--- Justin Guyett
[snip] This is what happens when one picks up ideas from people who present
On 2004-12-11T08:10:27-0500, Steve Thompson wrote: them
second-hand (or at even greater distances from their origin) and who do not make proper footnotes.
That's just a symptom of the problem that there's no clear line past which ideas must be cited. How infrequently do you have to see an idea in print, and how novel must it be, before a citation is appropriate?
Depends, I suppose, on a number of factors.
Ideas are a continuum. Plagiarism is an artificial notion constructed as a result of the need to measure individuals' progress in higher education, as well as to protect intellectual property (which didn't really exist before the invention of the printing press). People used to have scribes copy books. They were treated as tomes of knowledge, not as property. Now that they are property, people have more books than ever before, and are reading them less carefully than ever before.
Well, previously there was more importance put towards knowledge, and less on making money with same. Today the emphasis is somewhat different.
Even Dawkins and Hobbes picked up ideas and used them without explicit citation. Hobbes didn't arrive at his conception of the State of Nature in a void. He got those ideas in reaction against Greek history, Descartes, and several other people.
Everybody does that, or at least those who create knowledge either as a process of study and synthesis, or as a result of original research. Some ideas are prevalent to the extent that it is obvious as to their origin. Ideally, someone who presents an idea as his or her own will take some pains to indicate the fact, and will distinguish their sources by way of appropriate references.
Which brings up an interesting thought relating to entropy. Does it matter whether a prior author breaks up a subject into N pieces, proving N-1 pieces unworkable but leaving the "last" unaddressed? Someone who
Now you're talking about SLAC.
takes those ideas and writes a defense of the "last" piece might be copying the prior author's ideas, even though they were not written anywhere. Intellectual property and ideas are often traceable directly, but sometimes they are not. Requiring citations for ideas often results in incorrect citations or citations to secondary or tertiary (or worse) sources.
Theft of IP is a complicated endeavour these days.
Hijacking that thought a bit, lack of citations is one of my pet peeves.
Me too.
Nobody makes proper footnotes or citations these days; it's particularly noticeable in quote collections. There are fake quotes from the founders floating around, as well as fake quotes from Marcus Aurelius ("Times are bad; children no longer obey their parents, and everyone is writing a book.") as well as from all sorts of other historical figures.
Opinion: It seems there is a new trend towards guild-like protection of scientific and scientific-like diciplines. People who like the idea of guilds are working towards making participation contingent upon membership. Membership may eventually only be granted to individuals who submit to arbitrary rules. And note that I am not referring to ethical restrictions in this instance. Ethics -- good ones that dicate a minimum of racism and like discrimination, for instance -- are becoming somehwat rare. Regards, Steve ______________________________________________________________________ Post your free ad now! http://personals.yahoo.ca