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More to the Maureen Dowd Plagiarism than She Admits
Maureen Dowd now admits that one paragraph of her Sunday column actually comes from a blog post of Josh Marshall's (as thejoshuablog first reported at TPM cafe). http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/05/17/maureen-dowd-admits-inadv_n_204418.html
It turns out, though, that that's not the only thing in her column that comes from Josh. Two paragraphs above the one she has changed to be a quotation from Marshall's original post, she has a phrase that also comes straight from Josh, the description of a captured Iraqi official as "an old-fashioned P.O.W." Here is Josh at http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/2009/05/bubbling.php
"(Also worth noting is that an Iraqi intelligence official captured during the invasion would, I think, very clearly be an old fashioned POW.)"
Here is Dowd in the revised online version of her column: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/17/opinion/17dowd.html
"Even though this man was an old-fashioned P.O.W., someone in Vice's orbit reportedly suggested that the interrogations were too gentle and that waterboarding might elicit information about the fantasized connection between Osama and Saddam."
Dowd's explanation for lifting the paragraph was that she had not read Josh's post but that a friend told her the line. Frankly, this does not sound very plausible. But when we add in that she used an additional very distinct phrase, in an entirely different paragraph, its plausibility disappears to the vanishing point. Or did her friend tell her that line, too?
It turns out, though, that that's not the only thing in her column that comes from Josh. Two paragraphs above the one she has changed to be a quotation from Marshall's original post, she has a phrase that also comes straight from Josh, the description of a captured Iraqi official as "an old-fashioned P.O.W." Here is Josh at http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/2009/05/bubbling.php
"(Also worth noting is that an Iraqi intelligence official captured during the invasion would, I think, very clearly be an old fashioned POW.)"
Here is Dowd in the revised online version of her column: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/17/opinion/17dowd.html
"Even though this man was an old-fashioned P.O.W., someone in Vice's orbit reportedly suggested that the interrogations were too gentle and that waterboarding might elicit information about the fantasized connection between Osama and Saddam."
Dowd's explanation for lifting the paragraph was that she had not read Josh's post but that a friend told her the line. Frankly, this does not sound very plausible. But when we add in that she used an additional very distinct phrase, in an entirely different paragraph, its plausibility disappears to the vanishing point. Or did her friend tell her that line, too?
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I think MoDo is too embarrassed to admit that her underlings do a lot of her article prep for her. I'm hoping someone is running a bunch of her other columns through a Google filtr right now, just to see how extensive this pattern of "copying" is.
May 19, 2009 12:50 AM | Reply | Permalink
It sounds to me that she read the column herself and lifted from it. It appears that she is lying through her teeth.
May 19, 2009 7:06 AM | Reply | Permalink
astral66: Have you thought about running her columns through a Google filter yourself? I would, but I don't know how to do it.
May 19, 2009 7:09 AM | Reply | Permalink
One slow way to do it (my way, anyway) is to randomly select phrases--phrases so long they should be unique but short enough to lessen the chance of including paraphrased words--, paste them into Google, and put a quotation mark before the first letter.
It's amazing how many kids these days think they can piece together a research paper using sentences from eight or nine Wikipedia articles.
May 19, 2009 8:22 AM | Reply | Permalink
I think it's time to move on from this.
May 19, 2009 8:37 AM | Reply | Permalink
As a professor, plagiarism is an issue I am very serious about. Cutting and pasting from the internet is a constant problem with undergraduates, but one that is easily detected as well (see worthlesscitizen's comment for the method).
It is not something we should be seeing from New York Times columnists, however.
May 19, 2009 10:27 AM | Reply | Permalink
Why move on before one has had the chance to see if she has done this on a number of occasions? If the truth is out there, it needs to be discovered. To not uncover it would be doing a disservice to readers. I am betting she has done this a number of times.
May 19, 2009 8:54 AM | Reply | Permalink
Is some of this plagiarism accusations, making “Mountains out of molehills”.
Sorry maybe I should have identified the first user of that idiom.
If I should use Wikipedia, how many ways should I or could I use to express the same Idea, Using words only by changing, ever so slightly the order in the sentence.
