Politicians and academic plagiarism

[Murazor]

Recently there has been a case in Spain in which a politician of some importance has been revealed to have plagiarized some 40% of his Ph. D. thesis and seen the reaction to this (or lack thereof) with some dismay.

So I thought I'd ask whether someone can point me towards other cases of this kind of thing happening elsewhere and the consequences then. As I recall, there was an instance by someone of ministerial rank in Germany, but names and specifics elude my memory.

Also, if this is not an adequate fit for the subforum, just kick it wherever it is supposed to actually go. This seemed like a better place to post the thread than SLAM.

[Siege]

This case and this one came to mind immediately. They are probably the German cases you were thinking of. I think there have been cases in The Netherlands too. The result almost universally ought to be resignation of the minister in question.

[PainRack]

There's Rand Paul, who plagarised wikipedia for a speech as well as a think tank foundation report for his book.

He seems to have gotten off scott free, by claiming that politicians can't do the kind of footnotes needed in a speech and etc.....

[Ralin]

He seems to have gotten off scott free, by claiming that politicians can't do the kind of footnotes needed in a speech and etc.....

I kind of agree. Should I not?

[Tanasinn]

There's Rand Paul, who plagarised wikipedia for a speech as well as a think tank foundation report for his book.

And Herman Cain quoted the Pokemon movie and attributed it to " a poet."

[Elheru Aran]

He seems to have gotten off scott free, by claiming that politicians can't do the kind of footnotes needed in a speech and etc.....

I kind of agree. Should I not?

You shouldn't. He quoted the passages in question almost verbatim, without saying "in so and so, it was said 'thus and so'" or some such. He effectively posed these passages as though they were his own words when they were not (possible speech-writing notwithstanding). That counts as dishonesty in my book. It takes only a few seconds to attribute something verbally if you borrow a phrase from someone else. Neglecting to do so is pure laziness at best.

If the same thing can shoot down Joe Biden's run for President in the 80s, it should hurt Rand Paul too. Unfortunately, the only people who seem to actually care about it are Democrats, and the media gave it a few minutes of attention and then moved on.

[Simon_Jester]

A thought: some cases are tricky.

For example, take "with great power, comes great responsibility." Do we have to attribute this quote to Spider-Man? Maybe so. But it's not like the sentiment was new when Stan Lee put it in the mouth of Uncle Ben- I have no doubt that ancient Greek philosophers would have agreed, or at least some of them would.

[PainRack]

He seems to have gotten off scott free, by claiming that politicians can't do the kind of footnotes needed in a speech and etc.....

I kind of agree. Should I not?

Well, for the speech, I tend to agree, even though it was a huge chunk of text and etc.

But for said book? There's no excuse there.....

[slebetman]

Just being a devil's advocate here but some cases are tricky.

For example, take "with great power, comes great responsibility." Do we have to attribute this quote to Spider-Man? Maybe so. But it's not like the sentiment was new when Stan Lee put it in the mouth of Uncle Ben- I have no doubt that ancient Greek philosophers would have agreed, or at least some of them would.

(see what I did there?)

[Simon_Jester]

So, do you have an opinion on the subject?

In particular, what is the minimum-sized "atom" that constitutes a quote? What about paraphrases? Can I say 'power brings responsibility' or some other compact aphorism about the relationship between power and responsibility, without quoting a comic book of all things? If so, where do we draw the line?

If not, does that mean Stan Lee has permanently secured the intellectual property rights on observing that power and responsibility are or ought to be associated?

[Siege]

That way lie age-old discussions about what's permissible and impermissible, imitation versus wrongful appropriation and so forth. There are no clear and unambiguous rules with regards to plagiarism and just how much copying is too much and that's probably because the nature of language makes it impossible to do so. But if you ask me if you're knowingly using a turn of phrase invented or popularized by somebody else you should use attribution even if you're not quoting verbatim, and failure to do so should lead to sanction. It's a simple matter of intellectual honesty, particularly in politics: if you can't even trust a politician to not steal somebody else's words, what can you trust that person with?

[Purple]

That way lie age-old discussions about what's permissible and impermissible, imitation versus wrongful appropriation and so forth. There are no clear and unambiguous rules with regards to plagiarism and just how much copying is too much and that's probably because the nature of language makes it impossible to do so. But if you ask me if you're knowingly using a turn of phrase invented or popularized by somebody else you should use attribution even if you're not quoting verbatim, and failure to do so should lead to sanction. It's a simple matter of intellectual honesty, particularly in politics: if you can't even trust a politician to not steal somebody else's words, what can you trust that person with?

