Talk:David Darling (astronomer)
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[edit] A case of plagiarism
There are math articles in Darling's Encyclopedia of Astrobiology, Astronomy, and Spaceflight that appear to be copied, without citation, from Wikipedia. Here are two examples:
- Mobius strip and [1].
- Knuths_up-arrow_notation and [2].
I think that the case can be made even tighter by looking at older versions of the articles at Wikipedia. For example, compare his article on the Mobius strip with the old Wikipedia page [3].
Has anyone else noticed this?
Best, Sam nead 16:48, 26 January 2007 (UTC)
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- Didn't you notice that the case is the inverse of you're saying??? Wikipedia's article took the material from Darling's!!! —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 201.19.132.124 (talk) 14:00, 4 April 2007 (UTC).
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- Yes, I'll guess these are cases of Wikipedian's copying Darling, rather than vica versa. On certain obscure topics, his Encyclopedia is the only quick source for things. Marskell 14:19, 4 April 2007 (UTC)
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- I noticed what I noticed. The two pages cited grew on Wikipedia quite organically. There was no sudden importation of text at any point. But the Darling's text is too close to that of Wikipedia's (several lines are direct copies) for coincidence. Hmmm. Why do you assume that we copied from him and not the other way around? I urge you both to look at the history of the pages in question. Best, Sam nead 13:10, 5 April 2007 (UTC)
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- Sam, you do realise that the two links that you posted are nothing like Dr Darling's entries? I think you will find that Dr Darling does reference Wikipedia when necessary but the true cannot be said of the reverse! As Marskell points out Dr Darling's encyclopedia is certainly one of the most complete astronomy/astrobiology/spaceflight resources on the web. To try and somehow besmirch his character on here is nothing short of a disgrace. Wikipedia is not the be all and end all of research on the web, in fact Darling's site was created before this one was even though of so let's not try to go down the plagiarism route as it is pure fantasy. I look forward to your Poirot like detective skills actually being used for good instead of this puerile nonsense. King of Spin 06:59, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
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Dear all -- It appears that Darling's Mobius band page has been updated. You can find a copy of the old page on the Wayback Machine [4]. This version of his page has entire sentences which are identical to the earlier versions of the Wikipedia page. If you trace the history of the Wikipedia page you can see how those sentences arose. Best, Sam nead 12:56, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
The paragraph that seems to have been directly plagiarized is
The Möbius strip has a lot of curious properties. If you cut down the middle of the strip, instead of getting two separate strips, it becomes one long strip with four half-twists in it. If you cut this one down the middle, you get two strips wound around each other. Alternatively, if you cut along the strip, about a third of the way in from the edge, you will get two strips; one is a thinner Möbius strip, the other is a long strip with four twists in it. Other interesting combinations of strips can be obtained by making Möbius strips with two or more flips in them instead of one. Cutting a Möbius strip, giving it extra twists, and reconnecting the ends produces unexpected figures called paradromic rings.
It has been in the Wikipedia article since the very day it was created in 2002 by Axel Boldt.[5] Axel Boldt, by the way, has contributed a great deal to Wikipedia, without seemingly having resorted to plagiarism. So I find any assertion that he ripped off someone else's work a rather serious charge, and I have asked him to come look at this discussion.
Compare the paragraph above to what is currently in Darling's article on the Mobius strip.[6]
The Möbius band has a lot of curious properties. If you cut down the middle of the band, instead of getting two separate strips, it becomes one long strip with two half-twists in it. If you cut this one down the middle, you get two strips wound around each other. Alternatively, if you cut along the band, about a third of the way in from the edge, you will get two strips; one is a thinner Möbius band, the other is a long strip with two half-twists in it. Other interesting combinations of strips can be obtained by making Möbius bands with two or more flips in them instead of one. Cutting a Möbius band, giving it extra twists, and reconnecting the ends produces unexpected figures called paradromic rings.
An almost word for word duplicate (excepting the difference in the number of half-twists, see below).
The relevant observation is that the Wayback Machine does not show this article exists before 2004. Of course the Wayback Machine doesn't keep all versions, but may have deleted any existing previous article from its archive. So this proves nothing. But I noticed that the way one would typically find such an entry in Darling's encyclopedia is to look on the index page for M. The Wayback machines shows that the index page does not contain an entry for Mobius band (or strip) on Feb 6 2004 or Oct 10 2004.
In addition, Wikipedia's page history shows that Axel Boldt worked on this article, gradually rearranging things, until the paragraph resulted in the form above. To suggest he plagiarized it, is to basically suggested that he resorted to purposeful manipulation in his editing to make it appear as though he did not copy.
As far as I know, Axel Boldt is not David Darling, nor did Darling obtain permission from Boldt to use this material (Boldt can correct me if I am mistaken).
Interestingly enough, Boldt's version has 4-half twists, but was changed the next day by a different person to be 2-half twists. Some helpful person noticed that 4-half twists is correct and fairly recently changed it back. Darling's version (and past versions according to Wayback) has 2-half twists.
I've focused on a single paragraph which is really a word for word copy, but it's interesting to compare the Wikipedia version of September 26 2004 with Darling's version, which, as I explained, is shown by Wayback to not have existed before October 2004. The arrangement and structure is very similar with essentially the same content. The current Wikipedia and Darling versions still retain these similarities.
Some final comments. Looking over the previous discussion, I see some insults being hurled at Sam Nead, who is only trying to be a useful contributor by checking that there is not a copyvio occurring on Wikipedia. If you look at his edit summaries, it seems clear that initially he thought Wikipedia plagiarized Darling, but then changed his mind (presumably after his investigation). I realize the suggestion of plagiarism has roused up emotion, but there are solid indicators that there is no copyvio by Wikipedia. So as far as copyvio issues go, I don't think we need concern ourselves with it. It's a shame that David Darling's reputation had to be inadvertently attacked as a result of this, but in any case, it was a necessary matter to investigate. Not to mention that any denial of plagiarism by Darling is actually "besmirching" Axel Boldt's reputation. --C S (Talk) 15:44, 21 May 2007 (UTC)
Well, this is an interesting case. I don't recall ever having visited Darling's encyclopedia before, and I certainly never added material to Wikipedia using the cut-and-paste method. That said, I don't think I made the very first edits listed in the article's history. You'll notice that the first couple entries are all listed as having been made by me at exactly the same time, which may mean that they were incorporated later, after a software upgrade, and the editor and date information might very well be wrong. (Note that a software update happened on the English Wikipedia in July 2002 [7].) Going through the edits one by one, I believe I made these: [8], [9], [10], [11]. I am pretty sure that I did not make the edit [12] that introduced the paragraph discussed above. I would have bolded the main term, would have introduced the alternative term "Moebius band" right afterwards, and wouldn't have linked the plural "science fiction stories". Also I wouldn't have used the "curious properties" language. The fact that the paragraph contains a typo in the middle (capitalization of "alternatively") that was corrected later, together with the fact that a mathematical error was introduced later (2 half twists), suggests to me that it was not a cut-and-paste job. AxelBoldt 17:53, 21 May 2007 (UTC)
