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发帖数: 7039 | 1 An Open Letter to Shi-Min Fang
from Robert Root-Bernstein, Ph. D., Professor of Physiology,
Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI 48824 USA;
r******[email protected].
Dated 3 August 2011.
A number of people, including myself, have accused you of plagiarizing my
work. You and your followers have denied it. Let’s use this difference of
opinion to educate ourselves about what constitutes plagiarism in and see if
we can reach an accord.
Let me begin by stating that I am basing my arguments on The Universal
Copyright Convention, to which the People’s Republic of China and the
United States both adhere.
1) You admit that you used my article “On Defining a Scientific Theory”
as the basis for an essay that you published online in your blog in 1995
and subsequently in a book. The full bibliographic reference for my article
is: Root Bernstein, R. S. "On Defining a Scientific Theory: Creationism
Considered," in Evolution and Creationism, Ashley Montagu, ed. (Oxford: The
University Press, 1984), pp 64 94.) It is copyrighted by the Oxford
University Press.
2) You and four of your Chinese colleagues have sent me various English
translations of your essay. Although there are some differences in the
specific wording of each translation, all display exactly the same
development of the argument in the same order using the same examples.
3) According to copyright law, a person may plagiarize another person’s
work in several ways. The first is to copy their words without attribution.
The second is to use more than a certain percentage of a work without
explicit permission from the copyright holder. For example, in the U. S. one
may not quote more than 250 words from a single source, even with
attribution, without obtaining explicit permission from the copyright holder
. I am told that in China, an essayist must not copy more than 3% of a text
and that a student who copies more than 25% may be denied his or her degree.
A third form of plagiarism consists of lifting another author’s arguments
and examples without explicit permission. Accordingly, one may plagiarize a
work even in the absence of copying its language and even with attribution,
especially if the arguments and examples are unique and constitute a
substantial portion of the work plagiarized.
4) Others claim, and I concur, that you have plagiarized my work in all
three ways. Let’s take a look at each, one at a time. You claim that you
have not plagiarized me because you have not copied my words. Translations
of words and ideas from one language to another pose a special problem in
plagiarism cases, since differing grammars and cultural idioms will
necessarily create alterations from the original text. Re-translations back
into the original language cause further distortions. While it is always
difficult to prove copying of words when using translations, many of your
sentences have the identical structures and occur in the same order as mine
and this is highly suggestive of copying. Therefore, in considering
plagiarism in translation one must look beyond exact verbal duplication.
5) Beyond exact verbal duplication, it is necessary to ask how much of
the original text has been used in formulating the second-language text and
whether the second language text copies the verbal logic, the development of
the argument, and the specific examples of the first language text. With
regard to your essay, the answer is that you plagiarized me all of these
ways. Many of your sentences (retranslated into English) have the same
logical structure and occur in the same order as mine. This is highly
suggestive of copying. Moreover, this identity of logic and sequence
certainly exceeds 250 words and you certainly did not obtain my permission
to do so. Finally, whether or not it can be proven that your essay simply
translates mine, it can certainly be proven that the argument and the order
of the points that you make are identical to those in my article, and the
majority of examples are also identical. Since these arguments and examples
constitute virtually the whole of my article and they also constitute the
whole of your essay, I must conclude that your essay is a copy of mine. In
verbal logic, development of argument and choice of example, your essay
replicates my article.
6) You and your followers respond that you have incorporated several of
your own examples in the place of mine. This does not alter the fact that
the development of the entire argument, the exact order of the points, and
the majority of the examples are still drawn from my own text.
7) You and your followers also argue that you did cite my name in
publishing your article, but the only evidence you have provided to me is a
photograph of a page in Chinese from an undated book on which my name
appears. This evidence is inadequate for two reasons. First, the issue is
not whether you cited me in your book, but whether you cited me in your
original blog post in 1995. I have been presented with evidence that your
original blog post did not cite me, and that you subsequently altered your
post to incorporate my name only after you were accused of having
plagiarized my article. Even if you did cite me in your original blog post,
and even though you cite my name and even the source of my article in your
essay as it now appears in book form, the claim of plagiarism still stands.
Because you use the same logic, the same development of argument and very
largely the same choice of examples as my original article, and because you
draw on no other sources, your essay is a representation of my work and you
are still under the obligation to obtain my explicit written permission to
publish your essay in any form.
8) In addition, you and your followers have argued that my own essay “On
Defining a Scientific Theory” is itself a popularization or “summary” of
other people’s scholarship and therefore not protected by the same
copyright laws as scholarly works. I gather that you believe that because
you think you could have found the ideas in my article expressed elsewhere,
my work is derivative and not therefore a copyrightable work. This is simply
untrue on two counts. In the first place, Oxford University Press did
copyright my essay. It is protected under law. Indeed, popularizations of
all kinds are protected by copyright. Secondly, my article was not a
popularization. It is a scholarly work published by a major university press
. Moreover, you cannot find any other author arguing that a scientific
theory must satisfy four sets of criteria simultaneously: logical,
evidential, sociological and historical. You may find other scholars who
have argued one or two of these together, but I know of no one who has
argued any three of them together, and I am quite certain that I am the
first scholar to argue that there are historical criteria that must also be
part of the mix (see also my book Discovering [Harvard University Press,
1989]). Thus, my essay represents a unique and important scholarly
contribution to the study of science. In plagiarizing my work, you have
therefore stolen a scholarly synthesis of intellectual ideas that is unique
to me, and which occurs in no one else’s scholarly or popular work. In
other words, you could not have found these ideas anywhere else, nor could
you have invented them yourself.
9) You and your followers have also argued that same criteria for
citations do not pertain to popularizations as to scholarly essays and books
. This argument is simply irrelevant. A popularizer may not plagiarize any
individuals work whether they cite it or not.
In short, I maintain that whether you have used my exact words or not, you
have certainly plagiarized my work by copying my unique scholarly argument,
the logic and the points I use to substantiate it, and most of the examples
I laboriously found to support it. I further maintain that because of the
extent of this plagiarism, which consists of your entire article, you have
plagiarized me in both your blog post and in your written essay. This
plagiarism stands whether or not you cite my name in your blog post or in
your written essay because of the extent of the material borrowed. Stated
another way, your essay is an unacceptable copy of my work both because of
the extent of the material borrowed and because you drew upon no other
source or sources but mine in writing it. Due to this replication, you were
obligated to obtain my explicit written permission before posting your blog
or publishing your essay.
Now, what do I want from you? The answer is simply an apology. I am a
teacher and I welcome this opportunity to teach about the complexities and
subtleties surrounding the protection of intellectual property. We all make
mistakes. What is important are the lessons we learn from our mistakes. The
lesson here is that all you needed to do was to ask permission if you could
popularize my essay and I would have said “yes!”. I was, after all, in the
building right next to yours at MSU when you wrote your essay in 1995! And,
like most scholars, I am always very pleased to have my work used by other
people – as long as I get credit for having done that work! So my advice to
you and all other scholars is something I learned very early in my career:
it never hurts you to credit everyone who might have contributed to your own
ideas; it always hurts you to leave anyone out. It never hurts to obtain
copyright permission, even if you may not need it; but it always hurts to
try to get away without obtaining that permission.
I look forward to your reply!
Sincerely,
Bob Root-Bernstein, Ph. D., Professor of Physiology, Michigan State
University |
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