendolynflight assures a commenter that "it is completely and fully beta'd." Umm, right, because the real writer polished it, then sent it to a publisher where a line editor and a proofreader went over it. [eyeroll]
And then lower down where she actually admits that the story is a "fusion" with Price's PsyCops series. o_O This is where I get the idea that she's actually just that stupid, rather than a bold-faced thief. Not that being a moron is an excuse, but you know, it's something different to smack her for.
Then a few comments later where she's talking to a reader about how dark the story is, and mentions that Book Two is particularly dark, and she's glad that isn't turning the reader off. So she fully intended to go on doing this, through the whole series? Once she'd ripped off all the available novels, since she seems to think she's doing absolutely nothing wrong, I wonder whether she'd have had the balls to, like, write to Jordan and nudge her about hurrying up on the next installment. :P
Finally, about 2/3 of the way down, LJ user Throwawayreview calls it what it is and clues poor Gwendolynflight that this isn't a "fusion," it's not fanfic, it's plagiarism. And of course Ms. Gwen has all sorts of excuses, because plagiarism is "a social concept" and not absolute. And later on she says that "plagiarism isn't an inherent moral wrong - it's an issue firmly bound up in economic and patriarchal issues." Umm, right. It's a weapon of the Patriarchy. So her stealing the actual words of another woman writer and posting them as her own and accepting praise and credit for writing the words another woman actually wrote, is actually Ms. Gwen sticking it to the Patriarchy. Wow, good to know. [eyeroll]
Note that Jordan has no problem with fanfic. She said, in her reaction to this situation:
I'd also like to say that fanfic is an entirely different thing. If a reader said, "Wouldn't it be funny if Victor and Jacob got a flat tire...?" and wrote that story, using my characters and storyverse but their own plot and words, that would be fanfic. I've written half a million words of fanfic; it's how I learned to write, for good or ill. This re-tooling of Among the Living was not fanfic.
So this isn't a case of one of the uptight pro writers trying to stomp on the poor fanficcers. Actual fanfic would've been fine. Copying a whole freaking novel (with plans for the second one) and swapping out the names and places and a few police procedure details, but keeping the other ninety-some percent of the original author's verbage is not fanfic, in any way, shape or form. Gwendolynflight is one of the people who gives all fanfic writers a bad name. She's one of the people whose actions convince the New York publishers and the Hollywood producers, and their writers and their lawyers, that we're all a bunch of pathetic, talentless thieves who are too lame to write our own stories and get credit and praise and e-cookies for our own work, so we steal from them and pretend their work is ours and claim credit for the wonderful writing we didn't do. That's what they think of all of us, and one of the reasons they think that is because there are people who do it in exactly that way. Because that's pretty much what's going on with Gwendolynflight.
She's gone into hiding now -- her journal's been completely locked down, although it hasn't been deleted. I'm kind of disappointed by that, because it means she might slink back out from under her rock at some point. I'm sure she has her own little group of friends who are all rallying 'round her now, giving her pets and hugs and feeding her chocolate and assuring her that she did Absolutely Nothing At All Wrong, and that all those evil mean people are just being so meeeeeean to her, isn't it just terrible?! Those bitches!!
But you know, this isn't the sort of person fanfic fandom needs, any fandom. And if she were eventually to pick up her dolls and flounce away and find a new hobby, I'd be just as happy.
Angie, who's in no mood to give this idiot any slack whatsoever
ETA: LJ User Pecos pointed this out, from Gwendolynflight's LJ profile:
This journal is primarily for whinging about school and/or teaching, and for posting the fanfic and fanvids which i occasionally, sometimes, rarely produce. You know, every once in a while.
This woman is a teacher. O_O
Friday, October 2, 2009
Flash Plagiarism
Someone named Richard Ridyard has been swiping lines from all over -- including from Stephen King -- and has just been exposed big-time by Angel Zapata. Thanks to Writtenwyrdd for the link.
One thing which makes this case notable is that, unlike every single other plagiarism case I've looked at in the last couple of years, there is no one sticking up for Mr. Ridyard here. Every other plagiarist who's been shoved into the limelight has had dozens or hundreds of fans who've rallied round with their indignation and counter-attacks to let the accusers know just how horrible and mean they're being. There's nothing like that here, and I have to say it's refreshing. Flash writers seem to be all on the same page when it comes to the evils of plagiarism and the need to find it, shine a light on it and stamp it out. Kudos to the flash folks.
It's also nice to see so many flash editors and publishers saying straight out that they're deleting Mr. Ridyard's work from their sites and blacklisting him. (The only publisher which tried to deny the charge was Valentine Publications, where Mr. Ridyard is an editor.) After all the denials of interest or responsibility, and attempts to brush off accusations and queries, and to ignore clear evidence by the larger publishers in earlier cases, it's good to see editors and publishers willing to take action and state in public that they're doing so. Kudos to them too.
Angie
One thing which makes this case notable is that, unlike every single other plagiarism case I've looked at in the last couple of years, there is no one sticking up for Mr. Ridyard here. Every other plagiarist who's been shoved into the limelight has had dozens or hundreds of fans who've rallied round with their indignation and counter-attacks to let the accusers know just how horrible and mean they're being. There's nothing like that here, and I have to say it's refreshing. Flash writers seem to be all on the same page when it comes to the evils of plagiarism and the need to find it, shine a light on it and stamp it out. Kudos to the flash folks.
It's also nice to see so many flash editors and publishers saying straight out that they're deleting Mr. Ridyard's work from their sites and blacklisting him. (The only publisher which tried to deny the charge was Valentine Publications, where Mr. Ridyard is an editor.) After all the denials of interest or responsibility, and attempts to brush off accusations and queries, and to ignore clear evidence by the larger publishers in earlier cases, it's good to see editors and publishers willing to take action and state in public that they're doing so. Kudos to them too.
Angie
Thursday, September 17, 2009
Will You Read My Story?
Josh Olson, the writer who did the screenplay for A History of Violence, wrote an article for the Village Voice entitled I Will Not Read Your Fucking Script, explaining exactly why he, and many other pro writers, won't read scripts, stories, novels, outlines, treatments, etc., that hopeful newbies try to hand them. Although his tone is rather harsh [cough] he makes some excellent points and I agree with him; pro writers don't owe random newbies anything. If they're asked by a random newbie (or even a newbie with a vague connection, like a spouse's brother's roommate or similar) to read a story -- or recommend the newbie to their agent, or share names/numbers/e-mails for editors, or whatever -- then "Sorry, no," is never a rude response and doesn't merit any immediate abuse or later bad-mouthing to others.
There've been some interesting responses from around the net, and Cleolinda over on LJ has the best collection I've found, along with some personal input of her own. She's a published writer herself, and has had relevant experience.
The original piece and some of the responses focused on obligation and courtesy and favors, and whether or not a pro owes anything to random newbies. Some of the other commenters point out that there are also legal issues involved, and that pro writers can be and have been sued for plagiarism because they read (or could have read, whether they did or not) some newbie's story or idea, and later came up with something on their own which the newbie thought was too similar. See David Gerrold's link in Cleolinda's piece, in particular, for an excellent take on that side of the question.
This issue affects every writer, both published and hopeful, and I recommend everyone read this set of posts.
Angie
There've been some interesting responses from around the net, and Cleolinda over on LJ has the best collection I've found, along with some personal input of her own. She's a published writer herself, and has had relevant experience.
The original piece and some of the responses focused on obligation and courtesy and favors, and whether or not a pro owes anything to random newbies. Some of the other commenters point out that there are also legal issues involved, and that pro writers can be and have been sued for plagiarism because they read (or could have read, whether they did or not) some newbie's story or idea, and later came up with something on their own which the newbie thought was too similar. See David Gerrold's link in Cleolinda's piece, in particular, for an excellent take on that side of the question.
This issue affects every writer, both published and hopeful, and I recommend everyone read this set of posts.
Angie
Thursday, June 4, 2009
Plagiarism Again -- This Time by a University President
As you might have heard, it seems the doctoral dissertation of William Meehan, who was granted his Doctor of Education degree by the University of Alabama in 1999, and is currently president of Jacksonville State University, contains a significant amount of plagiarized material. Check out the graphic in Michael Leddy's blog -- the verbage copied word-for-word from the 1997 dissertation of Carl Boening, is hilighted in yellow.
