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| Hearsay: |
Will the Google book search uncover a sordid history of plagiarism?
Amir Aczel knew just whom to blame. "It seems," the science author complained last month in an irate letter to the Washington Post, "that [Charles] Seife has submitted every sentence in my book to a Google search." Days earlier in a Post book review, Seife exposed what appeared to be embarrassing plagiarisms in Aczel's new book, The Artist and the Mathematician. But if Seife's discovery that Aczel lifted text from the Guggenheim Museum's Web site was instructive, so was the assumption behind Aczel's response. For any plagiarist living in an age of search engines, waving a loaded book in front of reviewers has become the literary equivalent of suicide by cop.
Hey, just to rub salt in the wounds of the plagiarist, is that the same Seife who wrote Zero: A Biography of a Dangerous Idea? 'Cause I loved that book!
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November 23rd, 2006 at 10:25 pm
Yes, indeed, George, Seife is the author of Zero…. I also second your enthusiasm for the book; it’s really good, even for math-hating English majors. Sadly, his last two have been as good.
November 26th, 2006 at 12:37 am
Plagiarism: Three Definitions
What is plagiarism exactly? We all know it means word-for-word copying from another source without credit, but in fact the concept is somewhat broader. The MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers defines plagiarism as “the act of using another person’s ideas or expressions in your writing without acknowledging the source. . . . In short, to plagiarize is to give the impression that you have written or thought something that you have in fact borrowed from someone else.”
This means that paraphrasing another’s word’s without attribution can also qualify as plagiarism. Making slight variations in syntax and wording may not spare a writer from this charge, which has ruined more than a few careers.
—The New York Public Library Writer’s Guide to Style and Usage (1994)
Plagiarism is a term often used in association with literary works. According to Black’s Law Dictionary, plagiarism is “the act of appropriating the literary composition of another, or parts or passages or his writings, or the ideas or language of the same, and passing them off as the product of one’s own mind.” As such, plagiarism may violate the right to reproduce a copyright work and may also violate the moral right of the author to have his or her name associated with his or her work. Where plagiarism is an appropriation of ideas, without the appropriation of the actual expression of those ideas, it is not a violation of copyright since copyright does not protect ideas.
—Lesley Ellen Harris, Canadian Copyright Law, 3rd edition (2001)
Plagiarize, v. To take the thought or style of another writer whom one has never, never read.
—Ambrose Bierce, The Devil’s Dictionary (1911)