When confronted with proof of their plagiarism, plagiarists tend to resort to a handful of tired excuses. “I forgot the citation,” is always popular, but isn’t all that convincing when talking about several paragraphs, or even pages, of verbatim text. “It was an accident” is another—which, again, if the offense is sufficiently severe, can be laughable.
But is it possible to plagiarize without meaning to? Joel Marks, professor emeritus of philosophy at the University of New Haven, thinks so. In an article for the current edition of Philosophy Now, he tells how he discovered, to his chagrin, a strong similarity between a science-fiction story he had written and one that he may (or may not) have read. Marks writes:
… even though my unconscious act was not itself morally wrong, it could count as plagiarism. This would depend on whether the concept of plagiarism incorporates conscious intention; it seems to be the legal consensus, at any rate, that it need not, so ‘unconscious plagiarism’ is not an oxymoron.
In a 2007 essay for The Virginia Quarterly Review, Erik Campbell writes about discovering that a poem he’d submitted to several journals was extremely similar to one by another poet whose book he owned. “I was too shocked to try to will myself dead,” he writes after happening across the other poem. Fortunately, Campbell’s poem was rejected.
This kind of plagiarism—if that’s even the right word—is a different beast entirely from the cut-and-paste variety. Copying is obviously wrong. But where, exactly, is the line between being influenced by a writer and ripping him or her off?
(Note: I intentionally stole the title for this post—”The Accidental Plagiarist”—from Campbell’s essay.)
11 Responses to The Accidental Plagiarist
2000man - April 23, 2010 at 12:26 pm
I think that Prof. Marks may have inadvertently stolen the idea for this paper from Seinfeld. You know the one where Elaine draws a cartoon for the New Yorker, but it turns out that she stole the idea from Ziggy.
12019021 - April 23, 2010 at 4:17 pm
For an interesting discussion of unconscious plagiarism, Judge Owen’s decision involving My Sweet Lord (George Harrison) and He’s So Fine (The Chiffons) is worth looking at. Who would have thought??? See: Bright Tunes Music v. Harrisongs Music, 420 F. Supp. 177 (S.D.N.Y. 1976)
swish - April 23, 2010 at 5:36 pm
And before either of the above, an episode of *The Dick Van Dyke Show* had Laura accidentally plagiarize a children’s book her grandmother had read to her. In another, Rob used an idea his son Richie mentioned in a comedy sketch, unaware that Richie was merely recounting a skit on another comedy show (in that case, however, Rob was certainly responsible and blameworthy).
tebartlett - April 23, 2010 at 9:21 pm
@2000man Oh yeah, I had forgotten about that one. @12019021 A link to that case: http://cip.law.ucla.edu/cases/case_brightharrisongs.html@swish I am awed by your knowledge of The Dick Van Dyke Show. And I thought I was a fan …
11159995 - April 24, 2010 at 8:45 am
For an answer to your last question, read Richard Posner’s delightful and insightful “The Little Book of Plagiarism” (Pantheon, 2007), which I reviewed here: http://muse.jhu.edu/login?uri=/journals/journal_of_scholarly_publishing/v040/40.3.thatcher.html.
tebartlett - April 24, 2010 at 10:41 am
@11159995 Thanks. Enjoyed the review.
slchew455 - April 24, 2010 at 11:37 pm
Unintentional plagiarism is a well established phenomenon in psychology. It is called cryptomnesia. Memory for source seems to be forgotten more quickly than memory for content. So someone may remember something but mistakenly believe it is their own original thought. Conversely, you may have thought of something yourself, but later believe the idea originated with someone else.
ebert - April 25, 2010 at 11:13 am
One has to distinguish the concepts of “plagiarism,” which is primarily an academic construct, from “copyright infringement,” which is a federal legal term (and which was at issue in the Harrison matter). As to federal law, one is free to copy that which is not protected, and one could indeed claim to be the author of Hamlet, without federal penalty (see Dastar). As to federal law, intent is not an issue, and one analyzes whether there is a substantial similarity of protectable elements. The case of Glenn Poshard at SIU raised the issue of inadvertent plagiarism in the context of Poshard’s Ph.D. thesis.
tebartlett - April 25, 2010 at 2:27 pm
@slchew455 Thanks. Vocab word of the day. @ebert Good points. As for Poshard, his thesis contains numerous verbatim passages from other sources without citations. Seems hard to believe that that falls under “cryptomnesia.”
esautovar72 - April 26, 2010 at 10:45 am
As one who has been “accidentally” plagiarized by a well known professor (790 words to be exact), it is difficult to believe that unconscious plagiarism occurs… this was more or less the excuse used. What is more disappointing is how little editorial boards care about the issue. To paraphrase the publisher, speaking on behalf of the journal editor, short of the shady work having a life threatening impact (as in medical studies focsing on the use of medications), there is no need to retract articles. See, cheating does help (some!).
ebert - April 26, 2010 at 1:05 pm
As a general matter, I agree with the remarks of esautovar72. The general rule is what makes the Sticklen case at Michigan State so remarkable.As to tebartlett, there are at least two interesting aspects to the Poshard matter. First, several of the professors argued that proper citation procedures were not well-defined for Ph.D. theses at the time of Poshard’s thesis. [!] Second, of more interest to me (and far less discussed), is the copying done at page 54 of the thesis, wherein a section summarizing the “state of the art” was taken from someone else’s book, without attribution [a bad thing] but the time frame of the copied text was entirely inappropriate for use in the context it was copied! [a serious academic error that none on the committee noted] It wasn’t just copying without attribution, it was irrelevant and inappropriate copying. Neither the Sticklen case nor the Poshard case appear to be cryptomnesia.