DCP's ongoing problem with plagiarism

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_Lemmie
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Re: DCP's ongoing problem with plagiarism

Post by _Lemmie »

Doctor Steuss wrote:
Tom wrote:[..]
Speaking of Sic et Non, I rate Dr. Peterson's telling of the history of the crusader castle of Shoubak or Shawbak as second only to the Wikipedia entry on "Montreal (Crusader castle)."

Tom posted the above in his Interpreter Foundation thread. I think it deserves to be here. I might have time later tonight to post side-by-sides, but I'm sure someone else will be able to do it, as it doesn't appear that it'll require too much effort.

Speaking of similarities to writing not his own, Peterson's April 18, 2018 version of the 2008 Irena Sendler story (parts of which get a mixed review from Snopes) is also remarkably like the copyrighted version that has appeared on yemshem.com since at least 2012, according to the archived versions. The most current version of the page has this at the end:

© 2018 http://www.yeshshem.com  All rights reserved.  

At the end of his 4.17.18 blog entry, "The Wisdom of the Nobel Prize," Peterson posts the story, giving no attribution.

As a comparison, here are a couple of excerpts. From the Copyrighted version:

[Irena Sendler ] got permission to work in the Warsaw ghetto, as a Plumbing/Sewer specialist. She had an ulterior motive.

Irena smuggled Jewish infants out in the bottom of the tool box she carried. She also carried a burlap sack in the back of her truck, for larger kids.

Irena kept a dog in the back that she trained to bark when the Nazi soldiers let her in and out of the ghetto. The soldiers, of course, wanted nothing to do with the dog and the barking covered the kids/infants noises.

Excerpt from DCP:

[Irena Sendler] received permission to travel into and out of the Warsaw ghetto as a plumbing/sewer specialist.
 
She had an ulterior motive.
 
Irena smuggled Jewish infants out of the Ghetto in the bottom of the toolbox that she carried. She also carried a burlap sack in the back of her truck, for larger kids.
 
Irena kept a dog in the back of truck, as well. She trained the dog to bark whenever she approached the Nazi soldiers at the Ghetto’s checkpoints. The soldiers, of course, wanted nothing to do with the dog, and the barking covered any noises made by the children.

And again from the copyrighted version:

Irena kept a record of the names of all the kids she had smuggled out, in a glass jar that she buried under a tree in her back yard. After the war, she tried to locate any parents that may have survived and tried to reunite the family. Most had been gassed. Those kids she helped got placed into foster family homes or adopted.

And also from DCP:

Irena kept a record, in a glass jar that she buried under a tree in her backyard, of the names of all the children she had smuggled out. After the war, she tried to locate any parents who might have survived and she attempted to reunite those children with their families.

Most family members had been gassed. So most of the kids that she had helped were placed with foster families or adopted.

Link to the Copyrighted version:
http://www.yeshshem.com/irena-sendler.htm

Link to blog entry by DCP:
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/danpeterso ... prize.html

This story has appeared all over in various forms, but virtually all I read acknowledged some type of source, even if it was just to refer to the chainmail story or the urban legend parts. Peterson, however, posts 'his' version with no attribution or backstory at all.
_candygal
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Re: DCP's ongoing problem with plagiarism

Post by _candygal »

Until I read all of this..I had no idea that Petersen was this bad..why does he get away with this? A college student would be kicked out on ear for doing something like this.
_I have a question
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Re: DCP's ongoing problem with plagiarism

Post by _I have a question »

Lemmie wrote:Speaking of similarities to writing not his own, Peterson's April 18, 2018 version of the 2008 Irena Sendler story (parts of which get a mixed review from Snopes) is also remarkably like the copyrighted version that has appeared on yemshem.com since at least 2012, according to the archived versions. The most current version of the page has this at the end:

© 2018 http://www.yeshshem.com  All rights reserved.  

At the end of his 4.17.18 blog entry, "The Wisdom of the Nobel Prize," Peterson posts the story, giving no attribution.

As a comparison, here are a couple of excerpts. From the Copyrighted version:

[Irena Sendler ] got permission to work in the Warsaw ghetto, as a Plumbing/Sewer specialist. She had an ulterior motive.

Irena smuggled Jewish infants out in the bottom of the tool box she carried. She also carried a burlap sack in the back of her truck, for larger kids.

