List of plagiarism controversies

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The following is a list of examples of plagiarism which were the center of notable public controversies.

Contents 1 Academia 2 Business 3 Computer games 4 Film 5 Journalism 6 Literature 7 Music 8 Politics 8.1 Senator Joseph Biden 8.2 Iraq War 8.3 Vladimir Putin 9 Wikipedia 10 Other instances 10.1 William H. Swanson 10.2 Lyle Menendez 11 References

[edit] Academia

• The earliest known instance of an accusation of purported plagiarism was in the 11th century, when al-Khatib al-Baghdadi accused al-Jahiz's Book of Animals of having plagiarized parts of Aristotle's Kitāb al-Hayawān,^[1] but later scholars have noted that there was only a limited Aristotelian influence in al-Jahiz's work, and that al-Baghdadi may have been unacquainted with Aristotle's work.^[2]
• James A. Mackay, a Scottish historian, was forced to withdraw all copies of his biography of Alexander Graham Bell from circulation in 1998 because he plagiarized the last major work on the subject, a 1973 work. Also accused of plagiarizing material on biographies of Mary Queen of Scots, Andrew Carnegie, and Sir William Wallace, he was forced to withdraw his next work, on John Paul Jones, in 1999 for an identical reason.^[3][4]
• Marks Chabedi, a professor at the University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa, plagiarized his doctoral thesis. He used a work written by Kimberly Lanegran at the University of Florida and copied it nearly verbatim before submitting it to The New School. When Lanegran discovered this, she launched an investigation into Chabedi. He was fired from his professorship, and The New School revoked his Ph.D.^[5] (The OCLC numbers for the dissertations are AAG9801108 and AAI9980001.)
• Historian Stephen Ambrose has been criticized for incorporating passages from the works of other authors into many of his books. He was first accused in 2002 by two writers for copying portions about World War II bomber pilots from Thomas Childers's The Wings of Morning in his book The Wild Blue.^[6] After Ambrose admitted to the errors, the New York Times found further unattributed passages, and "Mr. Ambrose again acknowledged his errors and promised to correct them in later editions."^[7]
• Norman Finkelstein has charged Alan Dershowitz with committing plagiarism by using material from Joan Peters' 1984 book From Time Immemorial in his book The Case for Israel, without giving proper credit.^[8] See "Dershowitz-Finkelstein affair".
• Author Doris Kearns Goodwin interviewed author Lynne McTaggart in her 1987 book The Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys, and she used passages from McTaggart's book about Kathleen Kennedy. In 2002, when the similarities between Goodwin's and McTaggart's books became public, Goodwin stated that she had an understanding that citations would not be required for all references, and that extensive footnotes already existed. Many doubted her claims, and she was forced to resign from the Pulitzer Prize board. ^[9][10]
• Mathematician and computer scientist Dănuţ Marcu claims to have published over 383 original papers in various scientific publications. A number of his recent papers have been proven to be exact copies of papers published earlier by other people. ^[11]
• A University of Colorado investigating committee found Ethnic Studies professor and activist Ward Churchill guilty of multiple counts of plagiarism, fabrication, and falsification. After the Chancellor recommended Churchill's dismissal to the Board of Regents, Churchill was fired on 24 July 2007.^[12][13]
• Physicist and Vice Chancellor of Kumaon University, India, Prof. B.S. Rajput resigned in 2003 after he and a student were found guilty of plagiarism of a paper (which formed part of the student's thesis).^[14][15]
• In 2007 researchers of Anna University Chennai in Madras published a paper in the Journal of Materials Science ^[16], an exact copy of an article from the University of Linköping published in PNAS ^{[17] [18]}
• In April 2008, James Twitchell, a professor of literature at the University of Florida, admitted having plagiarized and falsified the works of multiple authors.^[19]

[edit] Business

Main article: Controversies surrounding Royal Dutch Shell#Plagiarism controversy over Sakhalin-2 motivational memo

On 6 June 2007, the Financial Times published a front page article under the headline: "'Pipeliners All!’ Shell’s memo to Sakhalin" ^[20]

The article was about a leaked motivational memo in the form of an email from David Greer, the deputy chief executive of Sakhalin Energy circulated to Sakhalin-2 staff. Some keen eyed readers noticed that inspirational passages were appropriated from a famous speech given by the legendary U.S. General George S. Patton, on 5 June 1944 on the eve of D-Day the Sixth of June. On 7 June 2007, a quarter page follow-up article was published in the Financial Times newspaper and on the FT.com website, under the headline: "Sakhalin motivational memo borrows heavily from Patton” ^{[21][citation needed]}

