DCP's ongoing problem with plagiarism

Stocks · **Joined:** Thu May 02, 2019 12:34 am **Posts:** 153

Doctor CamNC4Me wrote:

You spend all your mental energy attempting to impress, to con the unobservant into believing you're something you're not, only to wake up one day that you're 12 years older and you've produced nothing while parasitically nourishing yourself off the works of others.
...
Virtually everything he has written, from his dissertation to his blog at Sic et Non, is a pastiche of stolen ideas, unattributed work, and since the 90's hastily cobbled together internet searches re-worked into the illusion that he's the one having these genius moments, one after another, and thus the LDS church is somehow true and BYU is somehow justified at keeping him on the rolls.

Right.

Again, none of this behavior is problematic for a private citizen.

That it comes from a tenured BYU professor is shameful.

That it has been going on for >10 years, and appears to chronically violate University rank & status standards, suggests the problem is a systematic failure on the part of BYU to uphold its own academic mandate. And by association, the Apostles (Trustees) and the church itself looks absolutely foolish for not merely looking the other way, but tacitly endorsing it.

That the behavior was acknowledged in 2011 to be complete waste of time (see here: https://youtu.be/BTx-n8Yx5eg?t=1033) suggests a horrifically unhealthy addiction.

Let me say that a different way.

He literally compares his own addiction to internet debate boards as being like an alcoholic, who walks past the saloon doors and cannot resist looking inside.

Watch the video. It's astonishing.

That cry for help was in 2011. It is 8 years later. Where are the friends and colleagues who profess to care?

If it were drug addiction or alcoholism, what a tragedy it would be for this person to have lost another 8 years before seeking help. But somehow, because the behavior pretends to be in service of the Kingdom, it is OK?

What the hell is wrong with these people?

Arc · **Posted:** Tue Jul 30, 2019 2:27 pm

Stocks wrote:

Again, none of this behavior is problematic for a private citizen.

That it comes from a tenured BYU professor is shameful.

That it has been going on for >10 years, and appears to chronically violate University rank & status standards, suggests the problem is a systematic failure on the part of BYU to uphold its own academic mandate. And by association, the Apostles (Trustees) and the church itself looks absolutely foolish for not merely looking the other way, but tacitly endorsing it.

That the behavior was acknowledged in 2011 to be complete waste of time (see here: https://youtu.be/BTx-n8Yx5eg?t=1033) suggests a horrifically unhealthy addiction.

Let me say that a different way.

He literally compares his own addiction to internet debate boards as being like an alcoholic, who walks past the saloon doors and cannot resist looking inside.

Watch the video. It's astonishing.

It is astonishing. It is also interesting that Dr. Peterson looked and sounded the same in 2011 as he does now. It seems that nothing has changed since that interview except for 8 more years of negative public comments.

Philo Sofee · **Posted:** Tue Jul 30, 2019 5:34 pm

Arc wrote:

Stocks wrote:

Again, none of this behavior is problematic for a private citizen.

That it comes from a tenured BYU professor is shameful.

That it has been going on for >10 years, and appears to chronically violate University rank & status standards, suggests the problem is a systematic failure on the part of BYU to uphold its own academic mandate. And by association, the Apostles (Trustees) and the church itself looks absolutely foolish for not merely looking the other way, but tacitly endorsing it.

That the behavior was acknowledged in 2011 to be complete waste of time (see here: https://youtu.be/BTx-n8Yx5eg?t=1033) suggests a horrifically unhealthy addiction.

Let me say that a different way.

He literally compares his own addiction to internet debate boards as being like an alcoholic, who walks past the saloon doors and cannot resist looking inside.

Watch the video. It's astonishing.

It is astonishing. It is also interesting that Dr. Peterson looked and sounded the same in 2011 as he does now. It seems that nothing has changed since that interview except for 8 more years of negative public comments.

