An article tweeted by The Hill last night was quite comical. It discusses the latest in the Trump transition, the hearings, and in particular the hearing of Ben Carson.
We all might remember Dr. Ben Carson from before the primaries, or maybe you don’t because there were so many republicans running for the bid. Either way— he is back as the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development nominee.
Peter Schroeder, the author of the article, explained how the written submission of Ben Carson’s testimony had some instances of plagiarism. He noted that this incidence was first shared by the Washington Post.
Apparently, Carson’s written testimony had un-paraphrased material without any citations or indication that it was not his own work. However, Dr Carson did not actually read the piece in entirety, instead he went off-the-cuff.
Now, for my favorite parts of this story. There was an update made to the submission in which the appropriate credits were included and Trump’s team stated that this had been a mistake. The following is the comment:
“It was a written statement for the record — his oral testimony, as I am sure you’ve heard, is extemporaneous and planned that way,” said the spokeswoman. “The original written statement was sourced with hyperlinks and footnotes, but unfortunately that seems to have fallen off.”
I wonder if that will work for students, should they forget to include their works cited page rushing to meet a deadline. Also, the next time I wing something I will be sure to use the word extemporaneous instead. I digress.
I hadn’t heard of The Hill until just recently when I was searching for news to follow on Twitter. I initially trusted it in part because it had the verified symbol, which meant this account was of semi-importance and legitimate. For the purposes of this story, I feel safe trusting the information because the same details can be found in other articles like the one Schroeder himself mentioned by the Washington Post. If a publication like the Washington Post has a similar story then I feel confident in the information here, especially after reading the article the WP published. The details of the story certainly matched up.
Despite the fact that another version of his testimony was later submitted with the proper citations, it says a great deal to me about a certain level of care and disregard. In all of my days of writing papers, a citation has never “fallen off.” These positions they are looking to fill through these hearings are important and if students can be expelled and given a proverbial scarlet letter for their plagiarism, why should we be accepting of people seeking to hold some of the highest offices in this nation to mistakenly turn in a version of a speech that has no credit being given, no links to check on where the information came from, and no citations? How does a version without those things even exist? I’d expect more care to be taken when preparing for one of the biggest interviews of your life. How far would the word “accident” go in other alleged plagarism situations?
Here is a link to the full story and the article by the Washington Post:
Superblog 