Leddy's been reporting on this for a while -- also see his posts on 23 April and 9 May.
Backing up a bit, this all started when Prof. David Whetstone sued Meehan over some plant specimens which Meehan claimed belonged to the university and Whetstone claimed belonged to him. Whetstone pointed out the plagiarism in Meehan's dissertation as a way of establishing "a pattern of behavior of him stealing others’ work." Most people commenting on the situation seem to be more concerned with the plagiarism than the plants, which is probably understandable to everyone but Prof. Whetstone. I think we're still grateful to him for bringing this up, though.
According to the Tuscaloosa News story linked just above, two UA administrators are fighting subpoenas to testify regarding the plagiarism of Meehan's dissertation, on the grounds that "it will subject them to annoyance, embarrassment and undue burden." Umm, right. The great burden of being called to testify in a matter as trivial as a plagiarized doctoral dissertation (especially when the accused is, on the strength of that dissertation, currently the president of a university) is just too onerous. Clearly someone should have sympathy for these poor people. [/sarcasm]
Sandy Gordon, a lawyer for the University of Alabama, claims that the two administrators shouldn't be called to testify because the plagiarism issue has nothing at all to do with the dispute over the plant specimens, and besides there's this other guy you should talk to about it 'cause he's on our side.
That being Mike Miller, who chaired Meehan's dissertation committee. And, interestingly enough, also chaired Boening's dissertation committee. That makes him a not-disinterested participant, since if it's officially decided that Meehan did plagiarize Boening's dissertation, the obvious question will be, why didn't Miller spot it? Or Harold Bishop, who was also on both committees?
Interestingly enough:
Miller, a former UA professor, said in an interview last week he was never contacted by anyone at the university to discuss Meehan’s dissertation, contradicting Meehan’s statement that Miller was called upon by UA to investigate the accusation two years ago.
Miller told The Tuscaloosa News that he doesn’t believe Meehan plagiarized.
So either Meehan or Miller is lying about whether anyone talked to Miller about this two years ago. And Miller's statement to the press doesn't carry much weight either; if he wasn't called on to investigate the plagiarism accusation two years ago, then can we really believe he remembers enough details about two dissertations he read ten and twelve years ago to be able to say with any assurance that there was no plagiarism? If he had investigated the matter two years ago then I'd be slightly more likely to believe at least that he believes there was no wrongdoing (although I still wouldn't take his word for it without a lot more supporting evidence than his bare assertion) but he says he did no investigation and was never asked to. One might suspect that his assertion that there was no plagiarism rests more on the fact that his own academic reputation is on the line here, than on the likelihood of him remembering specifics of two papers he read a decade or more ago.
Patty Hobbs, PR Director at Jacksonville State (where Meehan is president) said in a press release [link to PDF] on 23 April that:
Litigation is currently pending in a lawsuit filed by a JSU professor against the University claiming the professor owns plant specimens located in the JSU herbarium. Unrelated to this case, attorneys for the professor have leveled unfounded plagiarism claims against the university president. These claims have been investigated not only by the university, but by third parties and the university is completely satisfied that there is no substance to the allegations. President Meehan has been clear from the beginning that he used Mr. Boening’s dissertation as a spring board for his own, and Meehan’s dissertation duly credits his predecessor’s work. It appears these false charges have been made in an unfair attempt to pressure the university to pay money to resolve a questionable claim regarding ownership of the plant specimens. The two matters are totally unrelated.
So the two matters are completely unrelated, have nothing to do with one another, and besides he didn't do anything wrong.
Except the statement that "third parties" have satisfied the university that Meehan is in the clear is questionable. Leddy references an AP article in which
Jonathan Bailey of Plagiarism Today examined the dissertations and "concluded that 'extensive portions' of Meehan's dissertation were plagiarism of Boening's work." In other words, the third-party investigation supports, not discredits, the allegation of plagiarism.
One has to wonder just which third parties gave Meehan's dissertation a thumbs-up? It would've been nice if the press release had been more specific on just who was supporting Meehan.
The main argument in favor of Meehan seems to be that he acknowledged Boening. In his abstract, he says: [link to PDF]
Using a case study and content analysis design, this study replicated at a regional comprehensive institution a study of sabbatical leave patterns that had first been conducted at The University of Alabama in 1996 by Carl Boening.
That's fine so far as it goes, but that's an acknowledgement that the original idea for the study, and perhaps the method, came from Boening. This very general acknowledgement doesn't give Meehan wholesale leave to lift extensive phrasing and passages from Boening's dissertation without further, line-level citation. Boening's dissertation is included in Meehan's References list, and Boening's name is mentioned ten times in the body of the document. That's not nearly enough to account for all the lifted passages.
The fact that Meehan duplicated Boening's study, but at a different institution, isn't the problem. An editor's note in the Tuscaloosa News describes the situation, then says:
So far, so good. I can't see anything wrong with extending one line of research in new directions. In fact, that's what the scientific method is all about. We do similar things with news stories. If one newspaper looks at an issue in their hometown, we may look at the same issue here.
This is common practice in both academia and journalism; whether or not a thesis applies in a larger context or a different setting is a completely legitimate question for research. The problem isn't with what Meehan chose to study, or even how he conducted his research, but rather with the extensive verbage lifted directly from someone else's paper.
What's really outrageous about this isn't that, unless there's a fairly huge chunk of mitigating data hiding somewhere, an extremely prominent (and well paid) academic plagiarized large chunks of his dissertation, although that's bad enough. No, what's really outrageous is that neither the institution which granted his doctorate nor the one which currently employs him seem at all interested in pursuing the matter.
DRMT, commenting on BoingBoing's post on the subject, [Comment #108] says:
When a university president is found to have plagiarized, it's the alumni and donors who need to raise their voices and force the board of regents to fire him or her. It's unfortunate, but that's the only way these things get done. Plagiarism is an increasing problem in our classes and students need to understand how serious it is.
I'd say that the alumni and donors of both Jacksonville State University and the University of Alabama need to call for a thorough, independent and transparent investigation of the matter, followed by a firing if the results go against Meehan rather than dismissal without some sort of due process, but otherwise I agree. It's hard enough to convince other people -- writers, readers, students, teachers -- that plagiarism is a serious violation and not to be tolerated when someone as prominent as a university president seems to be getting away with it, and profiting handsomely from his stealing and cheating, even after the matter has been made so public. This is outrageous, and I wouldn't expect anyone to want to be associated with any institution which condones or overlooks such behavior, much less support them with funding.
Angie
Leddy's been reporting on this for a while -- also see his posts on 23 April and 9 May.
Backing up a bit, this all started when Prof. David Whetstone sued Meehan over some plant specimens which Meehan claimed belonged to the university and Whetstone claimed belonged to him. Whetstone pointed out the plagiarism in Meehan's dissertation as a way of establishing "a pattern of behavior of him stealing others’ work." Most people commenting on the situation seem to be more concerned with the plagiarism than the plants, which is probably understandable to everyone but Prof. Whetstone. I think we're still grateful to him for bringing this up, though.
According to the Tuscaloosa News story linked just above, two UA administrators are fighting subpoenas to testify regarding the plagiarism of Meehan's dissertation, on the grounds that "it will subject them to annoyance, embarrassment and undue burden." Umm, right. The great burden of being called to testify in a matter as trivial as a plagiarized doctoral dissertation (especially when the accused is, on the strength of that dissertation, currently the president of a university) is just too onerous. Clearly someone should have sympathy for these poor people. [/sarcasm]
Sandy Gordon, a lawyer for the University of Alabama, claims that the two administrators shouldn't be called to testify because the plagiarism issue has nothing at all to do with the dispute over the plant specimens, and besides there's this other guy you should talk to about it 'cause he's on our side.
That being Mike Miller, who chaired Meehan's dissertation committee. And, interestingly enough, also chaired Boening's dissertation committee. That makes him a not-disinterested participant, since if it's officially decided that Meehan did plagiarize Boening's dissertation, the obvious question will be, why didn't Miller spot it? Or Harold Bishop, who was also on both committees?