Irena kept a dog in the back that she trained to bark when the Nazi soldiers let her in and out of the ghetto. The soldiers, of course, wanted nothing to do with the dog and the barking covered the kids/infants noises.

Excerpt from DCP:

[Irena Sendler] received permission to travel into and out of the Warsaw ghetto as a plumbing/sewer specialist.
 
She had an ulterior motive.
 
Irena smuggled Jewish infants out of the Ghetto in the bottom of the toolbox that she carried. She also carried a burlap sack in the back of her truck, for larger kids.
 
Irena kept a dog in the back of truck, as well. She trained the dog to bark whenever she approached the Nazi soldiers at the Ghetto’s checkpoints. The soldiers, of course, wanted nothing to do with the dog, and the barking covered any noises made by the children.

And again from the copyrighted version:

Irena kept a record of the names of all the kids she had smuggled out, in a glass jar that she buried under a tree in her back yard. After the war, she tried to locate any parents that may have survived and tried to reunite the family. Most had been gassed. Those kids she helped got placed into foster family homes or adopted.

And also from DCP:

Irena kept a record, in a glass jar that she buried under a tree in her backyard, of the names of all the children she had smuggled out. After the war, she tried to locate any parents who might have survived and she attempted to reunite those children with their families.

Most family members had been gassed. So most of the kids that she had helped were placed with foster families or adopted.

Link to the Copyrighted version:
http://www.yeshshem.com/irena-sendler.htm

Link to blog entry by DCP:
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/danpeterso ... prize.html

This story has appeared all over in various forms, but virtually all I read acknowledged some type of source, even if it was just to refer to the chainmail story or the urban legend parts. Peterson, however, posts 'his' version with no attribution or backstory at all.


Unbelievably it appears he’s still at it. Where’s Jesse Pinkman to explain how this latest thing isn’t that big a deal and how he’s very busy and he was thinking of doing proper attribution when he had the time and poor old Dan leave him alone etc?
“When we are confronted with evidence that challenges our deeply held beliefs we are more likely to reframe the evidence than we are to alter our beliefs. We simply invent new reasons, new justifications, new explanations. Sometimes we ignore the evidence altogether.” (Mathew Syed 'Black Box Thinking')
_moksha
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Re: DCP's ongoing problem with plagiarism

Post by _moksha »

Just because Dr. Peterson got sucked in by a phony news story on Irena Sendler does not mean he did not have a strong testimony as to its content. Just the same as Glenn Beck having real tears even if induced by Tiger Balm ointment.

Irena Sendler had been nominated multiple times. However, the Nobel qualification is based on recent works for living recipients.
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_Physics Guy
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Re: DCP's ongoing problem with plagiarism

Post by _Physics Guy »

I was once a TA for a pretty bogus college course that had a term paper requirement as well as weekly written assignments. When I came to grade the term papers I noticed several that were far better written than anything the students had submitted in short homework texts. I pasted the first paragraphs into Google, and discovered that they were from the "free example" papers offered on various term-papers-for-sale sites.

So that was pure copy-paste plagiarism, and Peterson isn't doing that. He's paraphrasing. Subtler forms of plagiarism than outright copy-pasting haven't really come up for me for many years now, because physics papers are not supposed to report rediscoveries even if they have been made independently of the original discoveries. So one worries quite a lot about whether a paper contains material that has essentially been published already elsewhere, but the issue is novelty, not plagiarism. Acknowledging the already-published content would not make it new.

Because I'm fuzzy on less-brazen plagiarism, I'm a little unclear about the charge against Peterson here. As far as I understand the issues in plagiarism, Peterson could be in trouble for two things.

First of all he seems not to be citing his sources. I'm not sure everyone always has to cite a source for everything. An expert historian for example might explain some historical event just from her own knowledge of facts which are general knowledge in her field. My understanding is that this would be fine, and she should only be citing people for unique contributions. A student who has only read one book, on the other hand, would be expected to cite that one book in her term paper, even for points which are uncited general knowledge items for professional historians.

If a professional scholar recounts something from general knowledge then one would not expect her paragraphs to be clear paraphrasings of anyone else's paragraphs. The fact that Peterson's paragraphs are recognizable as paraphrasings shows that he has relied on single sources and thus should be citing them, even for points which in themselves may be general knowledge for experts.

