Plagiarism and Margaret Wente (reprise)

Today’s column doesn’t amount to much - just a few quotes, in the same order, as a previous column by Irwin Cotler in the Montréal Gazette.

Wente: Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad describes Israel as an "insult to humanity" and "a cancerous tumour," and calls for its "disappearance."



Cotler …. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who characterized Israel as an "insult to humanity" and "a cancerous tumour" while calling, yet again, for its "disappearance."



It’s the context – a brief glimpse of which can be had from a few examples below (taken from more extensive ones).  In many of these the overlap is not confined to quotes, and it's a legitimate question as to whether it constitutes proper attribution.

Wente: "delivering formal property rights to poor people can bring them out of the sway of demagogues and into the modern global economy…"



Cato Institute: "Delivering formal property rights to the poor can bring them out of the sway of demagogues and into the extended order of the modern global economy".



Wente: "For his challenge to the status quo, the Shining Path, the Peruvian Marxist terrorist group, targeted him for assassination. His offices were bombed and his car was machine-gunned. Today, the Shining Path is moribund, and Mr. de Soto continues his passionate mission".



Cato Institute:"For his efforts, the Peruvian Marxist terror group Shining Path targeted him for assassination. The institute's offices were bombed. His car was machine-gunned. Today the Shining Path is moribund, but de Soto remains very much alive and a passionate advocate…"



***

Wente and Helen Rumbelow, Sunday Times (prose overlap in bold):

Wente: one of the world's most authoritative sources of breastfeeding research is Michael Kramer, Professor of Pediatrics at Mcgill university. "The public health breastfeeding promotion information is way out of date," he says. The trouble is that the breastfeeding lobby is at war with the formula milk industry, and neither side is being very scientific."When it becomes a crusade, people are not very rational."

Rumbelow: ...one of the world's most authoritative sources of breastfeeding research: Michael Kramer, Professor of Paediatrics at Mcgill University, Montreal.

..."The public health breastfeeding promotion information is way out of date," Kramer says. The trouble is, he said, that the breastfeeding lobby is at war with the formula milk industry, and "neither side is being very scientific ... when it becomes a crusade, people are not very rational."

***

Wente and the New York Times:

Wente: …But it hasn't worked out that way, Mr. West writes. Instead, what we've built is a vast cultural dependency. Americans and Canadians are fighting and dying while the Afghans by and large stand by and do nothing to help them.

Dexter Filkins: …This isn’t happening. What we have created instead, West shows, is a vast culture of dependency: Americans are fighting and dying, while the Afghans by and large stand by and do nothing to help them.

***

Wente and Stephen Pinker, New York Times: Leaving aside side a short section in quotes, some of Pinker’s analysis and wording (see sections in bold), are not included in quotation marks.

Wente: Mr. Pinker… wrote: “The common thread in Gladwell's writing is a kind of populism, which seeks to undermine the ideals of talent, intelligence and analytical prowess in favour of luck, opportunity, experience and intuition” – explaining his appeal to both the Horatio Alger right (Mr. Gladwell is extremely popular on the Dilbert circuit) and the egalitarian left.

Pinker, NYT:The common thread in Gladwell’s writing is a kind of populism, which seeks to undermine the ideals of talent, intelligence and analytical prowess in favor of luck, opportunity, experience and intuition… this has the advantage of appealing both to the Horatio Alger right and to the egalitarian left.

Earlier in the same NYT piece, Pinker had used the expression Wente places in parentheses, but not in quotation marks - a popular speaker on the Dilbert circuit.

Wente doesn’t summarize Gladwell’s wide ranging and eclectic book herself –  she uses Pinker’s words and ideas:

Wente: Mr. Gladwell claims that cognitive skills don't predict success, that intelligence scores do not relate closely to job performance and that above a minimum iq of 120, higher intelligence doesn't bring greater intellectual achievements.

Pinker, NYT:It is simply not true that… cognitive skills don’t predict a teacher’s effectiveness, that intelligence scores are poorly related to job performance or… that above a minimum i.q. of 120, higher intelligence does not bring greater intellectual achievements.

***

Or thisrecent example, where Ms. Wente appears to use unattributed material gathered by a live blogger at a lecture by Robert Putnam: 

Wente:  “’We’re about to go over a cliff when it comes to social mobility,’ he says. ‘Social mobility and opportunity [for kids who grow up in the bottom third of society] are going to plummet.’”

