The Sources of Rapping

To give credit where credit is due, Keith Kloor understands what plagiarism is and Judith Curry does not. They are having it out on on the Wegman Report beat at his and hers, but the short and sour of it is Keith's

JD (146): I do find it odd that it took this long for a complaint to be lodged.

And per Judith Curry’s argument at her thread, I’m trying to get a handle on this. All I can say is, in my line of work, things are pretty cut and dry. You can’t make shit up and you can’t steal other people’s stuff and pass it off as your own.

Kloor comes at this from the standpoint of a journalist, whose reputation depends on the trust that readers and sources will have in him. Academics have a similar viewpoint, and in addition academics have to teach and enforce these ethical considerations to our students which accounts for Eli and Keith being on the same page. Keith, of course, teaches journalism.

A letter has come to Eli through Stephan Lewandowsky from another journalism professor, Nancy Longnecker

Dear Steve,

In teaching about scholarly conduct and science writing, I am always interested in finding examples to show students both appropriate and inappropriate actions. As you know, a textbook from a reputable publisher (Assessing Climate Change by D. Rapp; 2010. Springer) appears to contain substantial sections that are largely plagiarized. This provides a great example for demonstrating what not to do to students in our Science Writing classes. It is also useful in reinforcing the critical need to assess credibility of sources.

I am looking into using this example in a large first year communication class being proposed for 2012. This will be particularly relevant since the context of that class is likely to be communicating about climate change.

Kind regards,
Associate Professor Nancy Longnecker
Coordinator, Science Communication Program

What follows below has been edited heavily in an approximately one hour period after the original posting.

A major source for Chapter 1 in Dr. Rapp's book is sudden climate transitions during the Quaternary by Jonathan Adams, Mark Maslin and Ellen Thomas which appeared in Progress in Physical Geography March 1999, 23, 1-36.

But wait Lucia and the rest of μWatt'sLegions will write, that is AFTER Dr. Donald Rapp's book was published in 2008. Adams, Maslin and Thomas must have copied from Rapp. No. We have a record of the AMT paper through the majic of the Wayback Machine extending back to 1999 and, more importantly, the Rapp book uses AMT 1999 as a reference multiple times. Indeed, reading carefully, as Eli did not do at first (acknowledged error), this is an example where a defense of inadvertence could be is believable. The AMT paper, is another interesting example of how a scientific review evolves and hangs out there in neverland over a long period of time preserved in the Wayback Machine.

Eli will provide a teaser, perhaps a slightly unfair one, of one of many places where the text in Chapter 1, page 12 of Dr. Rapp's book matched that in the AMT paper without indication of a direct quote. In fairness, Eli should note that there are examples in the Dr. Rapp's text where he did correctly quote, using quotation marks and such, from the AMT paper such as on page 33. This is moving into the area where the source is acknowledged, but there is substantial copy and paste, which if not plagiarism in the sense of unacknowledged borrowing is copyright violation. Red indicates strikeouts and additions in Dr. Rapp's book, Chapter 1 Page 12.

Climatic variability on the timescale of tens of thousands of years has turned out to be a predominant pattern in eEarth history. The last two and a half million years have been marked by many global climate oscillations, between warmer and cooler conditions. This trend of oscillations appears to be merely the continuation of a pattern of variability extending back well into the Tertiary period and possibly beyond (e.g., Kennett 1995). During the last few million years, the length duration and the amplitude of these climate cycles has increased (e.g., Crowley & North, 1991; Hodell and Venz, 1992).

Large global interglacial-glacial-interglacial climate oscillations have been recurring at approximately a 100,000 year periodicity for the last 900,000 years (e.g. Berger et al. 1993; Mudelse and Schulz, 1997), though each individual cycle has had its own idiosyncrasies in terms of the timing and magnitude of changes (e.g., Lyle et al. 1992) (Adams, Maslin and Thomas 1999).

This section, and many others in the Chapter, are word for word matches between Dr. Rapp's book and the web page containing drafts of the AMT paper. While AMT is properly cited and many of the instances are short phrases or simply sentences, there is a lot of copy and paste all of which flags plagiarism software. At a minimum there was considerable carelessness. As said above, there are also many acknowledged direct quotes properly done, from AMT. For example on page 31

1.2.4.4 Surface Reflectivity (albedo) of ice and snow

According to Adams, Maslin, and Thomas (1999):

"The intensely white surface of sea ice and snow reflects back much of the Sun's heat, hence keeping the surface cool. Presently, about a third of the heat received from the Sun is reflected back into space, and changes in this proportion thus have the potential to strongly influence global climate. In general the ice cover on the sea, and the snow cover on the land, have the potential to set off rapid climate changes because they can either appear or disappear rapidly given the right circumstances. . .

Thus we have now two of ten or twenty instances where exact quotes (with grammar improved in some cases) appear in Dr. Rapp's book without quotation marks. This is acceptable for short phrases, but not so much for sentences, and not for paragraphs.