I don't mean to jab here. But who in the world actually trusts politicians in the first place? If they were trustworthy what the hell would they be doing in politics to begin with?

[Thanas]

^I for one do trust several of my elected officials. I trust them not to steal and generally not be corrupt. Don't you?

[Elheru Aran]

^I for one do trust several of my elected officials. I trust them not to steal and generally not be corrupt. Don't you?

Quite. If you have no expectation of honesty from elected (or appointed, as in the case of judges here in the States) officials in your government, then either your outlook is distorted or your government is severely broken. There has to be at least a basic idea that a person you put into a certain position of authority will not abuse that position.

There is definitely a distinction to be drawn between old saws/maxims/well known sayings and specific quotes. Here is one specific example from Rand Paul's case:

"In the movie 'Gattaca,' in the not-too-distant future, eugenics is common. And DNA plays a primary role in determining your social class," he said.

The Wikipedia entry for "Gattaca" reads, "In the not-too-distant future, liberal eugenics is common and DNA plays the primary role in determining social class."

The single difference is the word 'liberal'.

[Grumman]

There is definitely a distinction to be drawn between old saws/maxims/well known sayings and specific quotes. Here is one specific example from Rand Paul's case:

"In the movie 'Gattaca,' in the not-too-distant future, eugenics is common. And DNA plays a primary role in determining your social class," he said.

The Wikipedia entry for "Gattaca" reads, "In the not-too-distant future, liberal eugenics is common and DNA plays the primary role in determining social class."

The single difference is the word 'liberal'.

And "a" and "your", if you're going to get your OCD panties in a bunch.

But really, this is stupid. Somebody misattributing a one sentence summary of a film to the film itself and not the 85% similar summary from Wikipedia is insignificant. We elect politicians for their ability and willingness to manage the public sector. Plagiarising 40% of the document that is supposed to be evidence that you are competent to receive your doctorate is a problem. Forgetting you read something on Wikipedia once and paraphrasing a one sentence summary of a movie instead of creating it from whole cloth is not.

[salm]

Karl Theodor zu Guttenberg aka the Copy & Paste Minister.

[TheFeniX]

I think there's a large divide between trying to pass an idea you got from somewhere else off as your own and "good faith" plagiarism where you forget the original source, misquoted, or just didn't bother to point out where you got it from. There's also a point where an idea is either so wide-spread or so simple, you can't exactly take credit for the idea, even if you've phrased it in a unique way.

But there isn't even a comparison between that and ripping off your thesis, unless (however unlikely) the plagiarism is shit like "you missed a comma and/or put the wrong page number down."

[Siege]

I don't mean to jab here. But who in the world actually trusts politicians in the first place? If they were trustworthy what the hell would they be doing in politics to begin with?

You say you don't mean to jab but this is a particularly hackneyed remark to make right after saying it. It's an expression of the sort of cynical misanthropy that all too often is mistaken for sophistication, but actually it's just dumb repetition of vapid clichés. We wouldn't tolerate it if someone here were to claim all cops are killers, all blacks are thugs or all Americans are gun-toting yankee bastards, and rightfully so, so why trot out the same sort of shoddy stereotype-driven nonsense when it comes to politicians?

I work with politicians on a daily basis and most of them are genuinely idealistic people who truly believe that what their party wants is what's best for people. I may disagree with many of them a lot of the time (the nature of our compromise-driven multi-party system in fact means I disagree with most of them most of the time) but I'll still respect the hell out of them for standing up for what they believe is right. That's not the hip thing to say because ideals are scary and it's easier to be a cynic, but I hope we can all agree that it's patently stupid to blanket label all politicians as untrustworthy. That's unhelpful to public discourse about politics, and unhelpful to your understanding of what politics actually is and how it works.

[Purple]

I don't mean to jab here. But who in the world actually trusts politicians in the first place? If they were trustworthy what the hell would they be doing in politics to begin with?

You say you don't mean to jab but this is a particularly hackneyed remark to make right after saying it. It's an expression of the sort of cynical misanthropy that all too often is mistaken for sophistication, but actually it's just dumb repetition of vapid clichés.

Well, given that I just got home and did not really get a chance to post back with a more detailed explanation, and likely won't until tomorrow due to being tired I think you can forgive me by cutting this short and saying that no. In my case it is in fact simple cynical misanthropy without a hint of pretense to anything else.