Weinberg, quoting Putnam:  “If we look out the windshield, we’re about to go over a cliff when it comes to social mobility…Social mobility and opportunity are going to plummet.”

Wente:  “’Over the last two decades or so, white kids coming from less educated, less well-off backgrounds are more and more going through life with only one parent at home,’ he says. These kids are disaffected and disconnected from a very early age. ‘There’s a growing class gap among American youth among all the predictors of success in life’.”

Weinberg:  “Over the last two decades or so, white kids coming from less educated, less well-off backgrounds are more and more going through life with only one parent at home.”

“There’s a growing class gap among American youth among all the predictors of success in life.”

Wente: “As Mr. Putnam said at Aspen, ‘I happen to think that hugs and time are more important than money.’ (He added that money is important too.)”

***

We won’t belabor the point with more  – like the damning example of the fake Occupy protester John, or the Maureen Dowd example here.  Some were addressed by Editor's Notes or corrections.  But it’s interesting to compare these (and others) with any number of instances where journalists have been cited for plagiarism or improper attribution. 

Self-plagiarism, recycling and fabrication: different approaches

Weeks after it was revealed that he had used recycled material, The New Yorker’s Jonah Lehrer has resignedafter admitting that he also fabricated quotes from Bob Dylan.

The attention given to Lehrer’s recycling was interesting, given former MacLean’s writer Mark Steyn's frequent self-plagiarism.  (See here, here, and here).

As for Lehrer’s invented Dylan quotes, Steyn has yet to explain the discrepancy between a quote that appeared in the Toronto Star and his own version. 

Is it possible that there’s more tolerance for these things in Canadian, versus American journalism?  Perhaps that’s what Margaret Wente’s invented Occupy protester "John", and other examples here,  here,  here,  and here would  indicate.

As for Steyn’s recycling habit, my favorite very short example is “that flat in Marseilles” (in which only the punch line changes):

Steyn, UK Telegraph, 2005:

…a fellow in Marseilles is being charged with fraud because he lived with the dead body of his mother for five years in order to continue receiving her pension of 700 euros a month.

She was 94 when she croaked, so she'd presumably been enjoying the old government cheque for a good three decades or so, but her son figured he might as well keep the money rolling in until her second century and, with her corpse tucked away under a pile of rubbish in the living room, the female telephone voice he put on for the benefit of the social services office was apparently convincing enough. As the Reuters headline put it: "Frenchman lived with dead mother to keep pension."

That's the perfect summation of Europe: welfare addiction over demographic reality. Think of Germany as that flat in Marseilles, and Mr Schröder's government as the stiff, and the country's many state benefits as that French bloke's dead mum's benefits…

Steyn, America Alone, 2006, page 112-113:

A fellow in Marseilles was charged with fraud because he lived with the dead body of his mother for five years in order to continue receiving her pension of 700 euros a month.

She was ninety-four when she croaked, so she'd presumably been enjoying the old government check for a good three decades or so, but her son figured he might as well keep the money rolling in until her second century and, with her corpse tucked away under a pile of rubbish in the living room, the female telephone voice he put on for the benefit of the social services office was apparently convincing enough. As the Reuters headline put it: "Frenchman Lived with Dead Mother to Keep Pension."

That's the perfect summation of Europe: welfare addiction over demographic reality. Think of the European Union as that flat in Marseilles, and the Eutopian political consensus as the stiff, and lavish government largesse as that French guy’s dead mom's benefits…

Steyn, New York Sun, 2007:

A fellow in Marseilles was charged with fraud because he lived with the dead body of his mother for five years in order to continue receiving her pension of 700 euros a month.

She was 94 when she croaked, so she'd presumably been enjoying the old government check for a good three decades or so, but her son figured he might as well keep the money rolling in until her second century and, with her corpse tucked away under a pile of rubbish in the living room, the female telephone voice he put on for the benefit of the social services office was apparently convincing enough. As the Reuters headline put it: "Frenchman Lived With Dead Mother To Keep Pension."

Think of France as that flat in Marseilles, and its economy as the dead mother, and the country's many state benefits as monsieur's deceased mom's benefits.

Update:   this is how Fareed Zakaria’s plagiarism was dealt with.