Do I have it right about this issue in plagiarism?

That first issue is about the first level of acknowledgement—do you fail to cite a source when you should have? My understanding is that there is a second issue, which is essentially, "Do you merely cite a source when you should have been quoting?" Here the crux seems to be: how much para- is in your phrasing? Are you just replacing a few words with synonyms, or are you re-wording everything and rearranging the paragraph structure? In the first case your own text is so dependent on your source text that you should really be quoting your source text explicitly, while in the second case I believe you will be correct if you just acknowledge your source.

Is that how it is?

If it is, then my impression is that Peterson is mostly pretty thorough in his paraphrasing. If it is ever appropriate to cite a source and paraphrase its content, then I'm not sure how much more thoroughly Peterson could have re-written his paragraphs in order to qualify under this rubric. So it seems to me that all he really has to do is to acknowledge his sources, and if he did this then his paraphrasing itself would be no academic crime.
_Doctor CamNC4Me
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Re: DCP's ongoing problem with plagiarism

Post by _Doctor CamNC4Me »

PG,

Did you read through the entire thread?

He's passing off the words and ideas of others as his own. He's been at this for years.

- Doc
In the face of madness, rationality has no power - Xiao Wang, US historiographer, 2287 AD.

Every record...falsified, every book rewritten...every statue...has been renamed or torn down, every date...altered...the process is continuing...minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Ideology is always right.
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Re: DCP's ongoing problem with plagiarism

Post by _Physics Guy »

I think I've read most of the thread, but it was a while ago. Coming back to it now, I'm seeing posts that establish that Peterson has been paraphrasing, but I find I'm unclear about exactly what his crime is.

He isn't claiming unearned credit for excellent prose that someone else crafted, because he's remixed the sentences quite a bit. The writing itself is his own. It's a paraphrase.

I don't think he's pretending to have discovered all these facts about Irena Sendler himself through original research, like personally interviewing her before she died.

Whether or not it's a false impression, the impression his post gives to me is that he has extracted a short summary of Sendler's story from a broad reading of multiple sources—broad enough that for him the story is a kind of general knowledge for which a scholarly book might provide a bibliography but which doesn't have to be cited in a blog post. I post stuff about physics in my blog, and I'm afraid I don't bother to cite all the textbooks I've ever studied to learn what I know. And the yeshshem.com site that may have been Peterson's source does not itself cite any sources for its story about Irene Sendler.

If you google Irene Sendler, in fact, you get a lot of hits. She was on the A&E show "Biography". Numerous sites all have something about her, and few of them seem to cite any sources. The irenesendler.org site presents a bunch of facts which it claims are derived from primary sources—"over 4000 pages and thousands of hours"— but it does nothing to back up this claim.

If Peterson really did just read that one yeshshem.com page and paraphrase it, then I agree he should have cited it. But what if he read half a dozen websites or more, none of them citing much in the way of sources, and then made his own digested version, and it just turned out to parallel the structure of the digested version on yeshshem.com? There are only so many salient details in Sendler's story, and everyone who writes about her seems to hit most of them. Whom should Peterson cite?

Did Peterson plagiarize or just use his own words to express some common knowledge that's all over the internet? This example looks borderline at best to me. I have no brief for Peterson—his style seems annoyingly smug to me—but piling on him for borderline misdemeanors just lowers the credibility of substantial criticisms.
_Lemmie
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Re: DCP's ongoing problem with plagiarism

Post by _Lemmie »

PG wrote:Do I have it right about this issue in plagiarism?

No, you don't.

PG wrote:I think I've read most of the thread, but it was a while ago.

Well that explains it. :rolleyes:

Doc Cam4MenNC wrote:PG,

Did you read through the entire thread?

He's passing off the words and ideas of others as his own. He's been at this for years.

- Doc


I don't think he's actually read the thread. The difference between paraphrasing and plagiarizing is discussed quite thoroughly, and Peterson's ongoing problem with plagiarism is documented many, many times.
_Doctor CamNC4Me
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Re: DCP's ongoing problem with plagiarism

Post by _Doctor CamNC4Me »

Physics Guy wrote:I think I've read most of the thread, but it was a while ago.


