Plagiarism by profs

I gotta say, I thought this article was utterly fascinating. I'm always busting students for plagiarism - I mean, "intellectual dishonesty" - but it turns out that as with priests and parents, profs sometimes play the "do as I say etc" card.

I understand the pressure to publish, I do, but if you're really only publishing ghost-written books that devour the time and energy and originality of your grad students, you're a vampire, and you deserve the stake of bad publicity through your evil tenured heart.

Wow, and I thought I got cranky about the spectre of undergrad plagiarism....

(Hat-tip to the Little Professor on this one.)

UPDATE: The link works now. It no longer points to A Journal of the Plague Year, but to a recent issue of 02138, a journal mostly related to Harvard University and its alumni.

UPDATE #2: For those of you for whom the link didn't work in IE (Fiona!), the address is http://www.02138mag.com/magazine/article/1763.html, and the article is entitled "A Million Little Writers: Welcome to the world of celebrity academics–and the behind-the-scenes scribes who help make their fame and fortune possible."

(It begins with a brief story about Harvard prof Charles Ogletree, whose 2004 book lifts several paragraphs from one by Yale prof Jack Balkin. Ogletree's defense was that one research assistant had added the paragraphs rather than summarizing them; a second RA submitted the MS before he reviewed it; and Ogletree apparently didn't read the proofs of the book before publication. In other words, this noted academic hires students to write books and articles that he publishes as his own, and at times he never even reviews their writing. Ogletree, let me be clear, is just a representative case, not a rarity.)

UPDATE #3: As I've just remarked in the comments to this post, apparently none of the stories in 02138 works in Internet Explorer. Gosh, I guess we'll all just have to use Firefox or Mozilla or something. Maybe if Microsoft still had a Mac version of IE, they wouldn't lose so many of us. (And while they're at it, it'd be really great if Microsoft could maybe find a way for Office 2007 files to open directly in Office for Mac, 'kay?)