I'll note that Ackman did not provide links to what he purports that his lawyers found. Neither did he mention that The Wayback Machine is a "best-effort" attempt to preserve older versions of web sites, and is not guaranteed to be complete.
There's a PDF version of it, it's got dated metadata. He's right on that but of course it doesn't matter, because if he wants to be strict about it, by the book she plagiarized six ways from Sunday.
Surely at some point, somebody who has a good chunk of their money invested with him is going to have to start questioning his judgment. This is just insane.
It really looks like he is claiming that plagiarism rules have to include a list of every individual source that requires a citation and if it's not on the list you can just copy/paste and not cite.
Does he mean "citations of wikipedia", which is pretty dumb, or does he mean "missing citations are fine because it doesn't say anything about citations", which is insane?
Page 9 of the Academic Integrity at MIT Handbook 2009 version.
It seems pretty clear to me : "DO NOT CUT AND PASTE DIRECTLY FROM INTERNET INTO YOUR PAPER".
The surprising thing for me is that a PhD candidate at any institution of higher learning would use any encyclopedia, as a major, quotable source of their work.
I was teaching high school students during the era of “early Wikipedia.” While students were permitted to use encyclopedias for obtaining initial info, at its inception, Wikipedia was not considered a suitable source because of how and by whom its articles were constructed.
I would love to think that his lawyers are billing him at billionaire hourly rates so having them dig up this non-information cost him upwards of $100,000.
If you discover interesting, useful information for a paper in Wikipedia, you might want to check that article’s citations, and go directly to the source, then cite that source in correct format. If there are no source citations, go elsewhere.
He could be relaxing on a private beach somewhere in paradise, and instead he's staring at an iPhone and trying desperately to convince a bunch of nobodies that we didn't just see his whole ass.
The commentariat over at “American Thinker” have got Ackman and Oxman covered regardless of such technicalities. You just don’t understand the situation the way they do.
It's even more stupid: his argument was basically the "common knowledge" exception (bull anyway): Wikipedia's an open reference, you don't cite, etc. Garbage, but whatever.
But she lifted an *image*. Not just text. Images can't be common knowledge. We know *exactly* who she copied.
Beside the point, but 2009 wasn't really "early days" for Wikipedia. It started in 2001. (Though I swear I remember it being around in some form earlier than that.)
Ackman just keeps digging himself in deeper, doesn't he?
I mean the beauty of moral repair is there are a handful of academics where they didn’t meet the standard for being issued a degree, did massive harm and it would be easy for a university to pull their credentials and apologize (Raymond and J Michael Bailey spring to mind)
Comments
Neither does it preserve printed records.
I’m also sure that they learned to use either a print or online style book suitable to their grade level. We often used Purdue OWL for high school students . In AP, English we used the full MLA guide. https://www.owl.purdue.edu/owl/avoiding_plagiarism/should_i_cite_this_poster.html
It seems pretty clear to me : "DO NOT CUT AND PASTE DIRECTLY FROM INTERNET INTO YOUR PAPER".
They say it a million times in the handbook.
Source (haha) : https://web.archive.org/web/20090130013403/http://web.mit.edu/academicintegrity/handbook/handbook.pdf
https://www.ft.com/content/2ceb13fc-a209-421a-addb-62b3dd6e6d66
You know the rules. Any source not EXPLICITLY mentioned in the academic integrity handbook doesn't actually need to be cited.
Citing Wikipedia directly is just stupid.
But she lifted an *image*. Not just text. Images can't be common knowledge. We know *exactly* who she copied.
He's still not self-aware.
Ackman just keeps digging himself in deeper, doesn't he?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plagiarism_from_Wikipedia