Interestingly enough:
Miller, a former UA professor, said in an interview last week he was never contacted by anyone at the university to discuss Meehan’s dissertation, contradicting Meehan’s statement that Miller was called upon by UA to investigate the accusation two years ago.
Miller told The Tuscaloosa News that he doesn’t believe Meehan plagiarized.
So either Meehan or Miller is lying about whether anyone talked to Miller about this two years ago. And Miller's statement to the press doesn't carry much weight either; if he wasn't called on to investigate the plagiarism accusation two years ago, then can we really believe he remembers enough details about two dissertations he read ten and twelve years ago to be able to say with any assurance that there was no plagiarism? If he had investigated the matter two years ago then I'd be slightly more likely to believe at least that he believes there was no wrongdoing (although I still wouldn't take his word for it without a lot more supporting evidence than his bare assertion) but he says he did no investigation and was never asked to. One might suspect that his assertion that there was no plagiarism rests more on the fact that his own academic reputation is on the line here, than on the likelihood of him remembering specifics of two papers he read a decade or more ago.
Patty Hobbs, PR Director at Jacksonville State (where Meehan is president) said in a press release [link to PDF] on 23 April that:
Litigation is currently pending in a lawsuit filed by a JSU professor against the University claiming the professor owns plant specimens located in the JSU herbarium. Unrelated to this case, attorneys for the professor have leveled unfounded plagiarism claims against the university president. These claims have been investigated not only by the university, but by third parties and the university is completely satisfied that there is no substance to the allegations. President Meehan has been clear from the beginning that he used Mr. Boening’s dissertation as a spring board for his own, and Meehan’s dissertation duly credits his predecessor’s work. It appears these false charges have been made in an unfair attempt to pressure the university to pay money to resolve a questionable claim regarding ownership of the plant specimens. The two matters are totally unrelated.
So the two matters are completely unrelated, have nothing to do with one another, and besides he didn't do anything wrong.
Except the statement that "third parties" have satisfied the university that Meehan is in the clear is questionable. Leddy references an AP article in which
Jonathan Bailey of Plagiarism Today examined the dissertations and "concluded that 'extensive portions' of Meehan's dissertation were plagiarism of Boening's work." In other words, the third-party investigation supports, not discredits, the allegation of plagiarism.
One has to wonder just which third parties gave Meehan's dissertation a thumbs-up? It would've been nice if the press release had been more specific on just who was supporting Meehan.
The main argument in favor of Meehan seems to be that he acknowledged Boening. In his abstract, he says: [link to PDF]
Using a case study and content analysis design, this study replicated at a regional comprehensive institution a study of sabbatical leave patterns that had first been conducted at The University of Alabama in 1996 by Carl Boening.
That's fine so far as it goes, but that's an acknowledgement that the original idea for the study, and perhaps the method, came from Boening. This very general acknowledgement doesn't give Meehan wholesale leave to lift extensive phrasing and passages from Boening's dissertation without further, line-level citation. Boening's dissertation is included in Meehan's References list, and Boening's name is mentioned ten times in the body of the document. That's not nearly enough to account for all the lifted passages.
The fact that Meehan duplicated Boening's study, but at a different institution, isn't the problem. An editor's note in the Tuscaloosa News describes the situation, then says:
So far, so good. I can't see anything wrong with extending one line of research in new directions. In fact, that's what the scientific method is all about. We do similar things with news stories. If one newspaper looks at an issue in their hometown, we may look at the same issue here.
This is common practice in both academia and journalism; whether or not a thesis applies in a larger context or a different setting is a completely legitimate question for research. The problem isn't with what Meehan chose to study, or even how he conducted his research, but rather with the extensive verbage lifted directly from someone else's paper.
What's really outrageous about this isn't that, unless there's a fairly huge chunk of mitigating data hiding somewhere, an extremely prominent (and well paid) academic plagiarized large chunks of his dissertation, although that's bad enough. No, what's really outrageous is that neither the institution which granted his doctorate nor the one which currently employs him seem at all interested in pursuing the matter.
DRMT, commenting on BoingBoing's post on the subject, [Comment #108] says:
When a university president is found to have plagiarized, it's the alumni and donors who need to raise their voices and force the board of regents to fire him or her. It's unfortunate, but that's the only way these things get done. Plagiarism is an increasing problem in our classes and students need to understand how serious it is.
I'd say that the alumni and donors of both Jacksonville State University and the University of Alabama need to call for a thorough, independent and transparent investigation of the matter, followed by a firing if the results go against Meehan rather than dismissal without some sort of due process, but otherwise I agree. It's hard enough to convince other people -- writers, readers, students, teachers -- that plagiarism is a serious violation and not to be tolerated when someone as prominent as a university president seems to be getting away with it, and profiting handsomely from his stealing and cheating, even after the matter has been made so public. This is outrageous, and I wouldn't expect anyone to want to be associated with any institution which condones or overlooks such behavior, much less support them with funding.
Angie
Wednesday, January 7, 2009
Inspirational Plagiarism
Even the Christian side of publishing isn't immune, either to plagiarism or to rabid fan-apologists.
Links from Dear Author:
Discovery -- Famous Christian author Neale Donald Walsch published an essay which was incredibly close to another essay published ten years earlier by much more obscure author Candy Chand. He says he mistakenly thought it was something that'd happened to him. Uh huh.
Admission -- But okay, when they caught it he admitted the mistake. Good for him. Ms. Chand is still ticked off, and doesn't buy his explanation, but assuming it was actually just a mistake (rather than an actual conscious theft) at least he's owning it.
Fan Response -- Many of his fans, on the other hand, are righteously [cough] insisting that he did nothing wrong, that it's not a big deal, and that in point of fact the other author should be flattered.
Another reader chimed in: "[Y]ou, with 22 books out and counting and numerous articles published, stood to gain nothing in printing her story here as your own. Now that you have graciously given credit where credit is due, I can imagine a possibility that Ms. Chand might even be flattered by an author of your stature finding in her work such quality that it moved him to breed further life into it."
I love how he "graciously" gave her the credit she was due. Like he was being such a nice guy by doing her that favor. [eyeroll]
All I can say is that I'm glad this case didn't come out of the Romance end of the industry.
Angie
Links from Dear Author:
Discovery -- Famous Christian author Neale Donald Walsch published an essay which was incredibly close to another essay published ten years earlier by much more obscure author Candy Chand. He says he mistakenly thought it was something that'd happened to him. Uh huh.
Admission -- But okay, when they caught it he admitted the mistake. Good for him. Ms. Chand is still ticked off, and doesn't buy his explanation, but assuming it was actually just a mistake (rather than an actual conscious theft) at least he's owning it.
Fan Response -- Many of his fans, on the other hand, are righteously [cough] insisting that he did nothing wrong, that it's not a big deal, and that in point of fact the other author should be flattered.
Another reader chimed in: "[Y]ou, with 22 books out and counting and numerous articles published, stood to gain nothing in printing her story here as your own. Now that you have graciously given credit where credit is due, I can imagine a possibility that Ms. Chand might even be flattered by an author of your stature finding in her work such quality that it moved him to breed further life into it."
I love how he "graciously" gave her the credit she was due. Like he was being such a nice guy by doing her that favor. [eyeroll]
All I can say is that I'm glad this case didn't come out of the Romance end of the industry.
Angie
Saturday, August 16, 2008
Plagiarism -- Spreading the Word
So Dear Author reported that the Plagiarism panel at RWA Nationals was poorly attended.
It's disappointing, but from what folks have said, both in the post and in comments, I'm not really shocked. I think there are a few things going on here.
First, I agree with those who said that many people who are outraged about plagiarism likely didn't go because it sounded like a "This is what Plagiarism Is" sort of panel, and yeah, we know that already.
Theft of Creative Property
Speakers: Dr. John Barrie, Jane Little, and Nora Roberts
Join Dr. John Barrie, the creator of the architecture and technology behind iThenticate and Turnitin, and best-selling author Nora Roberts and attorney and dearauthor.com blogger Jane Little for a Q&A session on plagiarism. Special moderator: Sarah from Smart Bitches, Trashy Books.
I agree with Gina that this doesn't sound like a call to arms. It doesn't even sound like a call to come and have your opinion counted. Folks later in the comment thread are correct that we need to show that the community in general strongly condemns plagiarism, but the panel description didn't make it sound like an event where people were being encouraged to come and show the flag.
