Showing posts with label plagiarism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label plagiarism. Show all posts
Margaret Wente and The Gelber Prize
Plagiarism, 'originality failure', phantom Occupy protester – however you look at it, it’s surprising that columnist Margaret Wente was named to the jury for the Gelber Prize. Aside from the incident that became an international story (and resulted in her being 'disciplined'by The Globe and Mail), there are so many other reasons to wonder about the choice.
Don’t universities take strong public standards against plagiarism? What would the University of Toronto or The Munk School (partners in the award) do with students who engaged in these practices?
It’s not as though Ms. Wente springs immediately to mind as the country’s foremost expert in diplomacy and foreign policy – the focus of the award; she’s best known for a kind of artful contrarianism often aimed at social issues like gender and education. Unlike journalists who also produce sustained scholarship on foreign affairs, her books are largely collections of previous columns – an anecdotal writing style with coversshowing her provocatively draped in a Canadian flag. They seem more about Wente than the world.
Given its billing as “the world's most importantaward for non-fiction”, you’d expect jurors to bring relevant expertise from a variety of perspectives. But looking at the list, there’s not a lot of diversity. Other jurors include former Globe Editor William Thorsell, who, as I think I read somewhere, shares both a work history and a country house postal code with Ms. Wente. And Wente’s ‘originality’ problems may present other challenges in terms of range and diversity – take for example fellow juror, Walter Russell Mead.
In the last couple of years, Wente has cited the work of the “brilliant analyst Walter Russell Mead” about 7 times. While not extensive enough to warrant the plagiarism discussionthat followed the Paarlberg or Carr examples, or the ethical concerns about "John", one might still ask if some of the similarities in viewpoint or missing quotation marks in these articles amplify questions around her selection.
For example, a column Ms. Wente wrote on climate change followed one by Mead, who here puts punctuation around material he includes from The Guardian:
“[a] Guardian investigation… found evidence that a series of measurements from Chinese weather stations were seriously flawed and that documents relating to them could not be produced.”
The Guardian… has found that a series of measurements from Chinese weather stations were seriously flawed, and that documents relating to them could not be produced.
In a similar article called Kyoto fraud revealed, Mead celebrated the demise of that “idiotic”, “stupid piece of counterproductive social engineering” (or as others might see it – failed international diplomacy) aimed at reducing greenhouse gases. He argued that environmentalists got a ‘free ride from the media’ and ‘need to grow up’. Wente seems to be singing along for a bit.
If you add up the CO2 released by the goods and services Europeans consumed, as opposed to the CO2 thrown off by the goods and services they produced, the EU was responsible for 40% more CO2 in 2010 than in 1990.
(The EU is actually responsible for 40 per cent more CO2 today than it was in 1990, if you count the goods and services it consumed as opposed to the ones that it produced.)
(Environmentalism) gets a free ride from most of the mainstream media and also the mainstream intellectual establishment.
They got a fabulous free ride from politicians and the media…
Kyoto was as big a fraud as…
…reduction in carbon emissions… exposed as a giant fraud…
Environmentalists will only be able to help the world when they grow up.
And, after arguing that environmentalists should forget climate change and polar bears and focus on important things - like lions and tigers - she echoes Mead’s observation:
Please grow up, people. You have important work to do.
In other articles, both writers show their displeasure with public education and universities, arguing that we need to scrap current arrangements, and move to a more market driven approach.
Tenure is going to become much, much rarer…
Tenure will become much rarer…
Mead says classes will be taught by:
… non-Ph.D. TA’s trained to handle a particular group of courses…
…teaching loads will increasingly be handled by non-PhDs trained to handle a particular group of courses.
The natural sciences … will probably do better than the humanities…
Natural sciences will fare better than the humanities…
Here, Wente gets around to mentioning Mead, but still no quotation marks:
…as U.S. commentator Walter Russell Mead remarks, taxpayers are not going to subsidize research in critical literary theory much longer.
Taxpayers are not going to subsidize research in critical literary theory very much longer.
In Our school systems are so last century Wente credits Mead for paraphrased material, but then uses some words that had appeared in an article by Globe colleague Gary Mason (without mentioning him):
“It is in almost every respect a system built for another age,” writes education historian John Fleming (whose views were cited in The Province newspaper). The union, the government and the school trustees, in his view, are all anti-visionary, anti-technological and completely committed to the status quo.
