Let’s Talk About Plagiarism

[Steve S]

ROFLMAO.... I was just made aware that this sad sack is so bereft of good ideas he can't even come up with an original name for a podcast. He's literally planning to do a podcast called Ripper Cast UK. I'm almost feeling sorry for him at this point. I mean good lord if you can't even come up with an original title, what hope does he have of coming up with original material. At this point it's just too sad to bother with anger, it's pathetic and like laughing at the guy in the gutter, stained with his own piss and ****. Everything he's done has been a second-rate copy of others work and a failure. If anyone agrees to work with him at this point, it's a judgement on their own intelligence and competence.

I suspect his 'Great Comeback' of next year will be in the great successful tradition of the German offensive of 1946......

[Ally]

Or as they say in my neck of the woods: "The Mouth Shall Rise Again!"

[Steve S]

Or as they say in my neck of the woods: "The Mouth Shall Rise Again!"

I have just choked on my wine......Actually, Boss Hogg from Dukes of Hazzard is coming to mind

[JeffHamm]

Several years ago there was an entire ebook published and sold that copied all of its content off of Casebook. I can’t remember the name of it. Which brings me to ask this question. If an author cites contemporary newspaper articles in their book that they actually found in the Casebook Press Reports section...should the author cite the Casebook online source or is it OK for them to simply cite the original newspaper? Citing only the newspaper gives the impression to the reader that they did “research” when in actuality they were just using the search engine in the Press Reports.
A hypothetical question as I don’t have a specific example in mind...

JM

What you've just described is a case of a secondary source, so the Newspaper is the primary source, and Casebook is a secondary source (a source you read which cites another source). What one should do is cite "through" the source you've actually viewed (i.e. The Times as cited on Casebook ...) with proper information with regards to citing a website, etc. The reason is simple, if, let's say, there were an error in the transcription of the news article so the Casebook source isn't correct, then it protects the author from being held responsible for that transcription error. Also, if the Casebook version is "out of context" or "incomplete", again, the author is indicating where they got the information from so cannot be held responsible for information they did not have.

This kind of citation, however, should be used extremely sparingly, and only resorted to if one cannot view the original source. That's the whole point of citations. If an author reads something on Casebook, and wants to include reference to that source material, they absolutely should go and view the original material. Make sure they are citing the information they claim to be citing. Otherwise, errors propagate that should never do so, and it's dishonest as well. A citation is you claiming to have viewed the material you cite, not viewed someone else's citation of that material. If you're doing the latter, you cite as such - and yes, it also signals to the reader something about the author's research approach, and lazy and incomplete come to mind.

- Jeff

Oh, I should point out, that's how it's done in my field of research (cognitive psychology, no, not related to clinical disorders, etc, but basic principles of perception and cognition - real wild at parties I'll tell you )

[jmenges]

Following on Ally’s post about Cobb’s inability to come up with original material. He can’t even begin his introduction to his chapter in Who was Jack the Ripper? without lifting the majority of it straight from CSI Whitechapel.

JM