I'll just stop you right there. You didn't read the thread.

eta: Perhaps Mormons' comfort with plagiarism is a cultural result starting with Joseph Smith himself:

https://www.reddit.com/r/exmormon/comme ... lation_of/

TIL: BYU.edu states Joseph Smith's Translation of the Bible (the JST) was a plagiarized version of Adam Clarke's biblical commentary. (jur.byu.edu)

http://jur.byu.edu/?p=21296

by the way, you see how I did that? I gave credit to the r/exmormon thread that brought the topic up, and then I also linked the .edu article.

I didn't have to do that. But I did. I'm more ethical than Mr. Peterson!

- Doc
In the face of madness, rationality has no power - Xiao Wang, US historiographer, 2287 AD.

Every record...falsified, every book rewritten...every statue...has been renamed or torn down, every date...altered...the process is continuing...minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Ideology is always right.
_Tom
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Re: DCP's ongoing problem with plagiarism

Post by _Tom »

I wish to offer some observations regarding the recent Sic et Non blog post titled Genetic Information is Not Itself Material.

Sic et Non (hereafter SEN) reads:
Professor Hubert P. Yockey (April 15, 1916 – January 31, 2016) was a physicist and an information theorist who worked under Robert Oppenheimer on the Manhattan Project as well as at the University of California at Berkeley.

One of his areas of concentration was the application of information theory to problems in biology; from 1974 onward, he published his writings in the Journal of Theoretical Biology. Yockey was very critical of the theory that life had originated in a kind of “primordial soup,” arguing instead that “the origin of life is unsolvable as a scientific problem.”

He died on January 31, 2016 at the age of 99.

SEN is clearly dependent on Wikipedia (the W source) here. W's entry on Yockey reads, in part:
Professor Hubert P. Yockey (April 15, 1916 – January 31, 2016) was a physicist and information theorist.[1] He worked under Robert Oppenheimer on the Manhattan Project, and at the University of California, Berkeley.

He studied the application of information theory to problems in biology and published his conclusions in the Journal of Theoretical Biology from 1974 onwards. Yockey was very critical of the primordial soup theory of the origin of life, and believed that "the origin of life is unsolvable as a scientific problem."

He died on January 31, 2016 at the age of 99.[2]

SEN then quotes from a purported separate manuscript that I will call LID (short for Leap into the Dark) (we will examine the evidence for the existence of a separate LID manuscript at another time):
Here’s a brief passage from a very rough manuscript of mine that draws a bit upon Professor Yockey’s thought:

Hubert Yockey used a linguistic analogy to make the point that the information contained in the genetic code, although it is embodied in matter, is not itself material. It cannot be reduced to a chemical or physical property. He points out that the meaning of words or letter sequences, if they have any, is essentially arbitrary. It is determined by the natural language that they are seeking to represent, and is not an intrinsic property of the letters or their arrangement, let alone of the ink with which they may be printed on a page. For example, the letter sequence that spells out the English word hell means “bright” in German. Similarly, fern means “far,” while gift means “poison,” mist refers to manure, bald means “soon,” and boot means “boat.” The letter sequence singe represents, in German, the imperative verb “sing!” In French, pain denotes bread. Ballot refers to a bundle, coin means a “corner” or a “wedge,” and chair means “flesh.” Cent means “hundred” in French, whereas son means “his,” tire refers to the act of “pulling,” and ton means “your.”

SEN refers to a linguistic analogy used by Yockey. In my attempts to ascertain whether LID is directly dependent on Yockey rather than a secondary source in the paragraph above, I came across some evidence that LID is relying upon a heretofore unidentified source: Dean Overman, A Case Against Accident and Self-Organization (note: neither SEN nor this passage from LID cite Overman). I will call this the O source or O.