He's just practicing to be a mini-me for Jehovah is all. Nothing major happening here, move along.

malkie · **Posted:** Tue Jul 30, 2019 6:49 pm

Doctor CamNC4Me wrote:

I think one of the great lessons Mr. Peter$on has imparted to the casual observer is that attempting to be a polymath is akin to being everywhere, but nowhere at the same time. You spend all your mental energy attempting to impress, to con the unobservant into believing you're something you're not, only to wake up one day that you're 12 years older and you've produced nothing while parasitically nourishing yourself off the works of others.

...

- Doc

Ahh, but it is also a manifestation of good-like characteristics:

An infinite sphere, whose centre is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere wrote:

The definition of God as 'an infinite sphere, whose centre is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere' has its roots in the Liber XXIV philosophorum, a Latin booklet by an anonymous author, which consists of 24 commented definitions of what God is.

https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/cross_fac/iatl/funding/fundedprojects/studentperformance/addivinola/

Lemmie · **Joined:** Sun Apr 05, 2015 1:25 pm **Posts:** 9023

DP wrote:

One of the ways that I like to write is simply to throw things rapidly into a computer file, as the thoughts occur to me, for later revisiting. At that point, I’ll clean them up, organize them into a suitable flow, check assertions, provide references where appropriate, smooth out inconsistencies, and otherwise make what I’ve written suitable (I hope) for publication.

https://www.patheos.com/blogs/danpeters ... ights.html

I feel like this is somewhat of a mea culpa for his most recent plagiarisms. Not that it is sufficient in any way.

"Throw[ing] things rapidly into a file" and "later revisiting" to "provide references" in NO way covers for or excuses his deliberate, meticulous, synonym-exchanging attempts to disguise his online theft of other people's intellectual property.

Philo Sofee · **Posted:** Tue Jul 30, 2019 9:15 pm

Were Peterson to actually wake up to his dire situation he could recognize that his ego has kept him a spiritual midget his entire existence on earth thus far. And it is so truly an unnecessary harm he is doing to himself.

moksha · **Posted:** Tue Jul 30, 2019 11:12 pm

malkie wrote:

Quote:

... a Latin booklet by an anonymous author,

Sounds like an author who would not demand those pesky quotation marks.

Physics Guy · **Joined:** Sun Aug 28, 2016 4:38 pm **Posts:** 928

Lemmie wrote:

"Throw[ing] things rapidly into a file" and "later revisiting" to "provide references" in NO way covers for or excuses his deliberate, meticulous, synonym-exchanging attempts to disguise his online theft of other people's intellectual property.

It's hard to see how "rapid throwing" could generate the slight revisions to the original texts while preserving long phrases verbatim. I mean, if I were to rapidly throw ideas into a file, I would either cut and paste whole paragraphs into my scrapbook app (which automatically appends a link to their source) or else write jot notes of my own that would not preserve so much of the original wording. I just can't see how passages like Peterson's could be produced other than by deliberately editing the original.

Conceivably he cut and pasted whole paragraphs, then later forgot that he had copied them and, thinking he had written them himself, revised them a bit before posting them without attribution. This would be plagiarism by culpable negligence—it wouldn't be an excuse—but at least it wouldn't be deliberate. Presumably this is the defence that Peterson is trying to offer.

The kinds of revisions Peterson makes don't really seem to me to fit that pattern, however. They don't tend to shorten or simplify awkward expressions; if anything they more often make the original harder to read. So they look more like deliberate token efforts at paraphrasing than like the kind of revisions one would make to one's own words.

My best guess is that Peterson thinks he is serving as an expert curator: by his scholarly expertise he is identifying good passages to quote much better than any lay person could by just googling. That kind of curation could indeed be valuable but it should take the form of posting links, not lightly edited copies without attribution. Perhaps Peterson feels that curated link lists are unfairly undervalued and that his plagiarism is a little white lie that lets him claim the academic respect which his expert curation deserves?

