The proverb “imitation is the sincerest form of flattery” does not hold true when plagiarism is involved.
Now, The New York Times’ plagiarism consultant Jonathan Bailey is reporting that allegations of plagiarism against Vice President Kamala Harris are “more serious” than originally thought.
Bailey released his “full analysis” regarding the allegations Wednesday, Fox News reported.
“At the time, I was unaware of a full dossier with additional allegations, which led some to accuse the New York Times of withholding that information from me,” Bailey wrote on Plagiarism Today. “However, the article clearly stated that it was my ‘initial reaction’ to those allegations, not a complete analysis.”
“Today, I reviewed the complete dossier prepared by Dr. Stefan Weber, whom I have covered before. I also performed a peer review of one of his papers in 2018,” he wrote.
“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,” he said.
“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,” Bailey said.
While Bailey said some of the work is merely sloppy and not malicious, he pointed to two paragraphs that were copied from Wikipedia, and therefore, were textbook examples of plagiarism.
“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,” Bailey said.
In the end, Bailey said no one will be happy with the endgame.
“Ultimately, I recognize that this view will make absolutely no one happy. I don’t feel that the book is a product of wholesale malicious plagiarism, nor do I think it’s free from problems,” Bailey said. “No matter your side, this will be an unsatisfactory answer.”
In a New York Times article, Bailey said the examples were much ado about nothing and conservative activist Chris Rufo, who was an integral part of Monday’s story, was taking minor violations and trying to “make a big deal of it.”
Bailey later posted on X, formerly Twitter, that he had reviewed the five examples provided to him and not the entire book.
“For those coming here from the NY Times Article. I want to be clear that I have NOT performed a full analysis of the book. My quotes were based on information provided to me by the reporters and spoke only about those passages,” he wrote.
Rufo claimed that Harris copied parts of her 2009 book “Smart on Crime.”
“Taken in total, there is certainly a breach of standards here. Harris and her co-author duplicated long passages nearly verbatim without proper citation and without quotation marks, which is the textbook definition of plagiarism,” Rufo wrote.