It's like architectural drawings.
There are only so many ways to design a 3-bedroom house with x amount of sq footage.
Could some one say you violated my copyright, because that’s the very way I put the bedrooms in relationship to the kitchen
One who writes ideas, should change an adjective or two, because for fear someone else used the same sentence structure?
If Maureen heard someone at the water cooler say “ Old fashioned POW, and then days after, a thought comes to her head "Old fashioned POW"
Wow! How appropriate this thought, not realizing the seed was planted days earlier from an overheard conversation.
“Mountain out of a molehill” I looked it up in Wikipedia, Who should I have given the credit, or must my paper list all of them?
Or how about the phrase ""Imitation Is The Best Form Of Flattery"
I wish if someone should ever use my thoughts, we could sit at the coffe table, and have a good discussion. The objective being not one of financial reward, but the exchange of ideas.
Changing or adding to the dialogue is the objective. It is not vanity.
May 19, 2009 1:51 PM | Reply | Permalink
Look --
It isn't an original idea and Josh ain't no Oscar Wilde. The real issue/embarrassment is pointed out by astral66 -- Who are these "underlings"?
May 19, 2009 2:34 PM | Reply | Permalink
Who are these "underlings"?
More importantly, can I borrow a few--I'm very short of underlings at the moment, and it makes me nervous.
May 19, 2009 2:47 PM | Reply | Permalink
Too many overlings, not enough underlings.
May 19, 2009 3:27 PM | Reply | Permalink
not enough underlings
They're dropping like flies! Like flies, I tell you!!
May 19, 2009 6:23 PM | Reply | Permalink
"There are only so many ways to design a 3-bedroom house with x amount of sq footage."
Assign it in first year studio and see what you get.
"Could some one say you violated my copyright, because that’s the very way I put the bedrooms in relationship to the kitchen"
We architects steal and call it referential.
May 19, 2009 3:38 PM | Reply | Permalink
If she really did not read the article herself, she certainly knows that it was lifted by now! Where's the mea culpa?
May 19, 2009 2:04 PM | Reply | Permalink
"an old-fashioned P.O.W.," is not a unique or long enough phrase to really count. And people borrow little turns of phrase from each other all the time.
I said this elsewhere but while the charge of hypocrisy is often overused, it's still not hard to feel that Dowd is asking for the benefit of the doubt that she would likely not extend to a public figure.
When somebody does or says something stupid, columnists like her interpret these as deep and telling character flaws. Biden's plagiarism showed he was irrevocably dishonest and disqualified him for the presidency. But Dowd's was just some foolish accident. When she makes a mistake, it is a matter of 'circumstance'. (The name for this fallacy is the fundamental attribution error.)
May 19, 2009 3:08 PM | Reply | Permalink
Again, it helps to look at the actual passages:
Dowd wrote:
More and more the timeline is raising the question of why, if the torture was to prevent terrorist attacks, it seemed to happen mainly during the period when the Bush crowd was looking for what was essentially political information to justify the invasion of Iraq.
Marshall wrote:
More and more the timeline is raising the question of why, if the torture was to prevent terrorist attacks, it seemed to happen mainly during the period when we were looking for what was essentially political information to justify the invasion of Iraq.
Except for substitutiong "the Bush crowd" for "we", even the commas are in the exact same places. Someone took the time to edit that one spot, so they knew they were cutting and pasting. There's no way to claim error.
May 19, 2009 3:31 PM | Reply | Permalink
It is absurd and beyond ridiculous to claim it was anything other then plagiarism. It should be embarrassing to those who suggest that it is not plagiarism because, if they are sincere, then they lack any decision making capacity to say, while there is a gray line between paraphrasing and plagiarism this complete paragraph crosses it, and if they are insincere and being disengenuous, that in itself deserves no respect.
May 19, 2009 3:51 PM | Reply | Permalink
I was talking about the "old fashioned pow" phrase, not the one you cite.
May 19, 2009 4:17 PM | Reply | Permalink
Sorry. I didn't see you were responding to a comment farther up.
