Stormy Waters

It all began with a Facebook posting on April 22, 2014: Arne Janning posted a longish article to his friends asking for help. He had found a recent book by two prominent historians (Karsten, A. & Rader, O. B. (2013) Grosse Seeschlachten -- Wendepunkte der Weltgeschichte von Salamis bis Skagerrak. München: C.H. Beck) to contain plagiarism from the Wikipedia. He exaggerated by saying that "every page contained plagiarism", and wondered what he should do.

The first thing Janning should have done was perhaps to check his privacy settings, as his post was public and the case quickly caught fire and was widely reported on. Maritime puns seem to be the norm for the titles of the articles, as I have also chosen: Spiegel Online ["Abschreiben bei Wikipedia: Zwei Historiker geraten in Plagiatssturm"], Neue Zürcher Zeitung, ["Seeschlacht mit unzulässigen Beibooten"], Süddeutsche ["Wendepunkte der Weltgeschichte aus Wikipedia kopiert"], FAZ ["Unter der Flagge Wikipedias"]. The authors and the publisher promptly threatened Jennings with legal action. According to Spiegel Online, one of the authors, Radar, noted that he did not actually steal intellectual property, as he only used "technical details" from the Wikipedia. "In earlier days we used the Brockhaus [encyclopedia], today we use the Wikipedia," he is quoted as stating [translation dww].

The blog Erbloggtes noted that there were at least two pictures used from the Wikipedia as well as some text, and the pictures were printed without attribution. That is a definite copyright infringement, although one of the pictures was indeed in the public domain, the other was not. Many other blogs joined the discussion: Archivalia, Schmalenstroer, hellojed, plagiatsgutachter. The Wikipedia-Kurier discussion was, as so often, extensive.

The publisher soon decided to withdraw the book, as reported by BuchMarkt, Meedia, and others. Beck ran the book through plagiarism detection software (iThenticate) and declared the parts written by Arne Kasten to be "free from unmarked quotations", despite the fact that it is impossible to prove the absence of plagiarism. One can only demonstrate the presence of plagiarism by a synoptic documentation showing the plagiarism and the source together. The other author, however, had not only plagiarized from the Wikipedia, but from an article published online in 2003. The publisher notes in a pseudo-scientific manner the "exact" word counts and percentages found, although I have repeated shown in my work (for example, my 2013 test) that such numbers are meaningless. Additionally, a reader cannot tell which parts of this book were written by which author, so they both are responsible for the entire book, in my opinion.

Beck also couldn't resist bashing Janning, still threatening legal action, perhaps to deflect criticism from itself for not having properly edited the book. A good comment by Jörg Hopfgarten in the Boersenblatt notes the publisher would be better off to understand that this was just an angry customer blowing off steam, ranting. Customers have a right to do just that without consulting a lawyer, especially when it can easily be seen that they are at least partially right. Amazon is full of similar reactions, this was just the media picking up on the keyword "plagiarism" and running with it, without having independently verified the accusations. Indeed, none of the Seeschlachten books in the Berlin libraries were out on loan when I obtained a copy, although perhaps they all purchased the Kindle version.

Beck closes their press notice with a condescending offer to "participate in a discussion about the use of the Wikipedia in academics." Jan Englemann notes on the Wikimedia blog that the discussion is for all practical purposes already over, as there are numerous court rulings on the legality of the Creative Commons license that the Wikipedia articles are under, CC-BY-SA. It is, perhaps, time for publishers to understand how a legal use of Wikipedia texts works: Link to the license and authors, and put the material that uses a Wikipedia text under at least this license. Open licenses do not mean that the material is free to be misappropriated.

Many of the blogs discussing the topic have started documenting the plagiarized portions, in particular using a German system Picapica (also called Picapedia), that compares text to the current version of the Wikipedia. I will be bringing a short test of this system in my next blog entry.