Margaret Wente’s sins

Not ‘original’ sins, mind you (Wente is rarely original).  In fact it is possible that her error today about Episcopalians, whom she describes as “the American equivalent of the United Church”, reflects the New York Times article which perhaps inspired her own version.  Ross Douhat’s earlier OpEd on the collapse of the liberal church (“Can Liberal Christianity Be Saved?”) cites the same figures for Episcopalians.

Episcopalians are, of course the American version of Anglicans.  But what the heck – for Margaret’s purposes - a drive-by smear of the United Church - they'll do just as well.

Borrowing from the Times isn’t new for Wente, and errors related to sloppy attribution practices are common.   Best known was "John", but there are more examples here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here andhere.  And another just recently. 


Update, Error #2:  Wente writes that Mormonism “requires obligatory missionary service”.  “Missions are voluntary”, says its website.


Update #2:  While it took them a day or two (or three) an Editor's Note was finally appended to the online version of Wente's article: 


The Episcopalian Church in the United States is equivalent to the Anglican Church of Canada and not the United Church. Mormons are strongly encouraged, but not required to do mission work. An earlier online version of this story, and Saturday's original newspaper version, were not clear.


 In addition, it's worth noting the gracious 

response

 from Mardi Tindal of the United Church.   

Censorship, attribution and disclosure at the Globe and Mail

It’s a sad fact that often the most informative (and benign, non offensive) comments by a number of contributors in response to articles by the likes of Margaret Wente or Neil Reynolds are removed.  This often happens to facts which contradict claims in the articles, or which raise uncomfortable questions.

Again today. Information about Ms. Wente and Don Coxe, whom she quotes - was removed:

A potentially interesting (and undisclosed) relationship between Wente and quoted expert Don Coxe who hails from Wente’s home turf – Chicago.  From the acknowledgements section of his 2003 book:

“Those who undertook the arduous task of evaluating the manuscript deserve special thanks, and I appreciate the comments and suggestions I received from Margaret Wente…”

Wente writes:  “’Canada’s mining and oil wealth is not just minerals dug from the ground,’ Don Coxe, a leading investment strategist, points out. ‘It is the managements, geologists, engineers, drillers, workers and investment bankers who staff companies headquartered in Canada that operate across the world.’”

Those quotes Ms. Wente uses in her breathless paean to Canada as an oil and gas superpower appear on page 17 of an older issue of Coxe’s monthly portfolio strategy journal.

It’s interesting to read them in context (particularly when he discusses “Dutch Disease”).  So why is pointing out the relationship, or the source of the quotes worthy of censorship?

And, as is so frequently the case, Ms. Wente’s column includes material that, it’s fair to suggest, might have benefited from attribution.

Concluding her promotion of the Chinese takeover bid of Nexen as “maximizing our opportunities as a global petro-power”, Wente writes, “Wilfrid Laurier was almost right when he said the 20th century belonged to Canada. He was only off by 100 years”.

Key Porter’s promotional blurb for a similar cheerleading book by Brian Lee Crowley et al (which it is reasonable to believe Ms. Wente is familiar with, as it’s up her alley and was covered in the Globe) reads:

“Laurier did indeed predict the Canadian Century. He was absolutely right; he was
merely off by 100 years.”

A clever hook – and perhaps Crowley, Clemens, Key Porter et al don’t mind the additional publicity.

And likely Mr. Coxe, who thanked Ms. Wente for her help, is pleased to see material from his newsletters in her articles.

But again, it’s reasonable to ask, why not simply disclose any relationships and/or attribute the quotes?  And why the routine censorship of information like this?

Update:  A bit more information that might have been disclosed: 

Don Coxe, the only “investment strategist” quoted by Ms. Wente in her gushing endorsement of the proposed takeover of Nexen by CNOOC is described by the Globe in an earlier article as “strategy adviser to BMO Nesbitt Burns”.  

In a more recent Globe business article, BMO Nesbitt Burns is described as advisor to CNOOC in the takeover bid of Nexen:  “BMO Nesbitt Burns and Citigroup advised CNOOC”, the Globe reports.  Again, should this information, like Ms. Wente’s assistance in the writing of Mr. Coxe’s book, have been subject to full disclosure?

Margaret Wente: Credit where credit is due?

Margaret Wente has a column on Robert Putnam’s research on social mobility.  “Two weeks ago, he discussed his latest findings at the Aspen Ideas Institute”, she writes, providing a number of quotes of what he said there.

Unlike the New York Times David Brooks, who also covered Putnam’s views, she does not indicate where her quotes come from.  She doesn’t say, for example, “as Mr. Putnam told me in a telephone interview”, or, “as Putnam writes in notesprepared for the Aspen Ideas Festival”. 