I'm not trying to excuse him, just trying to see why the heck he would keep on doing this.

Stocks · **Joined:** Thu May 02, 2019 12:34 am **Posts:** 153

Physics Guy wrote:

My best guess is that Peterson thinks he is serving as an expert curator: by his scholarly expertise he is identifying good passages to quote much better than any lay person could by just googling. That kind of curation could indeed be valuable but it should take the form of posting links, not lightly edited copies without attribution. Perhaps Peterson feels that curated link lists are unfairly undervalued and that his plagiarism is a little white lie that lets him claim the academic respect which his expert curation deserves?

It is addiction. He admitted to it back in 2011. Plain and simple.

Like other addictions, he cannot stop. With every new post, he gets a dopamine hit. With every comment notification, he gets a dopamine hit. With every comment posted, he gets a dopamine hit.

This is a compulsive disorder no different from addictions to video games, porn, gambling, kleptomania, or hoarding.

Were Dr. Peterson to visit with a psychologist and disclose the full measure of his weekly activity on internet blogs and discussion boards, what would a trained professional have to say? By his own admission, this has been an all consuming, life wasting, destroyer of professional productivity. What has this behavior done to interpersonal relationships?

Dan, get help.

Ask yourself, why would you need to tell white lies to cover other white lies to cover your behavior?

https://blogs.psychcentral.com/addictio ... dicts-lie/

7 Honest Reasons Why Addicts Lie

#1 To Preserve Their Addiction
#2 To Avoid Facing Reality
#3 To Avoid Confrontation
#4 They Are in Denial
#5 They Believe They’re Different
#6 They Feel Ashamed
#7 Because They Can

This board is the closest thing to an intervention being offered by anyone who cares. Dan, get help.

malkie · **Posted:** Wed Jul 31, 2019 6:23 pm

Lemmie wrote:

DP wrote:

One of the ways that I like to write is simply to throw things rapidly into a computer file, as the thoughts occur to me, for later revisiting. At that point, I’ll clean them up, organize them into a suitable flow, check assertions, provide references where appropriate, smooth out inconsistencies, and otherwise make what I’ve written suitable (I hope) for publication.

https://www.patheos.com/blogs/danpeters ... ights.html

I feel like this is somewhat of a mea culpa for his most recent plagiarisms. Not that it is sufficient in any way.

"Throw[ing] things rapidly into a file" and "later revisiting" to "provide references" in NO way covers for or excuses his deliberate, meticulous, synonym-exchanging attempts to disguise his online theft of other people's intellectual property.

When I'm teaching grade 11-12-level students how to write an essay, one of the most "serious" pieces of advice I give them is not to collect information this way - if you don't capture the reference data at the same time as the information, you are almost guaranteed to forget where you found something, thus making it unusable, or to forget that you found something, thus making it possible to think later that it was your own idea, and smoothing the path to plagiarism.

Lemmie · **Joined:** Sun Apr 05, 2015 1:25 pm **Posts:** 9023

Quote:

kiwi:

....Interestingly, one of his screen names was "Prop 8." Dan threatened to ban him a while back, but never quite got around to it. However, Prop 8 disappeared after he was outed for having used an Amazon book review and claimed it as his own.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the only genuine case of plagiarism to appear on Sic Et Non. But don't expect the obsessive haters at the Sty to make a fuss about it. They don't care about actual plagiarism; they only care about slinging mud at Dan.

https://www.patheos.com/blogs/danpeters ... 4593900207

Fascinating. The part I bolded is not true of course, as has been documented in this thread and several others, fully and completely, over a very long period of time regarding so many separate instances of Peterson’s plagiarism that it’s become simply laughable. How else to think about a BYU professor who thinks this is acceptable?

Still, it is fascinating that, apropos of nothing, this commenter feels the need to bring it up now.