Plagiarius Litterarius

For readers with some spare time over the holidays who can read German, here a link to the entry Plagiarius Litterarius in Zedlers Grosses vollständiges Universal-Lexicon Aller Wissenschafften und Künste – from 1741!

PLAGIARIUS LITTERARIUS, der gelehrte Dieb, wird unter den Gelehrten derjenige geheissen, der eines andern Sachen abschreibet, und vor seine eigene Arbeit ausgiebet, anbey aber den rechten Autorem, woraus er seine Nachrichten und Künste gezogen, nicht nennet. Und diese Gewohnheit heißt Plagium Litterarium, der gelehrte Diebstahl. Vom Plagio und Plagiariis hat Jacob Thomasius am ausführlichsten geschrieben. Doch ist kein Zweiffel, daß sein Catalogus Plagiariorum sehr vermehret werden könnte, nachdem der gelehrten Diebe immer mehr und mehr werden.

The answer to a question journalists often ask: Did plagiarism arise with the Internet? No!

The German Pseudodoctors

No, I'm not talking about the current situation, although it is getting bizarrer by the day. Nature published an anonymous editorial today, decrying the anonymous, mud-slinging plagiarism-accusers. Say what? Okay, I put in a comment, don't know that that will help.

I got the year wrong, though. I've got to learn to look up years and not trust my brain. I had the German historian Theodor Mommsen's letters in my head as 1867, but they were in 1876, as Ulrich Rasche noted in "Mommsen, Marx und May" earlier this year. It was also pointed out to me that the law about publishing the dissertation took a few more years.

In 1878 Max Oberbreyer put together a lovely collection of the letters and articles in Eisenach that had been published on the subject: Die Reform der Doctorpromtion - Statistische Beiträge von Dr. Max Oberbreyer. Google has scanned a copy and it makes fascinating reading. One of the articles by Mommsen is also available at Wikisource, Die Deutschen Pseudodoctoren. Plagiarism, as far as the eye can see. And since the end of the 19th century German academia has been discussing what to do.

Interestingly, the DFG published a second press release about the whistleblowing recommendation today. The press release emphasizes that the recommendation was ONLY about the ombud process, NOT about any other kind of scientific discussion:

Der Vorwurf, die DFG wolle über die Regelung zur Vertraulichkeit des Ombudsverfahrens Hinweise auf den Verdacht wissenschaftlichen Fehlverhaltens erschweren oder gar die Wissenschaftsfreiheit einschränken, entbehrt jeder Grundlage. (The accusation that the DFG wants to make it more difficult for whistleblowers to report suspicions of academic misconduct by regulating the confidentiality of the ombud process, or that they want to restrict scientific freedom, is completely unfounded. -- Translation by the author)

The lady doth protest too much, methinks. In the modern sense, not the Shakespearean.

Plagiarism allegations against new Russian minister of culture

Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty reports on the history dissertation of the new Russian minister of culture, Vladimir Medinsky. The article begins with some gems from the academic writing of Medinsky:

The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact "deserves a monument."
The U.S.S.R. never occupied the Baltic states, it just "incorporated" them. 
An infamous picture of a Nazi-Soviet military parade in Poland in 1939 was "photoshopped."
Anti-Semitism in Tsarist Russia has been "greatly exaggerated." 

Sure. Why, I remember that ancient version of Photoshop, must have been version -31, like it was yesterday.

But a group of Russian historians, perhaps inspired by VroniPlag Wiki, have documented plagiarism in 16 places in Medinsky's dissertation.

Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty quotes historian Lev Usyskin as passing judgement on the non-plagiarized portions of the dissertation:

"The bits that weren't plagiarized did not conform to the slightest academic rigor. This is actually a fraudulent scientific degree. The doctor himself knows this perfectly well -- this is a person who is not embarrassed to stand before the world as a fraudster," he adds. "His morals are clear."

It will be interesting to see how this develops.  Just a few weeks ago, the Romanian minister of education had to step down on charges of plagiarism, and at the end of March Hungary's president had his doctorate rescinded.