All of the specific quotes Wente provides, however, along with an overview of Putnam’s remarks, appear on a liveblog of his presentation by David Weinberger at Joho the Blog a couple weeks earlier.

Wente:  “’We’re about to go over a cliff when it comes to social mobility,’ he says. ‘Social mobility and opportunity [for kids who grow up in the bottom third of society] are going to plummet.’”

Weinberg, quoting Putnam:  “If we look out the windshield, we’re about to go over a cliff when it comes to social mobility…Social mobility and opportunity are going to plummet.”

Wente:  “’Over the last two decades or so, white kids coming from less educated, less well-off backgrounds are more and more going through life with only one parent at home,’ he says. These kids are disaffected and disconnected from a very early age. ‘There’s a growing class gap among American youth among all the predictors of success in life’.”

Joho the Blog:  “Over the last two decades or so, white kids coming from less educated, less well-off backgrounds are more and more going through life with only one parent at home.”

“There’s a growing class gap among American youth among all the predictors of success in life.”

Wente: “As Mr. Putnam said at Aspen, ‘I happen to think that hugs and time are more important than money.’ (He added that money is important too.)”

Weinberger concludes by liveblogging the Q & A session, ending with the same quote as Margaret Wente: “I happen to think that hugs and time are more important than money, but money is important too”.

At the bottom of the Joho the Blog post, the following statement is clearly visible: 

“Share it freely, but attribute it to me, and don't use it commercially without my permission”.

Hence, the question:  Margaret Wente is a very well-paid columnist with a history of some questionable attribution issues (browse the archives).  And perhaps Mr. Weinberger is fine with people borrowing his work.  But if the quotes and other material that appear in her column reflect work done by another writer, why not credit them?  

Meet Margaret Wente’s Québec student protester - not from Québec, it turns out (but it’s all Greek to her)

In a nasty piece on the student protests, Margaret Wente lays on the clichés about lazy, demanding, ungrateful Québecers - protected cradle to grave by the “Québec model” nanny state –  all subsidized, she adds, by Anglophone Canada.

She describes Québecers as ingrates not sufficiently beholden to those in the ROC who pay the bills: “In France, which many Quebeckers feel more connected to than they do with the rest of Canada, growth has stalled and generous entitlements have far outrun the government’s ability to pay. The same has happened in Quebec. But it gets a helping hand from the rest of Canada in the form of equalization payments, which will amount to $7.3-billion this year”.

Wente makes the student protest emblematic of a French/English divide, and tells Québec to take a hike:  “The rest of Canada looks on, appalled. If this is an example of Quebec’s distinct society, we want no part of it”.

Comparing Québec to Greece, she concludes: “They want the Germans to send them money forever and ever, and no matter how much the Germans send, they’ll keep demanding more. The student protesters are the Greeks of Canada. And we’ve had it”.

So who is the emblematic Québec student Margaret quotes?  After describing a protest at the Université du Québec à Montréal, Ms. Wente offers a single, exemplary quote from a protester. 

But it turns out the protester isn’t quite so exemplary.  He’s not a Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois, nor a Leo Bureau-Blouin  or any other Québec protester (who could no doubt have provided a quote in English).  No, Wente’s example for this exercise in Québec bashing isn’t from Québec.  The spoiled, entitled brat that “people in the rest of Canada simply cannot understand”, is a student named Ethan Feldman, from, well, somewhere in “the rest of Canada”.

Here’s Wente’s quoted example of his motivations:

“Governments are completely saturated by neo-liberal ideology, disconnected from the public interest. These protests – like others around the world – are about showing there’s a limit to how far the state can go to protect capitalist interests at the expense of the people.”

And here's Ethan Feldman (an out of province McGill student) in the Montréal Gazette:

 “’Governments are completely saturated by neo-liberal ideology, disconnected from the public interest. These protests – like others around the world – are about showing there's a limit to how far the state can go to protect capitalist interests at the expense of the people.’

He (Ethan Feldman) points out that few of those involved would be seriously affected by the proposed gradual tuition increase. They're working for future students. His out-of-province tuition is around $6,700.”

Of course this isn’t the first time Wente has offered up a sloppy cartoon of lazy, “entitled” students.  A more significant example of her lax standards was "John", the fake Occupy protester whose bio and quote originated on an American website – but who, it turned out, was not an Occupy protester at all.

