Thank you for this refreshing statement! I love the term "forensic metascientist", sounds much better than what the press calls me: plagiarism hunter. And thanks for mentioning VroniPlag Wiki. However, the group does not only document plagiarism in politician's dissertations. Of the 218 currently published documentations only 20 are from people considered politicians. More than double (58!) are or were academics: Professors, researchers, teachers. An overview of the cases (with links to the forensic research results) can be found here: https://vroniplag.fandom.com/de/wiki/%C3%9Cbersicht
Indeed, I find some of the findings to date in Gay's thesis serious and others not so much. The situation where a reference is given but the quotation marks are "forgotten" is called a "pawn sacrifice" in Germany. Often the text overlap (one of my euphemisms for the p-word) continues on past the reference mark.
Referencing is not rocket science: Mark where the text or ideas from others begins, where it ends, and where it comes from. So either directly quote: "...." (Snafu 2024) or indirectly paraphrase with Snafu notes that ..... (2024, p. 42). Snafu continues to decry .... (2024, p. 43). And so on.
"I find some of the findings to date in Gay's thesis serious and others not so much" <- glad to hear you say it, and would be upset with myself were it otherwise.
Awww, thanks! The important thing is that on the basis of just a few fragments one can neither determine plagiarism or exculpate the author. As you noted, it needs a full investigation in order to determine if, as in the words of the supreme administrative court of Germany (in Leipzig): the thesis is characterized quantitatively or qualitatively by disguised borrowings from other texts. Note the word "OR". That means either there are a lot of fragments, for various definitions of "a lot", or there are brazen bits (like copying a first person passage), or a bit of both. That is why VroniPlag Wiki first documents in a hidden corner of the wiki without using the name of the author. Only when a case is deemed serious is it moved to a more prominent location and eventually the name may be published and the university informed. And then: often nothing happens. I published an article in the FAZ in 2021 "Die unrühmliche Verschleppung" (the inglorious foot-dragging) and even named names of universities needing years to decide on clear cases. Nothing changed. For example, I informed the Humboldt University (Germany's Harvard) about this case (https://vroniplag.fandom.com/de/wiki/Ids) in 2020. They are still deliberating what to do about it. Of course, Corona and all that. They will be finished any day now.
The link points to an article alleging plagiarism by the wife of one of the Harvard donors who uncovered Gay's problems. Obviously, the implication is that the donor is being hypocritical (which he may be). Yet in the middle of the article, it says, "Similarly, in most of the other instances BI identified in which Oxman lifted passages from other works, she cited the author but did not put quotation marks around the plagiarized material," which is more the inappropriate citation that you described, rather than plagiarism proper. 🤦♂️
Re the antisemitism vs anti-Zionism issue, I agree with what Black South African-American Aaryan Morrison said at Mondoweiss. In fact, I used it as the header of a blog post. We should be angry FOR Claudine Gay, but we should also be angry AT her. She fricking screwed the pooch and it still didn't save her. And, yes, on things like Palestinian rights, Harvard sure as hell ain't close to "woke," if that's what supporting them is called. https://socraticgadfly.blogspot.com/2024/01/be-furious-at-claudine-gay-as-well-as.html
Why did you say no further investigation is needed, when she is still a highly paid professor at Harvard, some of the allegations seem true and she won't provide a dataset for her 2002 paper?
I think you're having some comprehension difficulties, and missed the part where I speculated about problems the rest of her work, and wondered if all the people leaving stupid comments on the internet would like to help do it instead of leaving stupid comments.
Yes, some. Less than was represented, more than zero. And you always need to add 'so far to a statement like that.
So far?
You bet. One of the ironclad rules of research integrity investigation is that there’s always one more example. Smoke is a great fire signal. I don’t know how much of Gay’s bibliography these angry internet men have looked at, there’s no internal investigative documents published, which is something a proper forensic metascientist always tries to do. So, if this is only half the papers, what’s in the other half? Maybe some of the thousands of people screaming about this would like to spend their time finding out instead?
There are two problems with Gay's research corpus. Plagiarism, of which she is a somewhat marginal exponent, isn't one of them. One is that the corpus is so damn small. By any standard, she has very little to show for 3 decades in paid academe. The second is alleged data falsification. This was explored in detail by competent meta-scientists 20 years ago, and is being reexamined currently, despite the interim disappearance of the critique from the archives. It is an interesting question why so little public attention has been paid to a well-evidenced charge of p-hacking and so much to sloppy citation habits. It is obvious which is worse, if true.
I heard rumours that there was a data issue, but I am waiting to see one single thing about that in the public domain.
