On the other hand: Critics And Writers Are Defending An Accused Plagiarist. Here’s Why They’re Wrong.
A student can fail or be kicked out of a class, and in some cases expelled, for plagiarizing in exactly that manner. I’m a writer at the start of my career; in an unofficial survey, my editors said that if they were shown evidence I’d plagiarized to a similar extent they would likely fire me. In 2006, then-19-year-old Harvard sophomore Kaavya Viswanathan’s debut novel with Little, Brown, “How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild, and Got a Life,” was found to contain several multi-word passages plagiarized from a variety of authors. Her book was withdrawn and her book and movie contracts cancelled.
Having examined the charges, which can be found here (https://tourniquetreview.com/blog/2017/9/27/william-logan), I would say that Bialosky did plagiarize, although not on the level of Jonah Lehrer, who cut far more corners than Bialosky. If a professed writer cannot find a new way to express information gleaned from research (one wonders why Bialosky did not dip into, say, actual books instead of Wikipedia), I would argue that she is probably not a very good writer. What is more fascinating about this story is how the literary community is willing to give Bialosky a fair pass for this. Is it because she is well-connected? Is it because, dare I say this, she is a woman? Do different rules apply for different people? This would appear to be the case.
ReplyDelete