This was a fairly last-minute addition to the conference, so it's great that there was anything and not surprising that neither the write-up nor the basic panel concept were terribly creative or exciting. I'm sure folks will come up with something next year that'll attract more interest. Seressia had some good ideas for panel names and concepts.
Second, however much need there is for education about just what plagiarism is and is not (and I do think there's a pretty huge need), I don't think the people who most need that education are the ones likely to show up at a panel on the subject. In the various plagiarism incidents of the past year, there were plenty of people insisting that the writers involved had not committed plagiarism and had not done anything wrong, and a low but significant percentage of those claimed to be writers, as I recall. These people are already sure that they know what's what, though, and are positive that all the fuss is just a bunch of jealous people being mean. They're not the ones who are going to go to a panel to learn about plagiarism. This education is necessary, but it needs to be all-pervasive through the industry, to the point where the people who don't want to deal with it can't avoid it -- both to educate the people who are mistaken about what plagiarism is, and to smack the people who don't think it's a big deal upside the head with the knowledge that it is serious and that there'll be considerable social censure applied to people who commit it as well as to people who support them.
Because third, I think that's the biggest problem right now, that there's too much of the wrong kind of social support for demonstrated plagiarists. There are too many people, both writers and readers, who don't think it's a big deal, and who therefore see what social censure there has been so far as a bad thing, as people being "mean" or "cruel" or "jealous" or "trolling" or whatever. If copying someone else's words isn't wrong, then smacking people who copy is a nasty thing to do and the writer gets defensive and all her fans or personal friends jump up to defend her with much righteous indignation.
I saw too many people, in the incidents with both Ms. Edwards and Ms. Logan, jump up to defend them out of the belief that supporting a person means supporting every action they take. They think that being a true fan means being on your favorite writer's side no matter what. They think that being a true friend means assuring that friend that of course they didn't do anything wrong, no matter what it was they actually did. The idea that supporting a person means kindly but firmly helping them admit when they've made a mistake and take whatever action is needed to fix the mistake (even if an apology is the only option) is a null concept to these folks, and there are a lot of them.
Sometimes the pressure against plagiarism and plagiarists is enough to overcome the misguided social support around the plagiarist -- as in the case of Ms. Logan, whose book was withdrawn from publication and who I'm pretty sure will never do that again -- and sometimes it isn't -- as in the case of Ms. Edwards, who's lost one publisher but has two more briskly selling her plagiarized work.
There's still social pressure pushing in the wrong direction, in support of the plagiarists. (Poor things, they've been through so much!) Together with ignorance of just what plagiarism is, however much true ignorance there might be, it gives us the situation we have right now. Too many people, including some writers, don't think there's anything wrong with copying someone else's lines. Way too many readers don't even know what's going on, and (judging by responses from readers who did know) wouldn't care if they did. And too many publishers (two out of three of Ms. Edwards's publishers) don't care because hey, since the readers don't care, the publishers are still making money selling those plagiarized books.
Backing up a step, too many schools have lax attitudes toward plagiarism, or only pay lip-service to what anti-plagiarism rules they do have, as in the case of Christine Pelton and Piper High School. Kids are growing up thinking that plagiarism is fine if you don't get caught, and that even if you do get caught, most of the time nothing will happen. These kids are the adults who eventually get caught up in plagiarism cases in the publishing world, either as writers who do it and then get indignant when they're caught, or as writers who defend other writers who get caught at it, or as readers who don't think it's a big deal and keep buying the books they like no matter who actually wrote the words in between the covers, or as publishers who'll keep publishing the works of a plagiarist so long as they sell. This is a systemic problem, and a series of educational "This Is Plagiarism" panels at RWA National, no matter how well conceived or well meant, isn't going to fix it.
It's a good start, though.
Rather than simple instructional panels to discuss definitions, maybe next year's panel (or panels?) could talk about what to do if you've been plagiarized. Can your agent help you? Your publisher? (They darned well should, but we know that at this point they likely won't -- what can we do to help nudge them along?)
What legal steps can be taken, and what will they cost? Could RWA, or some other writer's group, start a legal offense fund, to help writers who've been victimized take their cases to court? Sure, you can sue for expenses, but if someone can't afford to press a civil case in the first place, it'd be nice if there were a fund to help them out; they could sue for expenses and then repay the fund when they win and get their damages-plus-expenses money. Or maybe a list of lawyers willing to take on plagiarism cases, with expectation of payment out of an expense award, could be assembled?
How many of the writing groups have actual statements in their bylaws saying that any member shown to be a plagiarist will be expelled, permanently, period? Any? Maybe some should, whether at the national or local level. It might be something to talk about, at least, in a panel or other gathering.
And if news of even some of these discussions spread, and a few of these or similar actions were taken, that would show the plagiarists and their defenders that their peers in the industry are serious about this, that it is a big deal and that it won't be tolerated. Because the bottom line, in my opinion, is that we have to make plagiarism a socially as well as professionally poisonous act. So long as some large percentage of writers and readers think that plagiarism is no big deal, or just a minor infraction, or that plagiarism means taking someone else's entire book, verbatim, and publishing it with your name on it (and that absolutely nothing less than that qualifies), people will still do it. And so long as some large percentage of writers and readers are willing to "support" their favorite writers or their writer friends who've been shown to have committed plagiarism, people will still do it.
So long as a clear demonstration of plagiarism still has the power to tear apart an industry, a genre community, a social group -- so long as there's still enough support for plagiarism and the people who do it to even make an argument of it -- writers who'd rather take the way of ignorance or laziness won't have any incentive not to.
That attitude of support for plagiarists, from even a few other writers and from any number of readers and from their publishers, makes it too attractive a gamble to take; even if you lose, chances are you'll still have people patting you on the back and telling you that you're wonderful, and you'll still have a publisher (or two) willing to sell your books.
The social support for plagiarists is what has to be eliminated, and doing so will take a prolonged and vigorous attack from many directions. Panels, yes, on a variety of related topics. Discussions of what to do and how to appropriately punish plagiarists, at all levels. Plans for taking legal action in cases like that of Nora Roberts and Janet Dailey, where there's very clear financial harm, demonstrable to a court, and where the victim isn't a Nora Roberts and doesn't have the resources to take that legal action alone. Pressure on publishers to take action. (Which will happen automatically if some large percentage of readers become aware that this is a problem and stops buying books by plagiarists, but I'd hope we wouldn't have to wait that long for the publishers to do what's ethical.) Articles and editorials, fliers and pamphlets, posters and buttons, blog widgets and colorbars, and above all discussion and planning and agreement by a clear majority of the industry that this is not at all acceptable, ever, period.
Only social pressure will do the job thoroughly, and turning around a social impulse is never easy. There's no one solution. But if enough people try enough different things, the mass of pressure and influence will eventually come together and make plagiarism as socially and professionally poisonous as it should be.
Angie
It's disappointing, but from what folks have said, both in the post and in comments, I'm not really shocked. I think there are a few things going on here.
First, I agree with those who said that many people who are outraged about plagiarism likely didn't go because it sounded like a "This is what Plagiarism Is" sort of panel, and yeah, we know that already.
Theft of Creative Property
Speakers: Dr. John Barrie, Jane Little, and Nora Roberts
Join Dr. John Barrie, the creator of the architecture and technology behind iThenticate and Turnitin, and best-selling author Nora Roberts and attorney and dearauthor.com blogger Jane Little for a Q&A session on plagiarism. Special moderator: Sarah from Smart Bitches, Trashy Books.
I agree with Gina that this doesn't sound like a call to arms. It doesn't even sound like a call to come and have your opinion counted. Folks later in the comment thread are correct that we need to show that the community in general strongly condemns plagiarism, but the panel description didn't make it sound like an event where people were being encouraged to come and show the flag.
This was a fairly last-minute addition to the conference, so it's great that there was anything and not surprising that neither the write-up nor the basic panel concept were terribly creative or exciting. I'm sure folks will come up with something next year that'll attract more interest. Seressia had some good ideas for panel names and concepts.