It has previously been the case that academics have been 'fired for A' or 'resigned subsequent to A', and this has prevented a full expurgation of problem B, which would be 50 times worse.
When I see someone leave a senior job amicably subsequent to what feels like... 'insufficient sins', then I am always VERY mindful that there may be deeper problems that are in neither party's interests to investigate.
Gay declined to provide her data set, and the review paper was sanitised before publication. However, Brunet has posted a copy of the original version.
Can I say how much I enjoyed this article (though I felt some of the rhetorical flourishes may have risked diminishing the content in some people's eyes NTYC)?. And it wasn't just that you confirmed what I thought working from 1st principles. I should also say that sloppiness appears to be the new academic rigour from the little academic stuff I now read.
My solution to the plagiarism problem is to add ASOS to the end of each line to cover myself. As someone once said.
Thank you for the article. I suspected it was a piling on, and thanks for the digging and of course, showing your work. The weaponization of research integrity is expected and disheartening. The Till Buckner LSE piece you linked to said the Washington Free Beacon worked with a dozen research scholars to comb through her works looking for gotchas. Research Integrity of academics who stray into the culture wars is just another form of opposition research.
Wow. I’d glossed over other Gay articles so this was news to me. I also had no idea that so many scientists were fighting the good fight in exposing flawed, incompetent, or fraudulent research. And you’re a fellow Aussie - I’m stoked :-)
You gave me support for my own biases, which is that this plagiarism charge was a sexist / racist attack to remove a liberal. It should be seen as such. And it bodes ill for civil discourse.
Thank you for this refreshing statement! I love the term "forensic metascientist", sounds much better than what the press calls me: plagiarism hunter. And thanks for mentioning VroniPlag Wiki. However, the group does not only document plagiarism in politician's dissertations. Of the 218 currently published documentations only 20 are from people considered politicians. More than double (58!) are or were academics: Professors, researchers, teachers. An overview of the cases (with links to the forensic research results) can be found here: https://vroniplag.fandom.com/de/wiki/%C3%9Cbersicht
Indeed, I find some of the findings to date in Gay's thesis serious and others not so much. The situation where a reference is given but the quotation marks are "forgotten" is called a "pawn sacrifice" in Germany. Often the text overlap (one of my euphemisms for the p-word) continues on past the reference mark.
Referencing is not rocket science: Mark where the text or ideas from others begins, where it ends, and where it comes from. So either directly quote: "...." (Snafu 2024) or indirectly paraphrase with Snafu notes that ..... (2024, p. 42). Snafu continues to decry .... (2024, p. 43). And so on.
Oh damn!
For those of you who don't know, DWW is plagiarism *royalty*. https://www.google.com/books/edition/False_Feathers/ZlPFBAAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=0
"I find some of the findings to date in Gay's thesis serious and others not so much" <- glad to hear you say it, and would be upset with myself were it otherwise.
Awww, thanks! The important thing is that on the basis of just a few fragments one can neither determine plagiarism or exculpate the author. As you noted, it needs a full investigation in order to determine if, as in the words of the supreme administrative court of Germany (in Leipzig): the thesis is characterized quantitatively or qualitatively by disguised borrowings from other texts. Note the word "OR". That means either there are a lot of fragments, for various definitions of "a lot", or there are brazen bits (like copying a first person passage), or a bit of both. That is why VroniPlag Wiki first documents in a hidden corner of the wiki without using the name of the author. Only when a case is deemed serious is it moved to a more prominent location and eventually the name may be published and the university informed. And then: often nothing happens. I published an article in the FAZ in 2021 "Die unrühmliche Verschleppung" (the inglorious foot-dragging) and even named names of universities needing years to decide on clear cases. Nothing changed. For example, I informed the Humboldt University (Germany's Harvard) about this case (https://vroniplag.fandom.com/de/wiki/Ids) in 2020. They are still deliberating what to do about it. Of course, Corona and all that. They will be finished any day now.
Looks like the problem of politicizing research integrity work is already happening: https://www.businessinsider.com/bill-ackman-wife-neri-oxman-mit-dissertation-plagiarism-2024-1?amp
The link points to an article alleging plagiarism by the wife of one of the Harvard donors who uncovered Gay's problems. Obviously, the implication is that the donor is being hypocritical (which he may be). Yet in the middle of the article, it says, "Similarly, in most of the other instances BI identified in which Oxman lifted passages from other works, she cited the author but did not put quotation marks around the plagiarized material," which is more the inappropriate citation that you described, rather than plagiarism proper. 🤦♂️
Yep. This may snowball horribly.