May 19, 2009 4:36 PM | Reply | Permalink
No, she wouldn't extend the benefit of the doubt to any politician caught in the same kind of plagiarism.
The fundamental attribution error capsulates a lot of what goes on in the Beltway. What are "youthful indiscretions" for one politician are profound character flaws for someone else.
May 19, 2009 3:45 PM | Reply | Permalink
If you don't think "old fashioned POW" is unique or long enough, you should do a Google search and see what comes up first. (Hint: You're reading it.)
May 19, 2009 4:11 PM | Reply | Permalink
Turns of phrase are commonly coined, and then copied. Think of the trend of saying "not so much.", coined by Borat. Or the many ones accidently created by GWB -- "the interwebs". But I think that's a red herring.
The more egregious issue would be the type of wholesale lifting of entire ideas and sentences, as Astral cites above. I think it is surprising that such a long phrase would be remembered so accurately, especially passed from TPM to her "friend" to MoDo. Remember that whisper down the alley game when you were a child? The phrase usually gets changed quite a bit by the end.
May 19, 2009 4:25 PM | Reply | Permalink
Huh ? An "old-fashioned P.O.W" is not a common expression. Just Google it. Marshall's story comes up, and Dowd's, and maybe one other reference. That's it. There are lots of references to an "old fashioned Pow-wow" but not to this.
This was Marshall's phrase, and why I point it out is because Dowd used it too - which I believe shows that contrary to what she is saying, she read the piece too.
But please Google next time before you state facts.
May 19, 2009 4:33 PM | Reply | Permalink
My point was not that the phrase is common, but that people coin and borrow phrases all the time. Of course, this raises the question -- did she read Josh's post after all?
Perhaps Dowd is taking the "talking points memo" title too seriously? No, not literally YOUR talking points, Maureen.
May 19, 2009 8:18 PM | Reply | Permalink
No matter how you cut it, this episode makes one suspect that Dowd's ideas are entirely derivative. It sure looks like her way of working is to browse the net, find stuff she likes, and paste bits and pieces together in some sequence that makes sense to her. Maybe her friends sometimes supply her with bits and pieces. Then she goes through the results, chops some things out, and reworks each remaining paragraph to give it that Special MoDo Sparkle. On this occasion, she forgot to rework one of the paragraphs.
Did her "friend" really supply this paragraph? Or did she cut and paste it herself. Either way, it looks like she's a hack.
http://www.robertfulford.com/2003-08-19-hacks.html
May 19, 2009 4:42 PM | Reply | Permalink
I think she needs to consider retirement. If she's run out of ideas on her own. Which seems to be the case, imvho.
May 19, 2009 5:03 PM | Reply | Permalink
I'm confused as to how this subject has become a non-issue in the media. I keep reading, "let it go".
Why? As an instructor at a local college-plagiarism results in an automatic "F" along with disciplinary action and possible expulsion.
Should a Pulitzer Prize winning writer for the NY Times make this error in judgement without any price whatsoever?
May 19, 2009 5:46 PM | Reply | Permalink
A few years back, I wasted a few dollars on MoDo's BushWorld: Enter At Your Own Risk." Please note that I said wasted and not spent.
The book is compilation of her NYT essays. I got about one-third of the way through it before I put it on the bookshelf to stay, unfinished forever. If it weren't that I hate to throw away books, it might have found its way to the trash heap if not the nearest incinerator. Fahrenheit 451, indeed!
MoDo's book read as if someone had been forced to rewrite the same essay again and again and again until they reached the magic number for a book. There are only so many cutesy references to "Pappy Bush" and "little Shrub" one can take. Her work is, as Dan K said, "entirely derivative" to the point she repeats herself repeating herself.
With MoDo, it's less about crafting something unique and cogent, and more about creating -- and reusing ad nauseum the snarky nickname.
I think I'll call her "PlaDo" henceforth.
May 19, 2009 6:41 PM | Reply | Permalink
I hope Maureen keeps reading TPM, and maybe she is a contributor, already using another user name.
Maureen. Call me,
May 19, 2009 11:09 PM | Reply | Permalink