In article <
lrbip8dhea5codmvj...@4ax.com>,
Martin Luther King done the same sort of thing in his Ph.D. thesis:
<
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Luther_King,_Jr._authorship_issues>
Authorship issues concerning Martin Luther King, Jr. center around claims
of plagiarism and fall into two general categories: his academic research
papers, including his doctoral dissertation, and his speeches.
[edit] Dissertation and other academic papers
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s papers were donated by his wife Coretta
Scott King to Stanford University's King Papers Project. During the late
1980s, as the papers were being organized and catalogued, the staff of the
project discovered that King's doctoral dissertation at Boston University,
titled A Comparison of the Conception of God in the Thinking of Paul
Tillich and Henry Nelson Wieman, included large sections from a
dissertation written by another student (Jack Boozer) three years earlier
at Boston University.[1][2]
As Clayborne Carson, director of the King Papers Project at Stanford
University, has written, "instances of textual appropriation can be seen
in his earliest extant writings as well as his dissertation. The pattern
is also noticeable in his speeches and sermons throughout his career."[3]
Boston University, where King received his Ph.D. in systematic theology,
conducted an investigation that found he plagiarized major portions of his
doctoral thesis from various other authors who wrote about the
topic.[4][5]
According to civil rights historian Ralph E. Luker, who worked on the King
Papers Project directing the research on King's early life, King's paper
The Chief Characteristics and Doctrines of Mahayana Buddhism[6] was taken
almost entirely from secondary sources.[7] He writes:
Moreover, the farther King went in his academic career, the more deeply
ingrained the patterns of borrowing language without clear attribution
became. Thus, the plagiarism in his dissertation seemed to be, by then,
the product of his long-established practice.[7]
The incident was first reported in the December 3, 1989 edition of the
Sunday Telegraph by Frank Johnson, titled "Martin Luther King�Was He a
Plagiarist?" The incident was then reported in U.S. in the November 9,
1990 edition of the Wall Street Journal, under the title of "To Their
Dismay, King Scholars Find a Troubling Pattern." Several other newspapers
then followed with stories, including the Boston Globe and the New York
Times. Numerous newspaper editorials defended King, saying he was still a
great man regardless of his academic fraud.[citation needed]
Boston University decided not to revoke his doctorate, saying that
although King acted improperly, his dissertation still "makes an
intelligent contribution to scholarship." However, a letter is now
attached to King's dissertation in the university library, noting that
numerous passages were included without the appropriate quotations and
citations of sources.[1][8][9]
Ralph Luker has questioned whether King's professors at the Crozer
Theological Seminary held him to lower standards because he was an
African-American, citing as evidence the fact that King received lower
marks (a C+ average) at the historically black Morehouse College than at
Crozer, where he was a minority being graded mostly by white teachers and
received an A- average.[7][10] Boston University has denied that King
received any special treatment.[1]
The Martin Luther King, Jr. Papers Project addresses authorship issues on
pp.�25�26 of Volume II of The Papers of Martin Luther King, Jr., entitled
"Rediscovering Precious Values, July 1951�� November 1955," Clayborne
Carson, Senior Editor. Following is an excerpt from these pages:
The readers of King's dissertation, L. Harold DeWolf and S. Paul
Schilling, a professor of systematic theology who had recently arrived at
Boston University, failed to notice King's problematic use of sources.
After reading a draft of the dissertation, DeWolf criticized him for
failing to make explicit "presuppositions and norms employed in the
critical evaluation," but his comments were largely positive. He commended
King for his handling of a "difficult" topic "with broad learning,
impressive ability and convincing mastery of the works immediately
involved." Schilling found two problems with King's citation practices
while reading the draft, but dismissed these as anomalous and praised the
dissertation in his Second Reader's report....
As was true of King's other academic papers, the plagiaries in his
dissertation escaped detection in his lifetime. His professors at Boston
University, like those at Crozer, saw King as an earnest and even gifted
student who presented consistent, though evolving, theological identity in
his essays, exams and classroom comments.... Although the extent of King's
plagiaries suggest he knew that he was at least skirting academic norms,
the extant documents offer no direct evidence in this matter. Thus he may
have simply become convinced, on the basis of his grades at Crozer and
Boston, that his papers were sufficiently competent to withstand critical
scrutiny. Moreover, King's actions during his early adulthood indicate
that he increasingly saw himself as a preacher appropriating theological
scholarship rather than as an academic producing such scholarship.