Especially since even people who try really hard to cite and quote correctly are going to have an “error rate” that’ll produce infractions.
I used to edit a major journal in my field. Virtually every submission we got had some kind technical, but trivial, infraction (at least).
Re the antisemitism vs anti-Zionism issue, I agree with what Black South African-American Aaryan Morrison said at Mondoweiss. In fact, I used it as the header of a blog post. We should be angry FOR Claudine Gay, but we should also be angry AT her. She fricking screwed the pooch and it still didn't save her. And, yes, on things like Palestinian rights, Harvard sure as hell ain't close to "woke," if that's what supporting them is called. https://socraticgadfly.blogspot.com/2024/01/be-furious-at-claudine-gay-as-well-as.html
Why did you say no further investigation is needed, when she is still a highly paid professor at Harvard, some of the allegations seem true and she won't provide a dataset for her 2002 paper?
I think you're having some comprehension difficulties, and missed the part where I speculated about problems the rest of her work, and wondered if all the people leaving stupid comments on the internet would like to help do it instead of leaving stupid comments.
***********************************************************************
"But you said there plagiarism here?
Yes, some. Less than was represented, more than zero. And you always need to add 'so far to a statement like that.
So far?
You bet. One of the ironclad rules of research integrity investigation is that there’s always one more example. Smoke is a great fire signal. I don’t know how much of Gay’s bibliography these angry internet men have looked at, there’s no internal investigative documents published, which is something a proper forensic metascientist always tries to do. So, if this is only half the papers, what’s in the other half? Maybe some of the thousands of people screaming about this would like to spend their time finding out instead?
Oh. So it warrants further investigation, eh?"
There are two problems with Gay's research corpus. Plagiarism, of which she is a somewhat marginal exponent, isn't one of them. One is that the corpus is so damn small. By any standard, she has very little to show for 3 decades in paid academe. The second is alleged data falsification. This was explored in detail by competent meta-scientists 20 years ago, and is being reexamined currently, despite the interim disappearance of the critique from the archives. It is an interesting question why so little public attention has been paid to a well-evidenced charge of p-hacking and so much to sloppy citation habits. It is obvious which is worse, if true.
I heard rumours that there was a data issue, but I am waiting to see one single thing about that in the public domain.
It has previously been the case that academics have been 'fired for A' or 'resigned subsequent to A', and this has prevented a full expurgation of problem B, which would be 50 times worse.
When I see someone leave a senior job amicably subsequent to what feels like... 'insufficient sins', then I am always VERY mindful that there may be deeper problems that are in neither party's interests to investigate.
The 2002 investigation is linked from this article by Christopher Brunet: https://www.dossier.today/p/these-scholars-asked-claudine-gay.
Gay declined to provide her data set, and the review paper was sanitised before publication. However, Brunet has posted a copy of the original version.
Can I say how much I enjoyed this article (though I felt some of the rhetorical flourishes may have risked diminishing the content in some people's eyes NTYC)?. And it wasn't just that you confirmed what I thought working from 1st principles. I should also say that sloppiness appears to be the new academic rigour from the little academic stuff I now read.
My solution to the plagiarism problem is to add ASOS to the end of each line to cover myself. As someone once said.
"some of the rhetorical flourishes" - fam, this is as low as I can tune my personality. I am incapable of less rhetorical. We're stuck here.
Thank you for the article. I suspected it was a piling on, and thanks for the digging and of course, showing your work. The weaponization of research integrity is expected and disheartening. The Till Buckner LSE piece you linked to said the Washington Free Beacon worked with a dozen research scholars to comb through her works looking for gotchas. Research Integrity of academics who stray into the culture wars is just another form of opposition research.
If they worked with a dozen academics, they weren't working in research integrity. It also wasn't anyone from the forensic metascience community.
'...these angry internet men...'
https://twitter.com/carolmswain/status/1737824719275962497
Wow. I’d glossed over other Gay articles so this was news to me. I also had no idea that so many scientists were fighting the good fight in exposing flawed, incompetent, or fraudulent research. And you’re a fellow Aussie - I’m stoked :-)
Well, yes, I am. As my old boss used to say, 'pathologically Australian'.
Thanks for this article.
You gave me support for my own biases, which is that this plagiarism charge was a sexist / racist attack to remove a liberal. It should be seen as such. And it bodes ill for civil discourse.
Well, you can see it as such. But as we say in powerlifting 'you can't flex bone'. This is kind of... the Curate's Egg of plagiarism.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curate's_egg