On Monday 11 June 2007, the Financial Times published another article at ^[22] on the subject, this time headlined: “Motivational memos must make their message clear”. One of the opening paragraphs stated: “The memo (www.ft.com/shell) is crass, poorly punctuated and most of it wasn't even written by its author, David Greer, deputy chief executive of Royal Dutch Shell's Sakhalin Energy Investment Company. He had lifted the words of General George S. Patton with no attribution, and clumsily adapted them to spur on his team of recalcitrant pipeline engineers”.^{[citation needed]}

On 9 June 2007, The Moscow Times published a front page article on the controversy headlined: Sakhalin Pep Talk From ‘Old Blood and Guts'.

On Friday 22 June 2007, The Moscow Times published a front page story with the headline: "Sakhalin Energy's Greer Steps Down". The newspaper reported that "David Greer, the Sakhalin Energy deputy CEO running the giant Sakhalin-2 oil and gas project, has left the company unexpectedly just weeks after a leaked e-mail he wrote revealed the pressure that managers working there were facing". The article said that Greer had been a 27-year Shell veteran, and was leaving to pursue other business interests.

[edit] Computer games

• Atari's video game Pong was accused by Magnavox of being a copy of the Odyssey's tennis game. Nolan Bushnell saw Ralph Baer's version at a 1972 electronics show in Burlingame, California. Bushnell then founded Atari and established Pong as its featured game. "Baer and Magnavox filed suit against Bushnell and Atari in 1973 and finally reached an out-of-court settlement in 1976. It marked the end for Odyssey and the beginning of the Atari age."^{[23] [24]}

[edit] Film

• The 1922 film Nosferatu was an unauthorized adaptation of Bram Stoker's novel Dracula. Stoker's widow sued the producers of Nosferatu, and had many of the film's copies destroyed (although some remain).^[25]
• The 1990 movie Hardware was noted to have substantial similarities to the 2000 AD one-shot story "SHOK!". Following legal action, the filmmakers agreed to amend the credits to read that the movie was "inspired by" the writers of the comic strip.^[26]

[edit] Journalism

• In 1999, writer and television commentator Monica Crowley allegedly plagiarized part of an article she wrote for the Wall Street Journal (August 9, 1999), called "The Day Nixon Said Goodbye." The Journal ran an apology the same week. Timothy Noah of Slate Magazine later wrote of the striking similarities in her article to phrases Paul Johnson used in his 1988 article for Commentary called "In Praise of Richard Nixon".^[27]
• New York Times reporter Jayson Blair plagiarized articles and manufactured quotations in stories, including stories regarding Jessica Lynch and the Beltway sniper attacks. He and several editors from the Times resigned in June 2003.^[28]
• Moorestown Township, New Jersey, high-school student Blair Hornstine had her admission to Harvard University revoked in July 2003 after she was found to have passed off speeches and writings by famous figures, including Bill Clinton, as hers in articles she wrote as a student journalist for a local newspaper.^[29]
• Long-time Baltimore Sun columnist Michael Olesker resigned on January 4, 2006, after being accused of plagiarizing other journalists' articles in his columns.^[30]
• Conservative blogger Ben Domenech, soon after he was hired to write a blog for the Washington Post in 2006, was found to have plagiarized a number of columns and articles he'd written for his college newspaper and National Review Online, lifting passages from a variety of sources ranging from well-known pundits to amateur film critics. Domenech ultimately apologized and resigned.^[31]
• Boston Globe columnist Mike Barnicle was forced to resign when it was revealed that amid other allegations, his Globe column dated August 2, 1998 contained 10 lifted passages from George Carlin's 1997 book Brain Droppings.^[32]
• A Pakistani ezine, Wecite, was found to have plagiarised as many as 11 articles in its May 2007 issue, many of them verbatim, from various sources on the web, including Hindustan Times, Rediff, Blogcritics, Vis-a-Vis magazine and Slate magazines. ^[33] The ezine management pulled the website and apologised, terming the plagiarism a product of the "mis-use" of authority by writers and editors of the magazines, and promising to deal with the plagiarists accordingly but "by no means" letting the "genuine efforts of its [other] writers, administration, and management suffer for it".^[34]
• In an October 2007 column for The Sun-Herald, Australian television presenter David Koch plagiarised verbatim three lines from a column in The Sunday Telegraph. Koch stated to Media Watch: "... it has since been pointed out to me that these 3 sentences look as though they came from a similar story in another newspaper. While that was not obvious in the research brief it isn't an excuse and I take full responsibility for the mistake."^[35]

[edit] Literature

• A young Helen Keller was accused in 1892 of plagiarizing Margaret T. Canby's story The Frost Fairies in her short story The Frost King. She was brought before a tribunal of the Perkins Institute for the Blind, where she was acquitted by a single vote. She said she was worried she may have read The Frost Fairies and forgotten it, "remained paranoid about plagiarism ever after" ^[36][37] and said that this led her to write an autobiography: the one thing she knew must be original.

