NYT Withheld Full Harris Plagiarism Report From Expert, Who Admits It’s ‘More Serious’

NYT Withheld Full Harris Plagiarism Report From Expert, Who Admits It’s ‘More Serious’

The New York Times immediately pounced on Christopher Rufo’s report about instances of plagiarism in VP Kamala Harris’s book Smart on Crime: A Career Prosecutor’s Plan to Make Us Safer.

The publication showcased its own plagiarism expert, who shrugged off the examples given to him: “This amount of plagiarism amounts to an error and not an intent to defraud.”

The NYT didn’t give Jonathan Bailey of Plagiarism Today the complete dossier.

The expert tried to cover for the NYT because the article stated Bailey’s analysis was only his “initial reaction.”

Bailey received the full “dossier prepared by Dr. Stefan Weber,” known as the “plagiarism hunter.”

Bailey found it more severe than he initially thought, but he doesn’t think it’s the end of the world.

Bailey wrote about the dossier on his website Plagiarism Today:

With this new information, while I believe the case is more serious than I commented to the New York Times, the overarching points remain. While there are problems with this work, the pattern points to sloppy writing habits, not a malicious intent to defraud.

Is it problematic? Yes. But it’s also not the wholesale fraud that many have claimed it to be. It sits somewhere between what the two sides want it to be.

I love how Bailey, along with Weber, dismisses the self-plagiarism:

Furthermore, the report also treats these as less serious, calling them “maybe benign” examples of plagiarism. That makes sense as politicians, in general, have little, if any, expectation of originality.

That made me laugh.

Bailey found the Wikipedia accusations the most serious:

The most serious allegation concerns Wikipedia. Harris’ book contained roughly two paragraphs copied from Wikipedia without citation. To be clear, that is plagiarism. It’s compounded by the fact that Wikipedia is typically not seen as a reliable source, and, according to Weber, there was an error in the information.

The section quotes and cites a passage from the U.S. Bureau of Justice Assistance but does not indicate that Wikipedia was used.

Most of the remaining passages are in situations where text was used verbatim but not quoted. The sources were largely cited and, in some cases, were quoted, though not all verbatim text was included.

We’ve seen this problem repeatedly, especially with works from this period. Poor writing techniques and the lack of accessible plagiarism detection tools made this a common problem, especially before the 2010s. While that doesn’t make it acceptable, it makes it more about sloppy writing habits than an intent to defraud.

Bailey noted that other people have received forgiveness “for much greater plagiarism sins,” and others, like in this book, “have been dismissed outright in academia.”

Overall, it’s sloppy.

It ticks me off because, as I said before, we had strict standards when I went to school and taught. None of this would be forgiven at those levels. Man, I remember teachers making sure we knew how to avoid plagiarism.

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