Second, however much need there is for education about just what plagiarism is and is not (and I do think there's a pretty huge need), I don't think the people who most need that education are the ones likely to show up at a panel on the subject. In the various plagiarism incidents of the past year, there were plenty of people insisting that the writers involved had not committed plagiarism and had not done anything wrong, and a low but significant percentage of those claimed to be writers, as I recall. These people are already sure that they know what's what, though, and are positive that all the fuss is just a bunch of jealous people being mean. They're not the ones who are going to go to a panel to learn about plagiarism. This education is necessary, but it needs to be all-pervasive through the industry, to the point where the people who don't want to deal with it can't avoid it -- both to educate the people who are mistaken about what plagiarism is, and to smack the people who don't think it's a big deal upside the head with the knowledge that it is serious and that there'll be considerable social censure applied to people who commit it as well as to people who support them.
Because third, I think that's the biggest problem right now, that there's too much of the wrong kind of social support for demonstrated plagiarists. There are too many people, both writers and readers, who don't think it's a big deal, and who therefore see what social censure there has been so far as a bad thing, as people being "mean" or "cruel" or "jealous" or "trolling" or whatever. If copying someone else's words isn't wrong, then smacking people who copy is a nasty thing to do and the writer gets defensive and all her fans or personal friends jump up to defend her with much righteous indignation.
I saw too many people, in the incidents with both Ms. Edwards and Ms. Logan, jump up to defend them out of the belief that supporting a person means supporting every action they take. They think that being a true fan means being on your favorite writer's side no matter what. They think that being a true friend means assuring that friend that of course they didn't do anything wrong, no matter what it was they actually did. The idea that supporting a person means kindly but firmly helping them admit when they've made a mistake and take whatever action is needed to fix the mistake (even if an apology is the only option) is a null concept to these folks, and there are a lot of them.
Sometimes the pressure against plagiarism and plagiarists is enough to overcome the misguided social support around the plagiarist -- as in the case of Ms. Logan, whose book was withdrawn from publication and who I'm pretty sure will never do that again -- and sometimes it isn't -- as in the case of Ms. Edwards, who's lost one publisher but has two more briskly selling her plagiarized work.
There's still social pressure pushing in the wrong direction, in support of the plagiarists. (Poor things, they've been through so much!) Together with ignorance of just what plagiarism is, however much true ignorance there might be, it gives us the situation we have right now. Too many people, including some writers, don't think there's anything wrong with copying someone else's lines. Way too many readers don't even know what's going on, and (judging by responses from readers who did know) wouldn't care if they did. And too many publishers (two out of three of Ms. Edwards's publishers) don't care because hey, since the readers don't care, the publishers are still making money selling those plagiarized books.
Backing up a step, too many schools have lax attitudes toward plagiarism, or only pay lip-service to what anti-plagiarism rules they do have, as in the case of Christine Pelton and Piper High School. Kids are growing up thinking that plagiarism is fine if you don't get caught, and that even if you do get caught, most of the time nothing will happen. These kids are the adults who eventually get caught up in plagiarism cases in the publishing world, either as writers who do it and then get indignant when they're caught, or as writers who defend other writers who get caught at it, or as readers who don't think it's a big deal and keep buying the books they like no matter who actually wrote the words in between the covers, or as publishers who'll keep publishing the works of a plagiarist so long as they sell. This is a systemic problem, and a series of educational "This Is Plagiarism" panels at RWA National, no matter how well conceived or well meant, isn't going to fix it.
It's a good start, though.
Rather than simple instructional panels to discuss definitions, maybe next year's panel (or panels?) could talk about what to do if you've been plagiarized. Can your agent help you? Your publisher? (They darned well should, but we know that at this point they likely won't -- what can we do to help nudge them along?)
What legal steps can be taken, and what will they cost? Could RWA, or some other writer's group, start a legal offense fund, to help writers who've been victimized take their cases to court? Sure, you can sue for expenses, but if someone can't afford to press a civil case in the first place, it'd be nice if there were a fund to help them out; they could sue for expenses and then repay the fund when they win and get their damages-plus-expenses money. Or maybe a list of lawyers willing to take on plagiarism cases, with expectation of payment out of an expense award, could be assembled?
How many of the writing groups have actual statements in their bylaws saying that any member shown to be a plagiarist will be expelled, permanently, period? Any? Maybe some should, whether at the national or local level. It might be something to talk about, at least, in a panel or other gathering.
And if news of even some of these discussions spread, and a few of these or similar actions were taken, that would show the plagiarists and their defenders that their peers in the industry are serious about this, that it is a big deal and that it won't be tolerated. Because the bottom line, in my opinion, is that we have to make plagiarism a socially as well as professionally poisonous act. So long as some large percentage of writers and readers think that plagiarism is no big deal, or just a minor infraction, or that plagiarism means taking someone else's entire book, verbatim, and publishing it with your name on it (and that absolutely nothing less than that qualifies), people will still do it. And so long as some large percentage of writers and readers are willing to "support" their favorite writers or their writer friends who've been shown to have committed plagiarism, people will still do it.
So long as a clear demonstration of plagiarism still has the power to tear apart an industry, a genre community, a social group -- so long as there's still enough support for plagiarism and the people who do it to even make an argument of it -- writers who'd rather take the way of ignorance or laziness won't have any incentive not to.
That attitude of support for plagiarists, from even a few other writers and from any number of readers and from their publishers, makes it too attractive a gamble to take; even if you lose, chances are you'll still have people patting you on the back and telling you that you're wonderful, and you'll still have a publisher (or two) willing to sell your books.
The social support for plagiarists is what has to be eliminated, and doing so will take a prolonged and vigorous attack from many directions. Panels, yes, on a variety of related topics. Discussions of what to do and how to appropriately punish plagiarists, at all levels. Plans for taking legal action in cases like that of Nora Roberts and Janet Dailey, where there's very clear financial harm, demonstrable to a court, and where the victim isn't a Nora Roberts and doesn't have the resources to take that legal action alone. Pressure on publishers to take action. (Which will happen automatically if some large percentage of readers become aware that this is a problem and stops buying books by plagiarists, but I'd hope we wouldn't have to wait that long for the publishers to do what's ethical.) Articles and editorials, fliers and pamphlets, posters and buttons, blog widgets and colorbars, and above all discussion and planning and agreement by a clear majority of the industry that this is not at all acceptable, ever, period.
Only social pressure will do the job thoroughly, and turning around a social impulse is never easy. There's no one solution. But if enough people try enough different things, the mass of pressure and influence will eventually come together and make plagiarism as socially and professionally poisonous as it should be.
Angie
Thursday, June 5, 2008
Training Up the Next Generation of Plagiarists
Someone over on LJ posted a link to this news story, and I just had to shake my head.
To summarize, Christine Pelton was a science teacher at Piper High School in Kansas. Her sophomore biology class had a big project (called the "Leaf Project") to do, for fifty percent of their grade. Ms. Pelton was determined that no one in her classroom would get away with cheating, and before the project began, all the students and their parents had to sign a contract which included, among other things: "Cheating and plagiarism will result in the failure of the assignment. It is expected that all work turned in is completely their own." And as anyone who's made it to the sophomore level of high school (and certainly anyone who functions in the adult world, as all these students' parents theoretically do) should be able to figure out, if you fail a project that's fifty percent of your grade, then even if you ace everything else, you're gonna fail the class.
Simple, right?
Well, apparently this was a bit too complicated for some of the students and their parents to comprehend.
When the papers came in, Ms. Pelton noticed some lines which didn't sound like something her students would say. She turned to the internet, and discovered that twenty-eight of her students (almost a quarter of the sophomore class at Piper High) had committed plagiarism.
From one student: "I was kind of upset ‘cause I was pretty sure I did’t do it," he says, claiming he copied from the Internet but didn’t plagiarize.
"I put that as two different sentences," he says. "So it’s not like I copied it straight from the Web site. I changed it into two different sentences."
Oh, well, so long as he split the line he copied word-for-word into two sentences.... [eyeroll]
Bad enough that twenty-some percent of the sophomore class were cheaters. Just to compound the problem, when Ms. Pelton did as she had said she would from the beginning, and failed the projects of the cheating students, their parents -- rather than being outraged at the cheating and grounding their kids till they were thirty -- rose up in angry protest against Ms. Pelton and took the matter to the school board.