The historian’s name was later corrected; and Thomas Fleming’s views - at least the ones that Mason and Wente cite – seem to have appeared in The Tyee rather than The Province. Here’s Mason’s passage in The Globe a few months earlier.
“It is in almost every respect a system built for another age,” Dr. Fleming writes… the union, the government and the school trustees – are anti-visionary, anti-technological and completely committed to the status quo.
Wente then devotes a few paragraphs to Mead’s 21stcentury vision of education:
…groups of like-minded teachers… empowered to get together and open neighbourhood schools and run them as they see fit… determine their own curriculum, teaching materials and policies. They…would decide how big the classes would be and whether they should offer Grade 11 history, gym, music or clown lessons. Teachers would be treated as entrepreneurs and professionals… Principals would be able to recruit the teachers they want...Every so often, the students would write standard tests in core subjects, and the results would be public…
And last, in Debt ceiling chicken and the end of empire, Wente again channels Mead, who in the article she cites also writes that Medicare/Medicaid is a “catastrophe” “destroying the nation”, adding that abortion rates in the U.S. contribute to a “holocaust of youth and hope on a scale hard to match”. Wente apparently concurs:
As the thinker Walter Russell Mead puts it, the U.S. health system marries the greed of the private sector to the ineptitude of government. This health-care industrial complex will soon account for one-fifth of the economy.
No real attribution problems there, but in the same article, Ms. Wente finds efficiencies in material she reuses two weeks later.
Wente, July 30, 2011: As Fortune’s Nina Easton writes, 20 per cent of all American men are “collecting unemployment, in prison, on disability, operating in the underground economy, or getting by on the paycheques of wives or girlfriends or parents.”
Wente, August 16, 2011: These men, as Fortune’s Nina Easton observes, are either “collecting unemployment, in prison, on disability, operating in the underground economy, or getting by on the paycheques of wives or girlfriends or parents.”
Are these as serious as past instances? No. But they do reflect a kind of practice, a habit, and dare one say, a kind of entitlement. Given all that, and what was pretty universally described as the dreadful way Ms. Wente and her editors dealt with the more serious instances, one has to wonder why the Gelber Prize, the University of Toronto and the Munk School chose to rely so heavily on jurors associated with that particular newspaper in their selection of assessors .
One can think of so many qualified Canadian writers with unblemished careers. Even if one had to put so many eggs in The Globe’s basket, there are other choices. Take Stephanie Nolen – a book, sixNational Newspaper Awards, a Master’s degree from the London School of Economics. Or Doug Saunders, author of two books at least related to foreign policy.
There are lots of writers capable of sustained, original writing on relevant issues who would know first hand what the task involves – historians, analysts and others who could provide peer review, not just book review – especially when some of those book reviews have been acknowledged to be unacceptable.
And there are other newspapers, other postal codes. How about Dan Gardner? True, he may not have written glowing profiles of Peter Munk, but he’s written two great books and a pretty good article about Robert Paarlberg.
Sure, the Gelber Prize involves a private foundation, a wonderful and generous gift, and they can do what they want with their money. But it’s also associated with, and reflects, The University of Toronto and The Munk School – which, coincidentally, just announced a new journalism partnership with The Globe and Mail. What might that mean? As Ms. Wente might say, I don’t have a clue.
The Globe and Mail: Driving home a point about plagiarism
Since it seems we’re not to take Margaret Wente’s plagiarismoverlyseriously, what follows is likely acceptable at Canada's 'newspaper of record' as well.
I don’t read the Drive section. The similarity between Phil Patton's 2011 New York Times articleon the iconic Jaguar E and one a few days later by The Globe’s Jeremy Cato was pointed out (also noted in the Globe’s comments, and oddly, not scrubbed). Worth checking - how often do you find a Museum of Modern Art curator mixed up with transmissions and torque?
Looking closely, the little discrepancies raise as many questions as the (at times) identical writing. Christopher Mount was a curator at the MOMA when the Jag was purchased. While there’s less identical overlap in this example, let’s start there (emphasis mine):
Patton:“The story was that Sayer could draw the optimal aerodynamic shape of a car to within a thousandth of an inch,” Mr. Mount said… In the brochure distributed when the E-Type was added to the museum’s collection, Mr. Mount wrote that “the car’s beauty and overall harmony of line arises from the universality of these mathematical proportions, which are by definition not subjective but absolute.”