While not as egregious an error, presenting an Anglophone out of province student as exemplary of the Québec protests is still irresponsible.  Particularly when Wente is so actively inciting ill will - asking us to view the Québec protests as something  “the rest of Canada” (read Anglophones) “cannot understand”, “has had it with”, and “wants no part of”.

I suppose from where Margaret Wente sits in her upscale Toronto neighbourhood, Greeks and Québecers might look the same – tiny, and far away – especially when you can’t be bothered to look.  Most Québecers disagree with the protests, but that doesn’t stop Ms. Wente from ramping up and exploiting Anglo outrage.

Clearly Wente doesn’t care to find out what’s going on, and omitting the identification of her protesting poster boy as someone from outside the province serves her purposes.  Wente’s article achieved its objective, eliciting an outpouring of nasty anti-Québec comments on the Globe’s website.  

But before she engages in any more divisive baiting, maybe Ms. Wente could do a bit more research.  Given that his “parents cut the cheque” for his “$6,700” out of province fees, maybe Ethan Feldman isn’t so far away after all.  Maybe Margaret could actually interview him.  Maybe he lives next door.

  

Margaret Wente: Fabulous Fake Protesters, Fishermen, Polls, Pew Reports (and other possible P words?)

The Globe and Mail added an Editor's Note to address Margaret Wente’s latest error (about the Pew Global Christianity report) that we identified here - the fourth correction in seven months (sadly, others equally worthy, have been ignored).

Hmmm...anything worth looking at in the rest of the column?

For example, Wente mentions Philip Jenkins’ 2002 book “The Next Christendom” only late in the article and in passing, even though much of her column relies on his ideas (and the corrected claims are now attributed to him). Some parts also sound a lot like previous reviews of Jenkins’ book.

Library Journal: by the year 2050, only about one-fifth of the world's three billion Christians will be non-Hispanic Caucasian.

Wente: By 2050, only a fifth of the world’s three billion Christians will be non-Hispanic Caucasians.

Library Journal: with the rise of Islam and Christianity in the heavily populated areas of the Southern Hemisphere, we could see a wave of religious struggles, a new age of Christian crusades and Muslim jihads.

Wente: The rise of Islam and Christianity in the heavily populated South could create a new era of religious strife, of jihads and crusades.

Ms. Wente also provides exactly the same Jenkins quote that had appeared in another online review, then follows up with a paragraph that begins: “Or, you could argue that Christianity is simply returning to its roots” - sort of like the “or” indicates that what follows is her own contribution or counter-theory, when in fact, the paragraph includes both Jenkins words (Jenkins: “As Christianity moves South and East, it is returning to its roots” – emphasis added), and a number of his other ideas in a form similar to the same book review which contained the quote.

Wente: It was born as the religion of the outcast and the dispossessed. Today, it’s embraced by young rural migrants flooding to the giant, impersonal cities. Like Islam, Christianity is a reaction to urbanization, cultural upheaval and displacement. It provides meaning, community, refuge, support networks and an anchor. It also offers blessings and redemption. Christianity, in its original form, preaches that supernatural intervention can help you in the here and now…

About.com: They are, quite simply, fulfilling profound social needs. Countries in the south are experiencing great economic and demographic difficulties – traditional ways of life are fading away while young people are moving in increasing numbers to the cities…Increasing numbers of people, disconnected from tradition and family, are searching for meaning and community in impersonal cities….Christian groups form a sort of “radical community”…where supernatural power is shown to act in their lives, here and now…

Wente doesn’t attribute these ideas to Jenkins or the various reviews. But as we’ve seen, there are other instances of what people might consider plagiarism or improper attribution. And it’s difficult to understand why the Globe would correct a 19 word attribution issue from the New York Times, but leave other, longer examples standing.

And there’s this little attribution problem (noted in comments) from December 22: “According to a poll by Ipsos Reid, two-thirds of Canadians approve of its efforts to boost the military and fight crime. Sixty per cent of the public feel the government is enhancing Canada’s reputation in the world. And a whopping 80 per cent agree with its decision to ban the niqab at citizenship ceremonies – a move derided by much of the progressive left,” Wente informs us.

The last of those results are not from Ipsos Reid, who didn’t poll on the subject of the niqab at citizenship ceremonies. Could be an older Angus Reid poll on the niqab in Québec, or a Forum Research survey done for Sun News. We don’t know, because the Globe and Mail won’t say.

