Posted on 01/07/2017 4:24:26 PM PST by usafa92
An investigation by CNN’s K-File has found that Trump advisor Monica Crowley, who the president-elect has tapped for a senior communications role on his national security team, plagiarized many parts of her 2012 bestseller, What The (Bleep) Just Happened? The Happy Warrior’s Guide to the Great American Comeback. CNN discovered and documented more than 50 instances where Crowley, a former Fox News contributor and syndicated radio host and columnist, had lifted passages or phrases — some wholesale — from a variety of sources including Wikipedia, think tank websites, and news articles and op-ed columns from numerous publications like the National Review, Wall Street Journal, New York Times, and many others.
The Trump transition team defended Crowley in a statement to CNN and called the allegation — which CNN backs up with essentially irrefutable side-by-side comparisons — a “politically motivated attack that seeks to distract from the real issues facing this country,” insisting that Crowley’s “exceptional insight and thoughtful work on how to turn this country around is exactly why she will be serving in the [Trump] Administration.”
CNN was unable to get a response regarding the discovery from either Crowley or her book’s publisher, HarperCollins. Crowley is currently set to become Trump’s senior director of strategic communications for the National Security Council. She was previously accused of plagiarizing part of a Wall Street Journal column she wrote in 1999, an allegation she denied.
Serial plagiarizer.
That’s textbook plagiarism.
Its lazy man’s thinking and you have to be careful when you write to make it clear when someone else wrote something and when its yours.
I don’t have a Ph.D and I knew the rules when I wrote my graduate school thesis. Credit all primary and secondary sources.
When in doubt, always give appropriate credit. No one likes a thief.
We’re guilty of lapses from time to time but repeated plagiarism is a character defect. Crowley shouldn’t have a role in the Trump White House.
But to extend this, suppose author a wrote:"Reuters reports that 'Johnny, a wise-cracking maverick with a penchant for slim, vanilla-flavored cigars and low-rent women, pilfered an antique, floral cookie jar in 1987.'"
And then some time later author B writes: Reuters reports that 'Johnny, a wise-cracking maverick with a penchant for slim, vanilla-flavored cigars and low-rent women, pilfered an antique, floral cookie jar in 1987.'"
Here, it is claimed that author B stole from author A because he copied, to some significant degree, what author A wrote. The problem is that author A claimed that Reuters reported it, not author A, so author A has no claim.
For instance, I write: "a key hypothesis of Einstein's theory of relavivity is the constancy of the speed of light in all frames of reference." Now, it may be that some professor wrote a physics book stating exactly that in those exact words, plus or minus a few [there are dozens of such books, I believe]. He does not have priority to this idea, however. Einstein is the owner of the original idea here.
And if I create an example of what is seen by signalmen on trains passing at some large fraction of the speed of light, again, the professor would have no claim, even if he put it in his book because Einstein published that exact example.
There are illustrative examples where if I copied them from the professor I might be guilty of plagiarism, but many professional physicists would testify that all such examples are trivial extensions of Einstein's original theory and do not constitute original works.
Of course a line is drawn well before xeroxing and distributing for free copies of the professor's textbook, which is a clear infringement because the professor created substantial proprietary value in the compilation of explanation and example.
But if I write a book criticizing the theory of relativity and use language in an explanation that comes from the professor's textbook in order to criticize the unphysicallity (violations of physical law) of the example provided, I am not plagiarizing. I am criticizing.
And criticizing a whole body of received political wisdom is what Crowley is up to here. That the #fakenews liberal CNN does not like it does not change the fact that what she is writing is legitimate political criticism (the most protected form of speech).
You cannot claim she is plagiarizing ideas when not only is she not stealing them and passing them off as here own, but rather she is standing some distance from them and taking aim at them with a high powered rifle [to appropriate the language of violence associated with gun nuts advocating the right to bear assault rifles].
We rightly criticize others for their shortcomings and then excuse it when our side does it.
We’re simply hypocrites. We have standards and need to be held to them.
Right and wrong are the same for every one.
Thousands of people will be scrutinizing everything the Trump team has done from infancy. They will never give up trying to destroy them.
Thousands of people will be scrutinizing everything the Trump team has done from infancy. They will never give up trying to destroy them.
Quite so.
Plagiarism is borrowing others’ thoughts word for word and not giving them credit.
Its dishonest and it reflects poorly on whatever original ideas you may entertain.
How you would like it if I stole your money and claimed it was mine?
This is no different and isn’t behavior becoming of a decent person.
Theft is theft, period.
No it isn't. Please tell me which idea she "stole" and passed off as her original idea. Ideas in economics that derive from Keynes that she attributes to Keynes? Something Reuters said that she said Reuters said?