• Alex Haley settled a lawsuit with Harold Courlander that cited approximately 80 passages in Haley's novel Roots as having been plagiarized from Courlander's novel The African. "Accusations that portions of 'Roots' (Doubleday hard cover, Dell paperback) consisted of plagiarized material or were concocted plagued Mr. Haley from soon after the book's publication up until his death in February 1992. In 1978, Mr. Haley was sued for plagiarism by Harold Courlander, author of the novel The African, and Haley paid him $650,000 in an out-of-court settlement."^[38] Haley insisted that "the passages 'were in something somebody had given me, and I don't know who gave it to me . . . . Somehow or another, it ended up in the book."^[39]In 1988 In 1978, Courlander went to the U.S. District Court of the Southern District of New York, charging Haley with plagiarism of The African. Courlander's pre-trial memorandum in the copyright infringement lawsuit stated: "Defendant Haley had access to and substantially copied from The African. Without The African, Roots would have been a very different and less successful novel, and indeed it is doubtful that Mr. Haley could have written Roots without The African. . . . Mr. Haley copied language, thoughts, attitudes, incidents, situations, plot and character."

In his report submitted to the court in this lawsuit, Professor of English and expert witness on plagiarism, Michael Wood of Columbia University, stated: "The evidence of copying from The African in both the novel and the television dramatization of Roots is clear and irrefutable. The copying is significant and extensive....Roots...plainly uses The African as a model: as something to be copied at some times, and at other times to be modified; but always, it seems, to be consulted. . . . Roots takes from The African phrases, situations, ideas, aspects of style and of plot. . . . Roots finds in The African essential elements for its depiction of such things as a slave's thoughts of escape, the psychology of an old slave, the habits of mind of the hero, and the whole sense of life on an infamous slave ship. Such things are the life of a novel; and when they appear in Roots, they are the life of someone else's novel."

After a five-week trial in federal district court, Courlander and Haley settled the case[1], with Haley making a financial settlement and a statement that "Alex Haley acknowledges and regrets that various materials from The African by Harold Courlander found their way into his book Roots."

During the trial, presiding U.S. District Court Judge Robert J. Ward stated, "Copying there is, period." In a later interview with BBC Television, Judge Ward stated, "Alex Haley perpetrated a hoax on the public."

During the trial, Alex Haley had maintained that he had not read The African before writing Roots. Shortly after the trial, however, Joseph Bruchac, an instructor of black literature at Skidmore College, came forward to swear in an affidavit that in 1970 or 1971 (five or six years before the publication of Roots) he had discussed The African with Haley and had, in fact, given his "own personal copy of The African to Mr. Haley."

• Dan Brown, author of The Da Vinci Code, has been twice accused of plagiarism resulting in lawsuits, but both suits were ultimately dismissed.^{[40][41][42][43][44]}
  • Brown was accused of "appropriating the architecture" of the book The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail (1982) by Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh. A British judge dismissed the copyright infringement claim in April 2006, on the grounds that the earlier book claims to be non-fictional.
  • Additionally, Brown was accused by novelist Lewis Perdue for plagiarizing his novels The Da Vinci Legacy (1983) and Daughter of God (2000). A U.S. judge dismissed the case in August 2005.
• Kaavya Viswanathan's first novel How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild and Got a Life is reported to contain plagiarized passages from at least five other novels. All editions of the book were subsequently withdrawn, her publishing deal with Little, Brown and Co. was rescinded, and a film deal with Dreamworks SKG was cancelled.^[45][46][47]
• In 1999, J.K. Rowling (author of the Harry Potter series of books) was sued by Nancy Stouffer who claimed the former plagiarised material from the latter's short-lived writing career. Stouffer lost the suit after a judge ruled that she had fabricated evidence.