I wonder if Ms. Wente will offer up one of those year-end reflections on columns past? As a member of the Q Media Panel on CBC, she was asked to select the most over-rated story of the year. She chose the Occupy protests, and had the brazenness to claim that they were a “media projection”.

Well, in her hands they were. Wente set out to paint the Occupiers as lazy, entitled students. The laziness and entitlement seem to be hers, though – since, rather than go out and interview anyone herself, she just picked up characters from other stories - one of whom, it turned out, was not an Occupy protester at all.

While Wente’s “John” was not fabulism (among other things, inventing a character from scratch would have required more work), one could argue that the effect was the same – and that “John” as a “face” of the Occupiers, went past the notion of a ‘media projection’ into fiction – a character cut and pasted from one narrative into a different one (in which he had no part), similar to the scientist who mysteriously became a fisherman in Margaret’s story.

The Globe corrected the most recent Pew error, probably because Pew contacted them, and they carry some weight. But it should have been corrected because it was wrong. Otherwise, they seem more interested in protecting their long-time columnist and former editor from further embarrassment. Sadly, in so doing, they seem less concerned with their responsibilities to readers, or with upholding the standards that (hopefully) the rest of their writers still respect. Let’s hope for better things in the New Year.

Margaret Wente, Math and Christianity: More factual/attribution errors?

Wente writes that Christianity is the “fastest-growing religion in the world today”. “By 2050, Christians will outnumber Muslims 3 to 1.”

She claims that this comes from a “new report on global Christianity from the Pew Research Center.”

A pdf of the report is here, and if anyone can find anything suggesting that “By 2050, Christians will outnumber Muslims 3 to 1”, please advise. My search turns up no 2050 projections at all, and Muslims are not mentioned except in a footnote on Russia.

Wente goes on to describe a 2002 book by Philip Jenkins, offering similar points and the identical selected quote found in this book review:

There, another Jenkins quote appears: “Soon the phrase “a White Christian” may sound like a curious oxymoron…By 2050, there should be about three Christians for every two Muslims worldwide”.

The “should be” looks like it’s followed by a proviso – confirmed when Jenkins notes that while the percentage of Christians worldwide has remained the same for the past 100 years, Muslim numbers have surged from 12 or 13 percent in 1900 to just under 25 percent today.

Unlike the Pew Report, Jenkins does offer 2050 projections, writing: “Christians in 1900 outnumbered Muslims by 2.8 to 1. Today the figure is 1.5 to 1, and by 2050 it should be 1.3 to 1.” (Philip Jenkins, “The Next Christendom”, page 203)

http://books.google.ca/books?id=EIAKmFFfG3sC&pg=PA203&lpg=PA203&dq=2050+christians+muslims&source=bl&ots=v3X0LC0NVA&sig=etL3uuUSCCAMc-8iaXJG-ne2Lgo&hl=en&sa=X&ei=-cv1TrWbHqLZ0QG-1-mVAg&ved=0CCQQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=2050%20christians%20muslims&f=false

Last month, Wente picked up an unsuspecting "John" and erroneously turned him into the “face” of the Occupy movement. She’s also been known to turn scientists into fishermen. These mishaps usually occur through a failure to attribute, which is a fairly common occurence. Here she attributes statistics to a report, but the claims don’t seem to be there. Did she make up a billion extra Christians, or subtract a few million Muslims? Did she accidentally turn Jenkin’s 2050 ratio of “1.3 to 1” into “3 to 1”? And why did she claim that these figures come from the Pew Center?

Margaret Wente’s methods: Are there different attribution standards for different journalists?

More borrowed/recycled material? Just highlighting addenda to a post earlier this week which identified similar questions. In todays’s column, Margaret Wente recycles again. Here she is on January 7, 2011 with the same message and the same quote:

Wente, Dec. 10, 2011: This steady rise in material well-being helps explains why the Occupy movement didn’t catch on as many people expected it to. On the whole, average people think their lives are pretty good. “They don’t feel the moral outrage that radiates from the more passionate egalitarian quarters of society,” writes Prof. Cowen.

Wente, Jan. 7, 2011: There’s a reason people aren’t rioting in the streets over rising inequality. As Tyler Cowen writes in a widely noted essay (The Inequality that Matters) in The American Interest quarterly, ‘when average people read about or see income inequality, they don’t feel the moral outrage that radiates from the more passionate egalitarian quarters of society”.

