Although I think that giving credit where credit is due is important, I
have trouble getting terribly worked up about this sort of plagiarism
in textbooks (which will seem odd, I'm sure, seeing as I started this
thread by posting an article about college administrators plarigarizing
"Welcome" messages on websites). After all, in businesses and
government, credit is routinely taken by senior staff for writing done
by junior staff (e.g., someone I know who works for the gov't once
heard a bit of research she had conducted for her immediate supervisor
later presented as an answer by a government minister in the
legislature -- her exact words had worked their way up the chain, all
uncredited, until they had made it to the political level). Textbooks,
useful as they may be, are not original research and are very much Big
Business. I suspect that the thinking that among publishers has nothing
to do with originality or credit but with marketing:
"A book coming from Big Researcher X will sell well. But Big Researcher
X does not have the time or inclination to write a whole textbook. So,
we'll offer to hire some 'authorial assistants.' Big Researcher X can
then supervise, and later approve, their writing. It will save him/her
time and earn us greater profits."
After all, it now appears that many of the research reports published
in medical journals now consists of research reports written by the
pharmaceutical companies that commissioned the research, lightly edited
and signed off on by the researchers they have hired (because medical
researchers are deemed "too busy" to have to write the reports
themselves, so the sponsoring corporation provides the actual writing
as a "service" to the researcher). If we accept that for what is
supposed to be be original medical research (and no matter how much we
might complain about it, we do accept it in the end), why shouldn't we
accept the same for mere textbooks?
Now, I understand that this is all too cynical by half. In my ideal
world everyone would get credited for work they do (and do the work for
which they are credited). But we don't live in my ideal world (what
proportion of the (legal) images of Mickey Mouse in the world do you
suppose were actually drawn by Walt Disney?), and there are, it seems
to me, much more important things to get exercised about than who
actually wrote a textbook passage (like whether or not real research
really shows that the chemical I am about to really put in my body
really treats the medical condition I really have without really doing
significant secondary damage to me).
Regards,
--
Christopher D. Green
Department of Psychology
York University
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
M3J 1P3
e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
phone: 416-736-5115 ext. 66164
fax: 416-736-5814
http://www.yorku.ca/christo/
============================
.
Stuart McKelvie wrote:
Dear Tipsters,
A few years ago, Leo Standing and myself noticed that a "new"
introductory textbook by two well-known psychologists seemed to contain
passages that were similar to another textbook published by the same
company (see reference below). When we compared the two in detail, our
suspicions were confirmed. Substantial chunks of the first book
appeared in the second without proper credit. Notably, the preface to
the second text had the following passage (names deleted) "XXX (company
name) publishes YYY (the first text), and the ability to draw on
accumulated materials and illustrations for this text has been of great
value to us".
We often see the same illustrations in textbooks by the same company,
but passages are a different story. The euphemistic disclaimer
certainly did not convince us that the "borrowing" was appropriate.
McKelvie, S. J., & Standing, L. G. (1981). Recycled psychology.
Bulletin of the British Psychological Society, 34, 431.
Sincerely,
Stuart
______________________________________________
Stuart J. McKelvie, Ph.D.,
Department of Psychology,
Bishop's University,
2600 College Street,
Sherbrooke (Lennoxville),
Québec J1M 0C8,
Canada.
E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
or [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Phone: (819)822-9600, Extension 2402
Fax: (819)822-9661
Bishop's Psychology Department Web Page:
http/:www.ubishops.ca/ccc/dev/soc/psy
__________________________________
-----Original Message-----
From: Christopher D. Green [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
Sent: Thursday, July 20, 2006 8:50 AM
To: Teaching in the Psychological Sciences (TIPS)
Subject: [tips] Re: Inside Higher Ed :: Differing Standards on
Plagiarism
I wonder if what happens in these cases is that two publishers
unknowingly hire the same "uncredited writer" who, naurally enough,
cribs from his- or herself? Or are the uncredited writers plagiarizing
from each other (although in the case ot two books published in one and
the same year, that seems somewhat unlikely (though not impossible).
--
Christopher D. Green
Department of Psychology
York University
Toronto, ON M3J 1P3
Canada
416-736-5115 ex. 66164
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://www.yorku.ca/christo
=============================
Paul Smith wrote (quoting from the NYT):
This is how the 2005 edition of "A History
of the United States," a
high school history textbook by the Pulitzer Prize-winning historian
Daniel J. Boorstin and Brooks Mather Kelley, relates the cataclysmic
attacks of 9/11 for a new generation of young adults:
"In New York City, the impact of the fully fueled jets caused the twin
towers to burst into flames. The fires led to the catastrophic
collapse of both 110-story buildings as well as other buildings in the
area. The numbers of people missing and presumed dead after this
assault was estimated to be 2,750."
The language is virtually identical to that in the 2005 edition of
another textbook, "America: Pathways to the Present," by different
authors. The books use substantially identical language to cover other
subjects as well, including the disputed presidential election of
2000, the Persian Gulf war, the war in Afghanistan and the creation of
the Department of Homeland Security.
Just how similar passages showed up in two books is a tale of how the
largely obscure $4 billion a year world of elementary and high school
textbook publishing often works, for these passages were not written
by the named authors but by one or more uncredited writers. And while
it is rare that the same language is used in different books, it is
common for noted scholars to give their names to elementary and high
school texts, lending prestige and marketing power, while lesser known
writers have a hand in the books and their frequent revisions.
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