But the E-Type’s shape radiated a power that went far beyond any cold mathematical formulas.
Cato: "Sayer was about drawing the optimal aerodynamic shape of a car to within a thousandth of an inch," said Callum in Geneva, pointing to the car. A MOMA brochure describes"the car's beauty and overall harmony of line" as arising "from the universality of these mathematical proportions, which are by definition not subjective but absolute." Callum, though, was quick to say the E-Type is more than the product of cold mathematical formulas.
So at the beginning of the passage, the NYT quotes Mount about “optimal aerodynamic shape…”, while the Globe gives the words to Callum in Geneva. And at the end, the identical observation about “cold mathematical formulas” appears to be Patton’s prose in the NYT, and in The Globe, becomes Callum’s remarks again. So who really said or wrote what?
There are lots of similarities; here’s one near identical bit:
Patton:“It is impossible to overstate the impact the E-Type had when it was unveiled,” said Ian Callum, the design director of Jaguar Cars, who as a young man fell under the spell of the E-Type and the XJ6 sedan.
Cato: "It is impossible to overstate the impact the E-Type had when it was unveiled," said Jaguar design director Ian Callum last week in Geneva. Callum as a young man fell under the spell of the E-Type and the XJ6 sedan …
Now it’s certainly possible that Callum repeated that quote at the Geneva Auto Show, but the same canned quote in the above passage appeared on Jaguar's website and in several articles months before theevent. Like the passage with Mr. Mount above, are these things that Callum “said” in Geneva, or not? And given that the last identical bit about ‘a young man falling under its spell’ appears to be Patton’s original prose, what gives?
More:
Patton:The E-Type was the successor, as its name suggested, to Jaguar’s C-Type and D-Type racecars, both of which had accumulated brilliant competition records, including a string of wins at the 24 Hours of Le Mans in the 1950s.
A moncoque structure — derived from aircraft technology, it did not have a separate ladder-type frame — made the E-Type relatively light. It had disc brakes…and a clever suspension that made it agile.
Cato: The E-Type was the successor to Jaguar’s C-Type and D-Type race cars, both of which enjoyed a string of wins at the 24 Hours of Le Mans in the 1950s …. For instance, the monocoque structure, based on aircraft technology, was thoroughly modern and made the car very light. The disc brakes were race car-like and the clever suspension design made the E quick, responsive and agile.
Patton:Sayer’s approach was more scientific; he would withdraw to a private room at Jaguar to work, consulting his complex tables of numbers and formulas and outlining mysterious elliptical shapes…
Cato: Sayer was not a designer as such, but more of a mathematician… He is said to have created the E-Type in a private room at Jaguar, consulting his complex tables of numbers and formulas and outlining mysterious elliptical shapes.
Patton:Robert Cumberford, a critic and historian of automobile design, tagged it “Phalliform Perfection”…
Cato: Robert Cumberford, a critic and historian of automobile design who joined us on the stand in Geneva, says the car is the ultimate automotive expression of "Phalliform Perfection."
Cato’s mention of Cumberford as someone who “who joined us on the stand in Geneva” suggests his presence at the event – which amplifies the question; why is his article so similar, and at times identical, to Patton’s? Here, again, the two close in a similar vein.
Patton:The country in 1961 still lived in the extended aftermath of wartime austerity.... But the first stirrings of the ’60s counterculture were visible...A new band called the Beatles performed for the first time at the Cavern in Liverpool…
Cato: The E-Type… was also a product of an England which in 1961 finally found itself emerging from the suffocating grip of post-World War suffering and rationing. England in the 1960s was coming alive with music (The Beatles, the Rolling Stones to name two)...
Is it plagiarism? Sure looks like it. It would be for a student. Does it matter? It should. And together with the way Margaret Wente’s repeated lapses were handled, it speaks to standards.
And as with Ms. Wente, it’s not just the un-attributed use of other peoples’ prose and/or quotes. Like her scientist turned fisherman, student loan advertisement turned Occupy protester, Filipino peasant farmerturned Western “luminary”, figures from a Pew report that turn out to be from elsewhere, or her own borrowingfrom The New York Times, sloppy methods can lead to factual errors – or at least serious doubt about who said what.
Newspapers rely on public trust. Copying the New York Times doesn’t make The Globe and Mail likethe New York Times. And even if The Globe is now prepared to censor online comments to prevent anyone pointing this out, readers know it.
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