And just to demonstrate how prevalent these attribution questions are, a quick scan of the same January 7 column turns up what seem to be more borrowed quotes and wayward quotation marks:

A passage about The Economist appears in an earlier review of the same book Wente criticizes (The Spirit Level). Not only does she reproduce the quote as if she found it herself, the words in bold caps - which appear within quotation marks in Snowdon’s version - are presented as Wente’s own prose in the Globe.

Christopher Snowdon: The Economist published its Quality of Life index in 2005, the relative income theory was explicitly rejected: ‘There is no evidence… that an increase in someone’s income causes envy and reduces the welfare and satisfaction of others. In our estimates, the level of income inequality had no impact on levels of life satisfaction.’

Wente, Jan. 7, 2011: And The Economist, among many others, argues there is no evidence that an increase in someone’s income causes envy and reduces the welfare and satisfaction of others. “In our estimates, the level of income inequality had no impact on levels of life satisfaction,” it noted in its quality-of-life index.

It’s interesting to compare the growing list of attribution questions in Ms. Wente’s writing (three of which have resulted in corrections/Editor’s Notes in the last several months) with other journalists who have apologized or been been fired for plagiarism. Perhaps someone more knowledgeable could explain how they are they different?

Addendum: And there's more. Same column.

Wente, Dec. 10, 2011: “The inequality of personal well-being is sharply down,” wrote economics professor Tyler Cowen in a terrific essay, The Inequality That Matters….Bill Gates may have a much bigger house than you do, but he eats the same kind of food and wears the same kind of clothes. And thanks to him, even poor people have access to computers.

Michael Barone: Tyler Cowen writes in The American Interest, "The inequality of personal well-being is sharply down over the past hundred years and perhaps over the past 20 years, as well." Bill Gates may have a bigger house than you do. But you have about the same access to good food, medical care and even to the Internet as he does.

Margaret Wente: More migrating quotes and improper attribution?

Checking facts and quotes is sort of like the morning crossword. Sometimes it turns up alarming things, like when Margaret Wente apparently picked up a “John” on some website and took him to the Occupy protests.

Maybe Ms. Wente sprinkles quotes in her columns to make it look like she does research. But often these people are “her friends”, like “Virginia”, or “Ben”. Columns frequently begin and end with personal anecdote, making it seem as though the ideas and insights spring from her own experience. But there are problems.

Today's attribution issue: Ontario’s new anti-bullying initiative for schools, which Wente opposes. “Plenty of teachers are skeptical, too”, she writes, offering examples of what readers assume are some of those skeptical Ontario educators to backstop her claim. Wente provides three un-sourced quotes. One is something she says an unnamed teacher “told her”.

And: “’Administrators have had their spines surgically removed,’ one teacher says”.

This quote turns up on a 2001 blog post that has nothing to do with bullying or public schools, let alone the new Ontario law at the center of Wente’s article. Linda Seebach’s comment concerns academic freedom in American universities. Don’t know whether that’s where Ms. Wente found it, but given “John”’s surprising second life as an Occupy protester, one has to wonder.

Seebach, a geriatric blogger and contributor to the far right FrontPage Magazine (amongst other publications), also writes about the “nanny state”, “leftist universities”, and (like Wente) the appalling state of math instruction. A decade ago, she penned a diatribe on “political correctness” on American campuses that included this line:

“If you’re not routinely involved in higher education, you may not realize that many senior administrators have had their spines surgically removed as they crawled up the academic ladder.”

Seebach identifies herself as a “retired editorial writer and op-ed columnist” from Minnesota, “where in an earlier century she had been a math professor at St. Olaf College”. Given that they seem to share so many things, perhaps Ms. Wente considers her a kindred spirit, but Seebach’s comment appeared as that of an editorialist on another topic, and cannot legitimately be viewed as the solicited reaction of a “teacher” to Ontario’s new legislation.

We’ll skip over the problems with facts and arguments, and go to the third quote.

Wente: “As one school safety consultant says, ‘Parents and educators have the most important tools that legislation cannot deliver – education and supervision.’”

This looks like it comes from another American blog, although the post also appeared here, as a Letter to the Editor about cyber-bullying legislation in the U.S.

Kenneth Trump of Cleveland: “Parents and educators have the most important tools that legislation cannot deliver: Education and supervision”.