O (pp. 37-38):
The information contained in the genetic code, like all information or messages, is not made of matter. Materialism does not explain the meaning in the code. The meaning is not a property of the arrangement of the symbols of alphabet of the code. The message or meaning in the genetic code is non-material and cannot be reduced to a physical or chemical property. Hubert Yockey, an erudite physicist who studied under J. Robert Oppenheimer at Berkeley and then worked with him on the Manhattan Project, uses the analogy among letters of the Roman alphabet and their meaning in the English, French and German languages to demonstrate the non-material nature of the messages and information in the genetic code:
. . . the meaning, if any, of words, that is, a sequence of letters is arbitrary. It is determined by the natural language and is not a property of the letters or their arrangement. For example, the English word “hell” means bright in German, “fern” means far, “gift” means poison, “bald” means soon, “boot” means boat, “singe” means sing. In French “pain” means bread, “ballot” means a bundle, “coin” means a corner or a wedge, “chair” means flesh, “cent” means hundred, “son” means his, “tire” means a pull, “ton” means your. This confusion of meaning goes as far as sentences. For example, “O singe fort!” has no meaning as a sentence in English, although each is an English word, yet in German it means “O sing on!” and in French it means “O strong monkey”. Like all messages, the life message is non-material but has an information content measurable in bits and bytes and plays the role, ascribed by vitalists, of an unmeasurable, metaphysical vital force without being ad hoc, romantic, spooky, contrary to the laws of physics or supernatural. Of course, like all messages, the genetic message, although non-material, must be recorded in matter or energy.

Some points of comparison:

LID: "It cannot be reduced to a chemical or physical property."
O: "The message or meaning in the genetic code is non-material and cannot be reduced to a physical or chemical property."

Comment: LID appears to have merely switched O’s order of words at the sentence's end.

LID: "He points out that the meaning of words or letter sequences, if they have any, is essentially arbitrary."
O (quoting Yockey [hereafter Y]): ". . . the meaning, if any, of words, that is, a sequence of letters is arbitrary."

Comment: Here, LID could be using either Y or O (quoting Y).

LID: "It is determined by the natural language that they are seeking to represent, and is not an intrinsic property of the letters or their arrangement, let alone of the ink with which they may be printed on a page."
O (quoting Y): "It is determined by the natural language and is not a property of the letters or their arrangement."

Comment: LID could be expanding on either Y or O (quoting Y).

LID: "For example, the letter sequence that spells out the English word hell means 'bright' in German."
O (quoting Y): "For example, the English word 'hell' means bright in German."

Comment: Minor differences here. Again, LID could be using either Y or O.

LID: "Similarly, fern means 'far,' while gift means 'poison,' mist refers to manure, bald means 'soon,' and boot means 'boat.'"
O (quoting Y): "...'fern' means far, 'gift' means poison, 'bald' means soon, 'boot' means boat,"

Comment: The careful reader will notice that LID added one German word--mist--to Y’s list (or Y’s list as cited by O) of examples. This represents a minor expansion.

LID: "The letter sequence singe represents, in German, the imperative verb 'sing!' In French, pain denotes bread. Ballot refers to a bundle, coin means a 'corner' or a 'wedge,' and chair means 'flesh.' Cent means 'hundred' in French, whereas son means 'his,' tire refers to the act of 'pulling,' and ton means 'your.'"
O: "...'singe' means sing. In French 'pain' means bread, 'ballot' means a bundle, 'coin' means a corner or a wedge, 'chair' means flesh, 'cent' means hundred, 'son' means his, 'tire' means a pull, 'ton' means your."

Comment: Again, minor differences.

LID then purports to quote Yockey’s words, citing an article of his published in BioEssays in 1995. Given the relative inaccessibility of back issues of BioEssays (I let my subscription expire three months ago) plus the fact that SEN/LID has previously used O without initial acknowledgment (see here), I would suggest that LID is dependent on O here (which quotes the identical passage from Y) rather than the original Y.

LID:
For example, “O singe fort!” has no meaning as a sentence in English, although each is an English word, yet in German it means “O sing on!” and in French it means “O strong monkey”. Like all messages, the life message is non-material but has an information content measurable in bits and bytes and plays the role, ascribed by vitalists, of an unmeasurable, metaphysical vital force without being ad hoc, romantic, spooky, contrary to the laws of physics or supernatural. Of course, like all messages, the genetic message, although non-material, must be recorded in matter or energy.[1]

[1] Hubert Yockey, “Information in Bits and Bytes,” BioEssays 17 (1995): 85. [See original.]

One additional observation: Y's list of examples capitalizes "Gift" and "Boot" while O’s quotation of Y does not. Neither does LID. This would seem to lend support to the hypothesis that LID is dependent on O rather than Y.
“A scholar said he could not read the Book of Mormon, so we shouldn’t be shocked that scholars say the papyri don’t translate and/or relate to the Book of Abraham. Doesn’t change anything. It’s ancient and historical.” ~ Hanna Seariac
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