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Alleged Plagiarism In Chris Anderson's New Book

Posted by Soulskill on from the hyperlinks-don't-stick-to-dead-trees dept.

ScorpFromHell writes "Blogger Waldo Jaquith alleges in his blog that Chris Anderson, Wired magazine's editor-in-chief and writer of The Long Tail, has apparently plagiarized content from various sources without attribution for his soon-to-be-published book. 'In the course of reading Chris Anderson's new book, Free: The Future of a Radical Price, for a review in an upcoming issue of VQR, we have discovered almost a dozen passages that are reproduced nearly verbatim from uncredited sources. ... Most of the passages, but not all, come from Wikipedia.' When questioned about the similar passages, Anderson responded, "All those are my screwups after we decided not to run notes as planned, due to my inability to find a good citation format for web sources... As you'll note, these are mostly on the margins of the book's focus, mostly on historical asides, but that's no excuse. I should have had a better process to make sure the write-through covered all the text that was not directly sourced. I think what we'll do is publish those notes after all, online as they should have been to begin with.'"

9 of 138 comments (clear)

  1. first plagiarised post by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Funny

    Blogger Waldo Jaquith alleges in his blog that Chris Anderson, Wired magazine's editor-in-chief and writer of The Long Tail, has apparently plagiarized content from various sources without attribution for his soon-to-be-published book. 'In the course of reading Chris Anderson's new book, Free: The Future of a Radical Price, for a review in an upcoming issue of VQR, we have discovered almost a dozen passages that are reproduced nearly verbatim from uncredited sources. ... Most of the passages, but not all, come from Wikipedia.' When questioned about the similar passages, Anderson responded, "All those are my screwups after we decided not to run notes as planned, due to my inability to find a good citation format for web sources... As you'll note, these are mostly on the margins of the book's focus, mostly on historical asides, but that's no excuse. I should have had a better process to make sure the write-through covered all the text that was not directly sourced. I think what we'll do is publish those notes after all, online as they should have been to begin with.'

  2. It's not plagiarism... by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 5, Funny

    It's a "mashup"...

    1. Re:It's not plagiarism... by megamerican · · Score: 4, Funny

      Plagiarism is copying from one source. Research is copying from many.

      --
      If you have something that you dont want anyone to know, maybe you shouldnt be doing it in the first place -Eric Schmidt
    2. Re:It's not plagiarism... by Amazing+Quantum+Man · · Score: 2, Funny

      It's a "mashup"...

      --
      Fascism starts when the efficiency of the government becomes more important than the rights of the people.
    3. Re:It's not plagiarism... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      Plagiarism is copying from one source. Research is copying from many.

      Another snappy witticism on slashdot. But it's wrong. And not in a nitpicky killjoy technicality kind of a way, but just plain wrong. So inaccurate, that it's not funny is what I'm saying. Plagiarism is when you directly copy, or reinterpret with significant similiarity, the work of another without citing the original author. It's got squat to do with how many places you take from. And it's perfectly fine to build on the ideas of others - hell that's the foundation of academia - as long as you don't pass off that work as your own.

    4. Re:It's not plagiarism... by 0xdeadbeef · · Score: 2, Funny

      Plagiarism is copying from one source. Research is copying from many.

      Another snappy witticism on Slashdot, but it's wrong, and not in a nit-picky killjoy technicality kind of a way, but just plain wrong. It's so inaccurate that it's not funny is what I'm saying. Plagiarism is when you directly copy, or reinterpret with significant similarity, the work of another without citing the original author. It's got squat to do with how many places you take from. It's perfectly fine to build on the ideas of others - hell that's the foundation of academia - as long as you don't pass off that work as your own.

    5. Re:It's not plagiarism... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

      I hereby cite Merriam-Webster:

      joke

      Pronunciation: \ËjÅk\
      Function: noun
      Etymology: Latin jocus; perhaps akin to Old High German gehan to say, Sanskrit yÄcati he asks
      Date: 1670

      1 a: something said or done to provoke laughter ; especially : a brief oral narrative with a climactic humorous twist b (1): the humorous or ridiculous element in something (2): an instance of jesting : kidding c: practical joke d: laughingstock
      2: something not to be taken seriously : a trifling matter â"often used in negative constructions

  3. Re:Slashdot covers own ass (allegedly). by langelgjm · · Score: 4, Funny

    but I think we can safely call a spade a spare.

    I like bowling too.

    --
    "Anyone who [rips a CD] is probably engaging in copyright infringement." - David O. Carson
  4. Plagiarism without attribution by SheeEttin · · Score: 4, Funny

    Chris Anderson ... has apparently plagiarized content from various sources without attribution

    As opposed to...?