On 11 Aug 2012 at 8:41, Ken Steele wrote:

> I am stunned also by the admitted plagiarism by Fareed Zakaria. 
> I found his editorials on his CNN show - GPS - to be very thoughtful.

To defend the indefensible (not an easy task here),  there's a bit of 
wiggle room for Zakaria, which he chose not to take in his apology. 

The key is an astute observation by Marga in the comment section 
following the NYTimes article [ http://snipurl.com/24mfe43 ] which 
Mike Palij flagged (Note all my attributions!]. Marga pointed out 
that there's a double attribution involved, and Zakaria should have 
cited Lepore citing Winkler, which is clumsy at best. Zakaria may 
have thought he was just cutting out the clutter and going back to 
the primary source. 

Secondary sources are often valuable as clues to the primary 
literature, and we don't have to credit them for the tip (unless the 
true source is  _really_ obscure). The critical question in the 
Zakaria case is whether his version resembles Winkler's (the primary 
source) at least as much as it does Lepore's. Would we have objected 
if Zakaria had used Lepore to get to Winkler, and then instead of 
paraphrasing, quoted Winkler exactly, using quotation marks? Without 
a nod to Lepore? That would have been more prudent of him, I'd think. 

Of course, the cited plagiarized passage is just an example, and 
there may be more plagiarism in Zakaria's  writing which doesn't 
involve double attributions. 

Stephen

--------------------------------------------
Stephen L. Black, Ph.D.          
Professor of Psychology, Emeritus   
Bishop's University
Sherbrooke, Quebec, Canada               
e-mail:  sblack at ubishops.ca
---------------------------------------------


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