[edit] Music

• George Harrison was successfully sued in a prolonged suit that began in 1971 for plagiarizing the Chiffons' "He's So Fine" for the melody of his own "My Sweet Lord." ^[48]
• In early 2007, Timbaland was alleged to have plagiarized several elements (both motifs and samples) in the song "Do It" on the 2006 album Loose by Nelly Furtado without giving credit or compensation. See 2007 Timbaland plagiarism controversy.
• In early 2006, The writers of Lee Hyori's song "Get Ya" were accused of plagiarizing Britney Spears' 2005 song "Do Somethin'". This eventually led Lee Hyori to stop promoting the song and contributed to the failure of the song and its album, Dark Angel.
• In 1994 John Fogerty was sued for self plagiarism after leaving Fantasy Records and pursuing a solo career with Warner Brothers. Fantasy still owned the rights to the CCR library and sound. Saul Zaentz, the owner of Fantasy, claimed Fogerty's song "Old Man Down the Road" was a musical copy of the Creedence song "Run Through the Jungle." The court made a landmark decision when it ruled that an artist cannot plagiarize himself.

[edit] Politics

[edit] Senator Joseph Biden

• Biden was forced to withdraw from the 1988 Democratic US Presidential nominations when it was alleged that he had failed a 1965 introductory law school course on legal methodology due to plagiarism. "Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr., fighting to salvage his Presidential campaign . . . acknowledged 'a mistake' in his youth, when he plagiarized a law review article for a paper he wrote in his first year at law school. Mr. Biden insisted, however, that he had done nothing 'malevolent,' that he had simply misunderstood the need to cite sources carefully."^[49] Biden withdrew from the race September 23, 1987, and reported the law school incident to the Delaware Supreme Court. The court's Board of Professional Responsibility cleared him of any allegations.^[50]
• Biden was also accused of plagiarizing portions of his speeches, notably those of British Labour leader Neil Kinnock and US Senator Robert F. Kennedy. Biden was forced out of the Presidential race after the Michael Dukakis campaign released a video showing Biden using one of Kinnock's speeches without properly attributing it. Biden called the charges "much ado about nothing;"^[51] it was also revealed that Biden had used and properly cited the Kinnock speech on several other occasions, although he failed to do so on the one instance recorded by the Dukakis campaign.^[52]

[edit] Iraq War

• In a New York Times editorial prior to the Iraq War, United States President George W. Bush's National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice explained that Saddam Hussein could not be trusted for various reasons, including the fact that Hussein had committed plagiarism. "Iraq's declaration [to the United Nations regarding the state of its nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons programs] even resorted to unabashed plagiarism, with lengthy passages of United Nations reports copied word-for-word (or edited to remove any criticism of Iraq) and presented as original text."^[53]
• On February 3, 2003, Alastair Campbell, British Prime Minister Tony Blair's Director of Communications and Strategy, released a briefing document to journalists entitled "Iraq: Its Infrastructure of Concealment, Deception and Intimidation." It described Iraq and its weapons of mass destruction programs. Journalists discovered that many sources, particularly an article by Ibrahim al-Marashi, had been copied word-for-word, including typographical errors. Journalists dubbed the document the "Dodgy Dossier." After the revelation, Blair's office issued a statement admitting that a mistake was made in not crediting its sources, but it did not concede that the quality of the document's content was affected.^[54]

[edit] Vladimir Putin

• Russian President Vladimir Putin has been accused of plagiarism by fellows at the Brookings Institution who allege that "[l]arge chunks of Putin's economics dissertation on planning in the natural resources sector were lifted from a management text published by two University of Pittsburgh academics nearly 20 years earlier."^[55]

[edit] Wikipedia

• In November 2006, the Associated Press reported activist Daniel Brandt's claim to have uncovered 142 articles with plagiarized content among the 12,000 Wikipedia articles he chose to search. Wikipedia administrators responded that this list misidentified some articles where it was the allegedly original text that had plagiarized Wikipedia, and reported that they took action on the cases that involved copyright violations.^[56] He "called on Wikipedia to conduct a thorough review of all its articles."^[57]

• George Orwel has been accused of plagiarizing Wikipedia in the book Black Gold: The New Frontier in Oil for Investors. The publisher, John Wiley & Sons, has confirmed that the book used "about five paragraphs"^[58] from a 2005 Wikipedia article on the Khobar Towers Bombing in Saudi Arabia. One of the Wikipedia user pages contains related discussion.^[59] Additional comments (including some original material) and opinions are found in web-media.^[60][61]

[edit] Other instances

[edit] William H. Swanson

• William H. Swanson, CEO, of Raytheon, admitted to plagiarism in claiming authorship for his booklet, "Swanson's Unwritten Rules of Management," after being exposed by The New York Times.^[62] On May 2, 2006, Raytheon withdrew distribution of the book.^[63]

[edit] Lyle Menendez

• Lyle Menendez was suspended from Princeton University after his first semester for copying a fellow student's lab report.^[64]

[edit] References