Forwarding this from another mailing list, thought it'd be interesting
to share here... - Sarah
---
Jane Goodall is getting the wrong kind of attention for her new book.
She lifted a few passages nearly word-for-word from Wikipedia, but
failed to attribute them.
1. Mail Online (UK) - Conservationist Jane Goodall Admits "Borrowing"
Entire Passages From Wikipedia in Her New Book
<http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2296362/Chimpanzee-expert-Jane-Goodall-accused-plagiarism-passages-Wikipedia-websites-appear-new-book.html>
By DAILY MAIL REPORTER
PUBLISHED: 09:32 EST, 20 March 2013 | UPDATED: 09:43 EST, 20 March 2013
One of the world's leading chimpanzee experts has been accused of
plagiarism after entire passages from Wikipedia and other websites
appeared in her latest book without proper accreditation.
Dame Jane Goodall's new book 'Seeds of Hope: Wisdom and Wonder From the
World of Plants', was shown to contain a minimum of 12 passages borrowed
from a variety of websites.
However the respected British primatologist failed to include proper
attribution, or footnotes.
The similarities were spotted by a botany expert who had been invited by
The Washington Post to review the book and raised the alarm.
Among the suspicious passages is a discussion of sustainable tea farming
in which Goodall writes: 'According to Oxfam, a British nonprofit agency
working to put an end to poverty worldwide, the spraying of pesticides
on tea estates is often done by untrained casual daily-wage workers,
sometimes even by children and adolescents.'
However the website of Choice Organic Teas, a company which donates a
slice of its profits to the Jane Goodall Institute, carries exactly the
same paragraph word for word.
Another excerpt from the book reads: 'Bartrams Boxes, as they came to
be known, were regularly sent to Peter Collinson for distribution to a
wide list of European clients.'
Meanwhile a suspiciously similar entry on Wikipedia reading: 'Bartrams
Boxes as they then became known, were regularly sent to Peter Collinson
every fall for distribution in England to a wide list of clients.'
Seeds of hope, which was co-authored by Gail Hudson, who worked on two
of Goodall's previous books, is due out next month.
In an email to the Washington Post Goodall said she would she would
correct future editions and raise the issue for discussion on the Jane
Goodall Institute Web site blog.
She wrote: 'This was a long and well researched book and I am distressed
to discover that some of the excellent and valuable sources were not
properly cited, and I want to express my sincere apologies.
'I hope it is obvious that my only objective was to learn as much as I
could so that I could provide straightforward factual information
distilled from a wide range of reliable sources.'
Dame Jane spent 45 years studying the social interactions of great apes
in Tanzania, and founded her institute in 1997.
2. Washington Post - Jane Goodalls Seeds of Hope book contains
borrowed passages without attribution
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/books/jane-goodall-book-seeds-of-hope-contains-borrowed-passages-without-attribution/2013/03/19/448ad1f6-8bf3-11e2-9f54-f3fdd70acad2_story.html>
By Steven Levingston, Published: March 19
Jane Goodall, the primatologist celebrated for her meticulous studies of
chimps in the wild, is releasing a book next month on the plant world
that contains at least a dozen passages borrowed without attribution, or
footnotes, from a variety of Web sites.
The borrowings in Seeds of Hope: Wisdom and Wonder From the World of
Plants range from phrases to an entire paragraph from Web sites such as
Wikipedia and others that focus on astrology, tobacco, beer, nature and
organic tea.
Goodall wrote Seeds of Hope with Gail Hudson, who has contributed to
two other books by the 78-year-old naturalist. Hudson is described on
literati.net <http://literati.net> as a newspaper and magazine editor,
freelance writer, former spirituality editor for Amazon.com and longtime
devotee of organic foods and holistic living.
This was a long and well researched book, Goodall said in an e-mail,
and I am distressed to discover that some of the excellent and valuable
sources were not properly cited, and I want to express my sincere
apologies. I hope it is obvious that my only objective was to learn as
much as I could so that I could provide straightforward factual
information distilled from a wide range of reliable sources.
Goodall said she will discuss the issue on her Jane Goodall Institute
Web site blog and will correct future editions.
The books publisher, Grand Central, said in an e-mail it was
surprised to hear of the assertions. It added: We have not formulated
a detailed plan beyond crediting the sources in subsequent releases.
Hudson said she had no comment.
Goodall joins a list of famous authors who have recently faced questions
about material they included in their work. Often, the cause is speed
and sloppiness in the research, sometimes performed by co-authors and
abetted by technology that allows a writer to swiftly transfer passages
from one place to another and just as swiftly to forget it was done.
An expert in botany invited by The Washington Post to review Seeds of
Hope noticed some of the echoed passages, notified theeditors and
declined the assignment.
In Seeds of Hope, Goodall has crafted a passionate narrative about
plants, their effect on our lives and her desire to preserve the natural
environment. Her first-person reflections are full of her well-known
charm and humanitarianism. It is when the book moves away from Goodalls
own stories to deliver background information on plants and their
history that the instances of borrowing creep in. Goodall, whose
reputation was founded on observations of chimps in Tanzania,
acknowledges early in the book that her training in botany is limited.
I have spent a lifetime loving plants, she writes, even though I have
never studied them as a scientist.
In the book, Goodall extols the benefits of sustainable farming. She
expresses her shock at learning of dangerous conditions for workers who
harvest tea.
According to Oxfam, she writes, a British nonprofit agency working to
put an end to poverty worldwide, the spraying of pesticides on tea
estates is often done by untrained casual daily-wage workers, sometimes
even by children and adolescents.
--
Matthew Roth
Global Communications Manager
Wikimedia Foundation
+1.415.839.6885 ext 6635
www.wikimediafoundation.org <http://www.wikimediafoundation.org/>
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