Rachel Miller Investigates The Omnibus

omnibus-plagiarism

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12 comments

  1. Just a reminder as someone in the comments pointed out:
    “[Note: Please note that the name of the author of the essay does not mean that the author is the one responsible for the plagiarism. This is especially true of the image captions and side bars (large text inserts). Typically those parts of books are added by others after the authors have already written their essay text. I’m sorry for the confusion.]”

    From the article:
    “A caption explaining the example appears on each image. To view the caption, hover over the image. I have included the names of the editors and essay authors for citation purposes. I do not know who is responsible for the plagiarism in each example.”

    From the comments (John Barach):
    “I note that almost (though not all) of these examples are from sidebars (textual inserts) and from image captions. It should be pointed out that the author of a particular essay did not write the sidebars or the image captions that Veritas inserted to go along with that essay.

    For example, Peter Leithart wrote an essay for Omnibus on *The Great Gatsby*. He did not include the picture of a Duesenberg car or write up a caption for that picture, nor did he write a sidebar with definitions of slang from the Gatsby era. Those things were inserted by someone else in the process of producing the volume.

    The responsibility for the sidebars, textual inserts, and image captions rests with the publisher and editors.”

    • As Rachel has noted.

      That hardly mitigates 100s of pages of plagiarism. Again.

      About this episode, Carl Trueman says today:

      In the meantime, as I look at the sheer quantity of the evidence, I keep thinking of that comment made by Mary McCarthy about Lillian Hellman: “Every word she writes is a lie, including ‘and’ and ‘the’.”

      That the first instinct of those whom Carl calls “true believers” is to mitigate and defend (rather than to face the evidence and its necessary implications) is telling.

  2. We must consider where the guy might be coming from: If someone gets a bit of vision through investigation and study and publishes it, that vision becomes federal to everyone that reads the publication. That means that because it is federal, any member of the federation has a share in it, and may, therefore, publish it as his own.
    This is at least as scriptural as anything else that’s called Federal Vision.

  3. I would like to know how much academic dishonesty exists in seminaries. Do faculty at WSCAL use turnitin or some other means to check for plagiarism? I would like to know how much academic dishonesty exists in seminaries.

    All that yellow is so embarrassing.

    • Alberto,

      1. There are seminaries and then there “seminaries.” A distinction should be made between home-made, unaccountable schools and schools with high academic standards.

      2. Plagiarism is a general problem in the age of the internet. I’m aware of several cases where ministers have been dismissed because of plagiarism.

      3. I can’t speak for other seminaries. We’ve had a few cases. Because of federal laws I can’t say much but my experience is that most of my students are serious about learning and resist the temptation. There are ways of discovering plagiarism.

      4. This is the second case that Rachel has found with this publishing house and the third associated with one of the editors of this series.

    • “where ministers have been dismissed because of plagiarism” – James Sharp only lost a prospective bride through it. The heartbreak of seeing him become Archbishop, then brutal persecutor and then, finally, scorner and homicide victim thus became the lot of another.

  4. There’s an important follow-up, “Wilson Responds,” at Rachel’s website. It’s interesting to see how easily Rachel, armed with just the facts, can squash Wilson like a bug. No extended discussion or heated arguments needed.

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