Then to pour gasoline onto the situation and set fire to it, the school board caved in to the parents' demands, and intervened. They declared that the Leaf Project was worth a much smaller percentage of the students' total grade, so even the students who'd cheated and failed the project would pass the class if they'd been doing well otherwise.
Wow, I'll bet those students will learn a huge lesson from that.
Seriously, just what the heck did those parents think? That they were doing their kids any favors? That they were teaching them anything positive? That they were helping their children? Really? Let's look at some statements from the parents:
"The problem in her classroom wasn’t with the students, but with the teacher," says one parent.
"Plagiarism is black on this side, white on this side, with a whole lotta gray in the middle," said another parent.
...
According to some of the parents of the students she failed, Pelton missed a "teachable moment."
"She’s uncovered plagiarism," says a parent. "That’s great, that’s wonderful, let’s give her an attaboy. Let’s stop, put on a seminar, teach these kids exactly what plagiarism is, how to avoid it, and then let them take their new knowledge, go back, and rework their projects and resubmit them. They missed their teachable moment; I truly believe that."
Wow.
Any bets on how many of these students, or their siblings, or the students' kids later on, will be in the middle of a similar cheating/copying/plagiarism situation again some time, arguing indignantly that they did absolutely nothing wrong, that the people using the P-word are being harsh, being mean, that they're envious or hateful or just looking for attention? These students, and their parents, sound exactly like the people who were standing up in defense of the literary plagiarists over the last few months. And the people who were defending the plagiarist writers sound exactly like these parents. It all comes out of the same pot, it's all born of the same ignorance and the same sense of entitlement, the same belief that anything they do to get ahead must be just fine. And so long as parents are teaching their kids that they can cheat and they can plagiarize and they can get away with it, and that their parents will support them and help slay the evil accuser when they get caught, we're going to have more and more plagiarizing students. And plagiarizing writers.
This is the next generation. They're being trained right now. Some of them are going to end up in our field, and their life experience so far is going to have taught them that the smart people take the easy way and that cheaters win and that whistle-blowers get smacked down.
Lovely. I can't wait.
Angie
Epilogue: Christine Pelton resigned her teaching position when the school board interfered with her decision about how to handle proven cheaters. She's no longer teaching, but has opened a day care center in her home. The education establishment is much poorer for the loss. [sigh]
To summarize, Christine Pelton was a science teacher at Piper High School in Kansas. Her sophomore biology class had a big project (called the "Leaf Project") to do, for fifty percent of their grade. Ms. Pelton was determined that no one in her classroom would get away with cheating, and before the project began, all the students and their parents had to sign a contract which included, among other things: "Cheating and plagiarism will result in the failure of the assignment. It is expected that all work turned in is completely their own." And as anyone who's made it to the sophomore level of high school (and certainly anyone who functions in the adult world, as all these students' parents theoretically do) should be able to figure out, if you fail a project that's fifty percent of your grade, then even if you ace everything else, you're gonna fail the class.
Simple, right?
Well, apparently this was a bit too complicated for some of the students and their parents to comprehend.
When the papers came in, Ms. Pelton noticed some lines which didn't sound like something her students would say. She turned to the internet, and discovered that twenty-eight of her students (almost a quarter of the sophomore class at Piper High) had committed plagiarism.
From one student: "I was kind of upset ‘cause I was pretty sure I did’t do it," he says, claiming he copied from the Internet but didn’t plagiarize.
"I put that as two different sentences," he says. "So it’s not like I copied it straight from the Web site. I changed it into two different sentences."
Oh, well, so long as he split the line he copied word-for-word into two sentences.... [eyeroll]
Bad enough that twenty-some percent of the sophomore class were cheaters. Just to compound the problem, when Ms. Pelton did as she had said she would from the beginning, and failed the projects of the cheating students, their parents -- rather than being outraged at the cheating and grounding their kids till they were thirty -- rose up in angry protest against Ms. Pelton and took the matter to the school board.
Then to pour gasoline onto the situation and set fire to it, the school board caved in to the parents' demands, and intervened. They declared that the Leaf Project was worth a much smaller percentage of the students' total grade, so even the students who'd cheated and failed the project would pass the class if they'd been doing well otherwise.
Wow, I'll bet those students will learn a huge lesson from that.
Seriously, just what the heck did those parents think? That they were doing their kids any favors? That they were teaching them anything positive? That they were helping their children? Really? Let's look at some statements from the parents:
"The problem in her classroom wasn’t with the students, but with the teacher," says one parent.
"Plagiarism is black on this side, white on this side, with a whole lotta gray in the middle," said another parent.
...
According to some of the parents of the students she failed, Pelton missed a "teachable moment."
"She’s uncovered plagiarism," says a parent. "That’s great, that’s wonderful, let’s give her an attaboy. Let’s stop, put on a seminar, teach these kids exactly what plagiarism is, how to avoid it, and then let them take their new knowledge, go back, and rework their projects and resubmit them. They missed their teachable moment; I truly believe that."
Wow.
Any bets on how many of these students, or their siblings, or the students' kids later on, will be in the middle of a similar cheating/copying/plagiarism situation again some time, arguing indignantly that they did absolutely nothing wrong, that the people using the P-word are being harsh, being mean, that they're envious or hateful or just looking for attention? These students, and their parents, sound exactly like the people who were standing up in defense of the literary plagiarists over the last few months. And the people who were defending the plagiarist writers sound exactly like these parents. It all comes out of the same pot, it's all born of the same ignorance and the same sense of entitlement, the same belief that anything they do to get ahead must be just fine. And so long as parents are teaching their kids that they can cheat and they can plagiarize and they can get away with it, and that their parents will support them and help slay the evil accuser when they get caught, we're going to have more and more plagiarizing students. And plagiarizing writers.
This is the next generation. They're being trained right now. Some of them are going to end up in our field, and their life experience so far is going to have taught them that the smart people take the easy way and that cheaters win and that whistle-blowers get smacked down.
Lovely. I can't wait.
Angie
Epilogue: Christine Pelton resigned her teaching position when the school board interfered with her decision about how to handle proven cheaters. She's no longer teaching, but has opened a day care center in her home. The education establishment is much poorer for the loss. [sigh]
Wednesday, March 19, 2008
Awful Weekend
Just wanted to let people know I'm still around and alive, just behind. It's been a really horrible weekend and my other online community exploded in a firestorm.
Remember the plagiarized book that made it to the Eppie finals? It was originally fanfiction, and fandom just found out. BOOM! Proof positive that readers and writers are exactly the same everywhere -- the exact same arguments and defenses and attacks were made here (and are still going on, although it's finally slowed down) as were made in the Cassie Edwards incident. Substitute "fanfic" for "romance" and everything else is the same -- "It's only fanfic, why are you taking it so seriously?!" and "The standards are different in fanfic than they are elsewhere!" and "Hasn't she been through enough?!" and "Why are you being so mean?!" and "You're just jealous!" and "You just want attention!" and cetera.
If anything, I think it's been worse than the Cassie Edwards blow-up. Then, so far as I could tell, the people defending her were just readers, no matter how devoted. But Lucia Logan was a member of our community, many people consider her to be a good friend, and quite a few (myself included) have met her in realspace. That makes it much more personal, and the intensity went up correspondingly.
And also as with the Cassie Edwards case, Lucia Logan's response isn't helping any. :(
Everyone's in shock, there's a pall of anger and resentment and broken friendships -- I've been defriended by several people myself, and I wasn't even one of the main posters -- and I'm exhausted. I have over 200 blog posts piled up in my reader and I'll get to them eventually. I might not go all the way back, so if I miss anything important I apologize in advance. This has just been a completely sucky few days and I'm looking forward to... I don't know, next week? next month? whenever things get back to even a fragile mask of normalcy.
Angie
Remember the plagiarized book that made it to the Eppie finals? It was originally fanfiction, and fandom just found out. BOOM! Proof positive that readers and writers are exactly the same everywhere -- the exact same arguments and defenses and attacks were made here (and are still going on, although it's finally slowed down) as were made in the Cassie Edwards incident. Substitute "fanfic" for "romance" and everything else is the same -- "It's only fanfic, why are you taking it so seriously?!" and "The standards are different in fanfic than they are elsewhere!" and "Hasn't she been through enough?!" and "Why are you being so mean?!" and "You're just jealous!" and "You just want attention!" and cetera.