Sorry, plagiarism is passing off someone else's original ideas as yours.
There are all kinds of examples where I might learn of a fact or an idea from a secondary source that actually comes from a primary source. The ideas are not the property of the secondary source. E.g. In Washington's farewell address he stated:"...." or "Einstein's theory of relativity presumes: "..."
Now, suppose I wrote "the sun rose in the East at 5:53 AM on June 3, 1917 in Lubbock Texas" which I read in a history book and did not site the history book" but the history book sites the Lubbock Morning Herald of June 3, 1917 reporting that fact. Am I guilty of plagiarism? Well, no. Not only is it not an original idea, it is not even idea. It's a fact, and if you want to attribute the fact to some observer paid to observe these facts, well observer is employed by the Naval Observatory, maintained at public expense, and therefore the information is already owned, freely, by the American public.
To steal it, first, it has to be a thought, and second, it has to belong to the person from whom I "stole" it. It I merely copy words he copied from someone else, I didn't steal anything.
Somebody does something genuinely original, someone else steals it and passes it off has his won original idea, he is a scoundrel of the worst order.
But this isn't a game of igotcha and you have fallen into the trap of modern academia of trivializing the issue, which is mostly used to benefit those who actually don't have a lot useful to say.
Wrong.
If its a secondary source, you must still give credit.
Same as with primary source you may reference.
You don’t have to credit commonly expressed info but if you are quoting from someone, you must always credit them.
Its the right thing to do but oh the most insidious defense for wrong-doing with human nature is, “every one does it.”
No, they don’t and we wouldn’t want to live in such a world.
And as I showed at great length above, the issue CNN and the left have with Crowley is not that she stole their “ideas” - it’s that she ridicules their god-hero Obama and explains in very original prose exactly how he justifies expropriating and redistributing the advantages that had made the U.S. a great nation.
Oh B.S. If he is quoting someone else, he has no "property right" in the idea whatsoever.
And you have the whole thing backwards because, again you are confusing intellectual property and scholarship.
I quote a secondary source because I am attributing an idea to him or because he is the best source of information I have because the primary source is unavailable. If I am writing about the theory of relativity I cite Einstein rather than the 123rd expository textbook on the subject. Now it may be that someone discovered a unique application to a particular problem in astrophyics. Well, then I cite that paper. If I learned generally about a subject from a secondary source I will put it in my bibliography, particularly if it would be useful to the reader for additional information. But the secondary source has no primacy where the primary source is available.
Otherwise, you cannot write anything at all. I use the word "is" and I have to cite Bill Clinton.
If I am quoting Washington's farewell address I cite G. Washington not some history book that copied out the farewell address, unless there is some significant variation in versions that is important to history.
And, if I am concerned about the meaning of "is" I cite the Oxford English Dictionary, not Bill Clinton who raised it's meaning as an epistemological issue.
Reminds me when a neighbor’s kids was writing an essay, he ask, “Do I need to give a citation when I say, “George Washington was our first president?”
Ahahahahaha. Oh please.
I recall the current VP having had some trouble with plagiarism, of loser British Labour leader Neil Kinnock of all people.
People rightly criticized Biden for it.
Then they turn around and excuse Crowley for doing the same thing because she’s on “our side.”
If there are no standards, you don’t have the right to hold people accountable.
Liberals get away with it but we demand more of conservatives because we do aspire to standards.
CNN's argument is that you should ignore Crowley and dismiss her from a post in the WH not because she is wrong, but because she is a plagiarist - believe us - we have looked into this long and hard and she is a plagiarist.
Well, the problem is what they and you accuse her of plagiarizing are things she apparently holds up for criticism. If I write Kenynesian economics prescribes that unlimited spending is good for the economy, and then I criticize this as the stupidest bit of central bank fascism I can imagine, you cannot accuse me of stealing your idea and passing it off as mine. It may be your idea, but I am ridiculing it.
Now, if you want to accuse her of not living up to the Ivy League Standard on Academic Citations, well Crowley is not passing herself off as an Ivy League Academic.
When you read the Slimes or the Compost, how many citations do you find - none - but rarely is the content original with them except for their useless editorializing or their #fakenews. Where it is important it was generated by or about a public figure whose time is paid for by the taxpayers.
No, she has not written an academic paper. She has written a popular book of political criticism. Nothing she has "stolen" contributes substantially to the value of the book. The value of the book comes from Crowley's analysis of the views of others.
Its not like we are asking for her to be a Vice President after being a plagiarist of major political speeches...whoops, that was Joe. But that’s okay, he’s a Dem.
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