Once ideas are put into words and published, they become intellectual property, and the author has the same rights over them as he or she has over a material possession such as a house or a car. Anyone who has ever wracked his or her brain trying to solve a problem or trying to put an idea into clear and meaningful words can appreciate how difficult mental effort can be.
想法一旦被写成文字并出版，它们就变成了知识产权，作者对它们就享有和拥有一匹马或一辆车一样的所有权。唯一的差别就在于知识产权不是用钱而是通过心力取得的。任何曾绞尽脑汁去解决问题或者将想法变成明朗意味深长的话的人都会知晓动脑筋是多么的困难。
Plagiarism is passing off other people’s ideas or words as one’s own. It is doubly offensive in that it both steals and deceives. In the academic world, plagiarism is considered an ethical violation and is punished by a failing grade for a paper or a course or even by dismissal from the institu- tion. Outside the academy, it is a crime that can be prosecuted if the per- son to whom the ideas and words belong wishes to bring charges. Either way, the offender suffers dishonor and disgrace, as the following exam- ples illustrate:
• When a university in South Africa learned that professor Marks
Chabel had plagiarized most of his doctoral dissertation from
Kimberly Lanegran of the University of Florida, the university fired
Chabel. Moreover, the university that had awarded him his Ph.D.
revoked it. • When U.S. Senator Joseph Biden was seeking the 1988 Democratic pres-
idential nomination, it was revealed that he had plagiarized passages
from speeches by British politician Neil Kinnock and by Robert Kennedy.
It was also learned that, while in law school, he had plagiarized a
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PART ONE The Context
number of pages from a legal article. The ensuing scandal led Biden to withdraw his candidacy and has continued to stain his reputation.
• The reputation of historian Stephen Ambrose was tarnished by alle-
gations that over the years he plagiarized the work of several authors. Doris Kearns Goodwin, historian and advisor to President Lyndon Johnson, suffered a similar embarrassment when she was discovered to have plagiarized from more than one source in one of her books.
• When James A. Mackay, a Scottish historian, published a biography
of Alexander Graham Bell in 1998, Robert Bruce presented evidence that the book was largely plagiarized from his 1973 biography, which had won a Pulitzer Prize. Mackay was forced to withdraw his book from the market. (Incredibly, he did not learn from the experi- ence because he then published a biography of John Paul Jones, which was plagiarized from a 1942 book by Samuel Eliot Morison.)
• When New York Times reporter Jason Blair was discovered to have
plagiarized stories from other reporters and fabricated quotations
and details in his stories, he resigned his position in disgrace. Soon afterward, the two senior editors who had been his closest mentors also resigned, reportedly because of their irresponsible handling of Blair ’s reportage and the subsequent scandal.