If anything, I think it's been worse than the Cassie Edwards blow-up. Then, so far as I could tell, the people defending her were just readers, no matter how devoted. But Lucia Logan was a member of our community, many people consider her to be a good friend, and quite a few (myself included) have met her in realspace. That makes it much more personal, and the intensity went up correspondingly.
And also as with the Cassie Edwards case, Lucia Logan's response isn't helping any. :(
Everyone's in shock, there's a pall of anger and resentment and broken friendships -- I've been defriended by several people myself, and I wasn't even one of the main posters -- and I'm exhausted. I have over 200 blog posts piled up in my reader and I'll get to them eventually. I might not go all the way back, so if I miss anything important I apologize in advance. This has just been a completely sucky few days and I'm looking forward to... I don't know, next week? next month? whenever things get back to even a fragile mask of normalcy.
Angie
Tuesday, January 15, 2008
Plagiarism Again -- The Bigger Picture
For anyone who's been in bed the last week, the Smart Bitches blog has discovered that well-known romance writer Cassie Edwards has been plagiarizing text from her source material for a number of years. Last I heard, the number of her books which include material lifted without credit from other people's writing was up to about a dozen, and the sources stolen from included not only non-fiction sources (which were what it was all about at the beginning) but also La Farge's novel Laughing Boy (Pulitzer Prize winner in 1930) and Longfellow's "Hiawatha." There are several megs of commentary all over the blogosphere if you're interested.
What I'm really concerned with, though, is the bigger picture.
Aside from this specific case, and the sheer outrage that a well-known and extremely experienced novelist thinks she's done nothing wrong by lifting lines out of other people's work and selling them as her own, a few other things have been bothering me about this whole mess, and others like it.
First, the sheer bulk of people who honestly don't know what plagiarism is. Ms. Edwards denies she has plagiarized anything, despite the many displays of side-by-side text showing she clearly did, and she's not the first plagiarist to make such denials in recent memory. And there are many people who've defended plagiarists and/or attacked the people who've pointed out the plagiarism, insisting that no wrong has been done. There've been discussions and explanations and arguments over just what plagiarism is and isn't, and why using passages from a source which is out of copyright without giving credit still is plagiarism. Why don't people know this? Why don't writers know this? How can people follow rules they don't understand or can't define?
Second, and related to the first, I'm wondering how many more plagiarists there are out there. We've had a nice handful pop up lately and I'm starting to suspect, sadly, that we haven't caught all of them. Not even close. I suppose this might just be a statistical glitch, over the last six months or so, but it's more likely a trend.
Thinking about it, it even makes sense. Ten years ago, it was a lot harder to catch plagiarism. Someone who recognized the source text had to read a book or story and actually think, "Wait, I recognize that!" They had to have access to the source, and be willing to go to the trouble of finding the book (magazine, whatever) and finding the actual lines in the book, and then figuring out what to do about it.
Nowadays, it's just a matter of firing up Google. Checking for plagiarism is incredibly easy, and it's getting easier as more text sources make it onto the web. And once the fact of plagiarism has been established, telling people about it is much easier than it was even ten years ago, much less in the pre-internet days. Before, it'd have to be a pretty slow news day for this sort of plagiarism to go before the public, unless you were accusing someone as famous as Helen Keller. (Who did commit unconscious plagiarism, by the way, of a few passages from a fairy story which had been read to her as a child.) But now, the net is bulging with bloggers eager for material, and no matter what area of publishing your story is focused on, there are dozens if not hundreds of special-interest bloggers who'd love to post about it.
We're still not used to seeing news of plagiarism -- the fact that Ms. Edwards's publisher initially tried to brush the incident off shows what likely happened in most cases in the past -- but I think we're going to get much more used to it in the future.
I'd like to think that most cases will be like this one appears to be, where the writer who lifted the lines and used them without credit seems to be honestly ignorant of what this "plagiarism" thing is all about, and didn't know they were doing anything wrong. It doesn't say much for their intelligence, I'll grant, but I'd rather think that people are just that ignorant than believe that there are a bunch of writers out there who've been coldly stealing from their fellow authors, living or dead, and profiting off of it, just because they didn't think they'd get caught.
But when I see so many writers (initially at least) jumping up to defend plagiarists, I really have to wonder about their writing habits. Added to the fact that so many people who commit these quiet offences don't get caught, I have to think there are a lot of writers out there who do this. I'm just hoping they're doing it out of ignorance, as opposed to sheer selfishness or malice.
Angie
What I'm really concerned with, though, is the bigger picture.
Aside from this specific case, and the sheer outrage that a well-known and extremely experienced novelist thinks she's done nothing wrong by lifting lines out of other people's work and selling them as her own, a few other things have been bothering me about this whole mess, and others like it.
First, the sheer bulk of people who honestly don't know what plagiarism is. Ms. Edwards denies she has plagiarized anything, despite the many displays of side-by-side text showing she clearly did, and she's not the first plagiarist to make such denials in recent memory. And there are many people who've defended plagiarists and/or attacked the people who've pointed out the plagiarism, insisting that no wrong has been done. There've been discussions and explanations and arguments over just what plagiarism is and isn't, and why using passages from a source which is out of copyright without giving credit still is plagiarism. Why don't people know this? Why don't writers know this? How can people follow rules they don't understand or can't define?
Second, and related to the first, I'm wondering how many more plagiarists there are out there. We've had a nice handful pop up lately and I'm starting to suspect, sadly, that we haven't caught all of them. Not even close. I suppose this might just be a statistical glitch, over the last six months or so, but it's more likely a trend.
Thinking about it, it even makes sense. Ten years ago, it was a lot harder to catch plagiarism. Someone who recognized the source text had to read a book or story and actually think, "Wait, I recognize that!" They had to have access to the source, and be willing to go to the trouble of finding the book (magazine, whatever) and finding the actual lines in the book, and then figuring out what to do about it.
Nowadays, it's just a matter of firing up Google. Checking for plagiarism is incredibly easy, and it's getting easier as more text sources make it onto the web. And once the fact of plagiarism has been established, telling people about it is much easier than it was even ten years ago, much less in the pre-internet days. Before, it'd have to be a pretty slow news day for this sort of plagiarism to go before the public, unless you were accusing someone as famous as Helen Keller. (Who did commit unconscious plagiarism, by the way, of a few passages from a fairy story which had been read to her as a child.) But now, the net is bulging with bloggers eager for material, and no matter what area of publishing your story is focused on, there are dozens if not hundreds of special-interest bloggers who'd love to post about it.
We're still not used to seeing news of plagiarism -- the fact that Ms. Edwards's publisher initially tried to brush the incident off shows what likely happened in most cases in the past -- but I think we're going to get much more used to it in the future.
I'd like to think that most cases will be like this one appears to be, where the writer who lifted the lines and used them without credit seems to be honestly ignorant of what this "plagiarism" thing is all about, and didn't know they were doing anything wrong. It doesn't say much for their intelligence, I'll grant, but I'd rather think that people are just that ignorant than believe that there are a bunch of writers out there who've been coldly stealing from their fellow authors, living or dead, and profiting off of it, just because they didn't think they'd get caught.
But when I see so many writers (initially at least) jumping up to defend plagiarists, I really have to wonder about their writing habits. Added to the fact that so many people who commit these quiet offences don't get caught, I have to think there are a lot of writers out there who do this. I'm just hoping they're doing it out of ignorance, as opposed to sheer selfishness or malice.
Angie
Monday, December 3, 2007
Drawing the Line
[Note that I'm dealing with generalities here. There's a link at the bottom to my LiveJournal where I talk about specifics, if you're interested in what brought this on.]
There's a case up in the air right now (meaning that the person claiming injured party status says she's going to sue but I don't know if she has yet) which has made me think about where the line is drawn when it comes to "borrowing" from other writers. Where does browsing and scrounging and scavenging and reworking turn into really lame and uncool copying?