So, while it would have been both relevant and important to obtain reaction from Ontario educators about the new anti-bullying proposals, Wente contents herself with old, borrowed material, providing not one identified quote from the “plenty” of teachers she claims oppose it.

And as with “John”, it’s reasonable to ask how appropriate or professional it is to take un-attributed quotes from one context and repurpose them for a different issue.

More quote/attribution problems:

Plagiarism?

As has happened before, Ms. Wente fails to capture the entirety of a passage in quotation marks. Does the second sentence (in bold caps) constitute plagiarism?

Joel Kotkin, Foreign Policy: Cities often offer a raw deal for the working class, which ends up squeezed by a lethal combination of chronically high housing costs and chronically low opportunity in economies dominated by finance and other elite industries. Once the cost of living is factored in, more than half the children in inner London live in poverty…

Wente: As Mr. Kotkin has written, “Cities often offer a raw deal for the working class, which ends up squeezed by a lethal combination of chronically high housing costs and chronically low opportunity in economies dominated by finance and other elite industries.” Once the cost of living is factored in, more than half the children in inner London live in poverty.

Inaccurate quote?

Wente: “The environmental movement is deeply stained with a sort of Malthusian current,” Mr. Owen says. “It's anti-urban, anti-industrial, agrarian, primitivist.”

David Owen, quoting Daniel Lazare: Recently I asked (Daniel) Lazare whether he detected that same antagonism in the American environmental movement. “Unquestionably”, he said. “Green ideology is a rural agrarian ideology… The environmental movement is deeply stained with a sort of Malthusian current. It's anti-urban, anti-industrial, agrarian, primitivist.”

Recycled? Borrowed?

Maybe Ms. Wente doesn’t like the work involved in gathering quotes or soliciting comment. Recently she recycled a bit from an article she had written just weeks earlier:

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.”

The August column also includes a quote from Karl Marx. One might be forgiven for wondering whether Margaret has a bedside copy of The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon. Or is it possible the quote came from an editorial in the Australian on the same topic?

Wente, August 16, 2011: Karl Marx described such people as “vagabonds, discharged soldiers, discharged jailbirds, escaped galley slaves, swindlers, pickpockets, tricksters, gamblers, brothel-keepers, organ-grinders, ragpickers, knife-grinders, tinkers, beggars.” (He was referring to 19th-century France.)

Brendan O'Neill, The Australian, August 6: …this welfare-state mob has more in common with what Marx described as the lumpenproletariat. Indeed, it is worth remembering Marx's colourful description in The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon…“vagabonds, discharged soldiers, discharged jailbirds, escaped galley slaves, swindlers, pickpockets, tricksters, gamblers, brothel-keepers, organ-grinders, ragpickers, knife-grinders, tinkers, beggars…”

Addendum: Today’s column is pretty much a rehash of one from earlier in the year – again re-using an identical quote.

Wente, Dec. 10, 2011: This steady rise in material well-being helps explains why the Occupy movement didn’t catch on as many people expected it to. On the whole, average people think their lives are pretty good. “They don’t feel the moral outrage that radiates from the more passionate egalitarian quarters of society,” writes Prof. Cowen.

Wente, Jan. 7, 2011: There’s a reason people aren’t rioting in the streets over rising inequality. As Tyler Cowen writes in a widely noted essay (The Inequality that Matters) in The American Interest quarterly, ‘when average people read about or see income inequality, they don’t feel the moral outrage that radiates from the more passionate egalitarian quarters of society”.

Addendum 2:

And just to demonstrate how common this is, from the same January 7 column, more migrating quotation marks. The passage about The Economist, which Wente presents as if she dug it up herself, in fact appears in an earlier review of the same book she discusses (The Spirit Level). Not only does she reproduce the quote, the highlighted words - which appear within quotation marks in Snowdon’s version - are presented as Wente’s own prose in the Globe.

Christopher Snowdon: The Economist published its Quality of Life index in 2005, the relative income theory was explicitly rejected: ‘There is no evidence… that an increase in someone’s income causes envy and reduces the welfare and satisfaction of others. In our estimates, the level of income inequality had no impact on levels of life satisfaction.’

Wente, Jan. 7, 2011: And The Economist, among many others, argues there is no evidence that an increase in someone’s income causes envy and reduces the welfare and satisfaction of others. “In our estimates, the level of income inequality had no impact on levels of life satisfaction,” it noted in its quality-of-life index.