More Borrowing?
Regular readers here know my feelings about blatant "borrowing" of text and ideas such as the recently exposed acts of plagiarism by Stephen Ambrose and Doris Kearns Goodwin.
What's much tougher is the borrowing of ideas without proper attribution, since it's often impossible to know if an author intentionally "borrowed" from someone else and deliberately chose to slight her, or if an author just "assumed" certain information to be in the public domain and reworked it slightly.
I've just run across one of those cases in an article dated 1 February in the NY Times on the proposed HP-Compaq merger. Parts of it are strikingly similar to this article from the Economist dated 24 January, which I posted to Reductio Ad Absurdum a few days ago. In particular, paragraphs 1, 2, 4, 5, and 6 of the Economist piece track very closely to paragraphs 1, 2, 10, 11, and 13 of the NY Times piece. As in, some of the sentences seem only to be slightly reworded, and in some instances, in a more clumsy manner almost as to avoid copying the cleaner construction of the Economist article.
Is this plagiarism? Impossible to say. It's not blatant enough for me to make that accusation, although it certainly raises suspicions. Ultimately, only the author knows for sure. And it's these instances -- not the crystal-clear examples of Stephen Ambrose and Doris Kearn Goodwin -- that are the most difficult.
What is strange is that, in some ways, the NY Times piece is the stronger piece. It's weakened by the elliptical writing that, perhaps, represents an effort to avoid simply copying from the Economist piece, but otherwise it's more tightly focused on its topic (What is driving Hewlett) than the Economist piece on its topic (the strategic business issues dividing the camps in the merger debate). If any "borrowing" took place, one can only wonder why, since the author obviously can string together an effective article.
(02-02-02 Update: This FT article touches on all the same issues, without the same feel of "borrowed" text/ideas)
[Posted at 00:11 CST on 02/02/02] [Link]