To the best of my knowledge, plagiarism only covers actual words-in-a-row. That is, if I write:
"Bob and Tommy went to the pond to go fishing. They spent the afternoon and caught three trout, but Tommy got sunburned. They hitched a ride home from an old man in a blue Ford, and Tommy had a horrible night because he was burning up."
and someone else reads that, then writes:
"Boo and Timmy went to the woods to go hunting. They spent the day and caught three rabbits, but Timmy was sunburned. They hitchhiked home with an old guy in a blue Honda, and Timmy had an awful night because his sunburn was really burning him."
anyone who read my bit and then read the second bit would be able to tell that the second was copied, although not exactly. The second paragraph isn't actually plagiarized, but if you read the first one and then the second one, you might raise an eyebrow.
What if you read two novels like that?
What if you read two novels that were almost like that, with some lines and paragraphs about that close, and others not?
It's clear to me that the second novel isn't plagiarized, not exactly. Not legally, in a way that a court would accept. (So far as I understand this to work, with the usual IANAL disclaimer.) It's been rephrased, rewritten in places, with all the names and enough key words changed that it's not copying exact words-in-a-row, or at least not enough words, not enough important words, for a crime to have been committed, although someone made a great use of their thesaurus. It's derivative as hell and incredibly uncool because of it, even if it's not plagiarism.
Because seriously, writing a novel that's pretty clearly a MadLib of someone else's story is really lame, no matter what a court of law would say. And publishing it and making money off of it just adds injury to insult.
I think most of us who write have lifted ideas from other writers' stories. Aside from the old (and true) adage that there aren't any new plots, we'll see someone else's character do X and wonder what would've happened if they'd done Q instead. Or we'll see a plot twist or a gimmick or a point of characterization or worldbuilding or whatever, and think, "What if I did this with it...?" Writing a story is rather like making a patchwork quilt, and the scraps of fabric we sew together to make this quilt come from all over our life experience, which includes books we read, movies we see, music we hear, paintings we look at, and everything else. The fact that Stoker wrote about vampires doesn't mean another writer can't do it too. And Anita Blake is just another in a long line of vampire hunters (from Stoker's Van Helsing on), blended with some other characteristics to make her stand out, and many of those characteristics probably came from Hamilton's own experiences of others' creative works.
This sort of thing isn't a problem. It's where ideas come from, and that's fine.
But where do we draw the line? How much can we scavenge before it becomes uncool?
Is it a matter of blending it with enough other scavenged pieces? Like the old saying from uni, "Copying one source is plagiarism, copying many sources is research" -- how many sources do we have to copy before we move from plagiarism to research? And is there a grey area in the middle. If one source is plagiarism, and, say, fifty is research, what's twenty? Ten? Five? Two?
Where do we draw the lines between "just fine" and "kind of iffy" and "uncool" and "lame!" and actual "plagiarism?"
And what can/should be done about those grey areas of "almost", from "almost fine" to "almost plagiarism?" Is the "kind of iffy" level all right, where the source of this or that bit or gimmick is pretty clear, where you can see the scratches on that one chunk where the serial number was filed off but most of the story and world and background are properly scavenged and blended? I've actually read stories like this, where I've recognized a source I was pretty sure the writer drew from, and you probably have too. Is this "almost right," and if so, how close is the "almost?" And what about the other end of the "almost" spectrum, where we have a MadLib novel which is about as close as I can think of to plagiarism without actually being plagiarism. If this is "almost wrong," how close is it to that end of "almost?"
I'd never thought about it before, but there really isn't a single clear line between original writing and plagiarism. And that's disturbing, because so long as there's not, there'll be people who'll push into that grey area, trying to see how far they can get before someone notices and calls them on it. It looks like that's what's happening now, and unless it turns out that this whole thing is a huge hoax on the complaining writer's part, I really hope something happens to the second writer. If she did do this, then having her rep smeared and being unable to sell any other books would be a good start, even if she can't actually be sued.
Thoughts?
Angie
[I'm trying to keep this theoretical. If you want to see the specifics and haven't already heard about the situation, check out this post in my LJ, along with the links from it, or just Google "plagiarism Massa Amanda" and the first few items will be relevant.]
There's a case up in the air right now (meaning that the person claiming injured party status says she's going to sue but I don't know if she has yet) which has made me think about where the line is drawn when it comes to "borrowing" from other writers. Where does browsing and scrounging and scavenging and reworking turn into really lame and uncool copying?
To the best of my knowledge, plagiarism only covers actual words-in-a-row. That is, if I write:
"Bob and Tommy went to the pond to go fishing. They spent the afternoon and caught three trout, but Tommy got sunburned. They hitched a ride home from an old man in a blue Ford, and Tommy had a horrible night because he was burning up."
and someone else reads that, then writes:
"Boo and Timmy went to the woods to go hunting. They spent the day and caught three rabbits, but Timmy was sunburned. They hitchhiked home with an old guy in a blue Honda, and Timmy had an awful night because his sunburn was really burning him."
anyone who read my bit and then read the second bit would be able to tell that the second was copied, although not exactly. The second paragraph isn't actually plagiarized, but if you read the first one and then the second one, you might raise an eyebrow.
What if you read two novels like that?
What if you read two novels that were almost like that, with some lines and paragraphs about that close, and others not?
It's clear to me that the second novel isn't plagiarized, not exactly. Not legally, in a way that a court would accept. (So far as I understand this to work, with the usual IANAL disclaimer.) It's been rephrased, rewritten in places, with all the names and enough key words changed that it's not copying exact words-in-a-row, or at least not enough words, not enough important words, for a crime to have been committed, although someone made a great use of their thesaurus. It's derivative as hell and incredibly uncool because of it, even if it's not plagiarism.
Because seriously, writing a novel that's pretty clearly a MadLib of someone else's story is really lame, no matter what a court of law would say. And publishing it and making money off of it just adds injury to insult.
I think most of us who write have lifted ideas from other writers' stories. Aside from the old (and true) adage that there aren't any new plots, we'll see someone else's character do X and wonder what would've happened if they'd done Q instead. Or we'll see a plot twist or a gimmick or a point of characterization or worldbuilding or whatever, and think, "What if I did this with it...?" Writing a story is rather like making a patchwork quilt, and the scraps of fabric we sew together to make this quilt come from all over our life experience, which includes books we read, movies we see, music we hear, paintings we look at, and everything else. The fact that Stoker wrote about vampires doesn't mean another writer can't do it too. And Anita Blake is just another in a long line of vampire hunters (from Stoker's Van Helsing on), blended with some other characteristics to make her stand out, and many of those characteristics probably came from Hamilton's own experiences of others' creative works.
This sort of thing isn't a problem. It's where ideas come from, and that's fine.
But where do we draw the line? How much can we scavenge before it becomes uncool?
Is it a matter of blending it with enough other scavenged pieces? Like the old saying from uni, "Copying one source is plagiarism, copying many sources is research" -- how many sources do we have to copy before we move from plagiarism to research? And is there a grey area in the middle. If one source is plagiarism, and, say, fifty is research, what's twenty? Ten? Five? Two?
Where do we draw the lines between "just fine" and "kind of iffy" and "uncool" and "lame!" and actual "plagiarism?"
And what can/should be done about those grey areas of "almost", from "almost fine" to "almost plagiarism?" Is the "kind of iffy" level all right, where the source of this or that bit or gimmick is pretty clear, where you can see the scratches on that one chunk where the serial number was filed off but most of the story and world and background are properly scavenged and blended? I've actually read stories like this, where I've recognized a source I was pretty sure the writer drew from, and you probably have too. Is this "almost right," and if so, how close is the "almost?" And what about the other end of the "almost" spectrum, where we have a MadLib novel which is about as close as I can think of to plagiarism without actually being plagiarism. If this is "almost wrong," how close is it to that end of "almost?"
I'd never thought about it before, but there really isn't a single clear line between original writing and plagiarism. And that's disturbing, because so long as there's not, there'll be people who'll push into that grey area, trying to see how far they can get before someone notices and calls them on it. It looks like that's what's happening now, and unless it turns out that this whole thing is a huge hoax on the complaining writer's part, I really hope something happens to the second writer. If she did do this, then having her rep smeared and being unable to sell any other books would be a good start, even if she can't actually be sued.
Thoughts?
Angie
[I'm trying to keep this theoretical. If you want to see the specifics and haven't already heard about the situation, check out this post in my LJ, along with the links from it, or just Google "plagiarism Massa Amanda" and the first few items will be relevant.]
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