EAllusion · **Joined:** Tue Dec 04, 2007 6:39 am **Posts:** 16422

Lemmie wrote:

Quote:

kiwi:

....Interestingly, one of his screen names was "Prop 8." Dan threatened to ban him a while back, but never quite got around to it. However, Prop 8 disappeared after he was outed for having used an Amazon book review and claimed it as his own.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the only genuine case of plagiarism to appear on Sic Et Non. But don't expect the obsessive haters at the Sty to make a fuss about it. They don't care about actual plagiarism; they only care about slinging mud at Dan.

https://www.patheos.com/blogs/danpeters ... 4593900207

Fascinating. The part I bolded is not true of course, as has been documented in this thread and several others, fully and completely, over a very long period of time regarding so many separate instances of Peterson’s plagiarism that it’s become simply laughable. How else to think about a BYU professor who thinks this is acceptable?

Still, it is fascinating that, apropos of nothing, this commenter feels the need to bring it up now.

This lie will get repeated over and over so that, eventually, all that will be remembered by kiwi's fellow travelers is that some smear-artist named Lemmie frequented this board and manufactured false charges of plagiarism against the good doctor.

DrW · **Posted:** Wed Aug 28, 2019 4:56 am

EAllusion wrote:

This lie will get repeated over and over so that, eventually, all that will be remembered by kiwi's fellow travelers is that some smear-artist named Lemmie frequented this board and manufactured false charges of plagiarism against the good doctor.

Fortunately not all of those who have seen this thread are genuine fellow travelers of kiwi and DCP. Many are members who already have doubts or are just curious enough to come here for a look.

Many of these people are likely to consider the evidence for plagiarism by DCP that Lemmie and others have provided over the years on this thread. They have, or will, weigh it against the hollow protests of DCP, kiwi, Midgley and other sycophants who post comments over at SeN. At least some of these viewers will come to the conclusion that DCP operates pretty much as described here.

As pointed out on other threads on this board, there is a fundamental dishonesty and self-delusion that taints Mormon apologia in general and that is what most bothers the SeN crowd.

DCP, kiwi, and their ilk are struggling against a rising tide here. Each time I return to Utah, I'm struck by how many of my LDS relatives and acquaintances there (even if they work directly for the Church) indicate that they do not believe in Mormonism's religious nonsense, but stay active for cultural, social, and even professional reasons.

It grows reminiscent of the emerging social order among the more secular and educated as compared to more traditional Muslims in places like Kuwait, Turkey, Oman, and even Saudi Arabia. People who know better but find themselves living under religiously justified authoritarian regimes are simply going along to get along.

Doctor CamNC4Me · **Joined:** Mon Jun 15, 2009 5:02 am **Posts:** 19116

His latest plagiarism:

https://www.patheos.com/blogs/danpeters ... -fall.html

He again claims to have so. many. manuscripts.

"Here’s a passage from a manuscript of mine"

Anyway. All he does is rehash the wiki article where he got his image from (oddly enough credited to the page where he stole his material from).

- Doc

Exiled · **Joined:** Tue Sep 29, 2015 9:48 pm **Posts:** 2703

____ believable this guy. He's so blatant...as if he wants to be caught or defiantly parade his deeds for everyone to see.

Doctor CamNC4Me · **Joined:** Mon Jun 15, 2009 5:02 am **Posts:** 19116

My Plagiarizin’ PeteR$on spidey sense is going off at about three alarms:

https://www.patheos.com/blogs/danpeters ... ffect.html

Anyone wanna take a crack at decoding his latest grift?

- Doc

Doctor CamNC4Me · **Joined:** Mon Jun 15, 2009 5:02 am **Posts:** 19116

I guess I'll do it. :(

https://www.patheos.com/blogs/danpeters ... ffect.html

Quote:

In this passage, Hesse sets forth a Buddhist conception of the cosmos and of human life as expressing an unbroken chain of cause and effect, without gaps, with no room in it for gods or divine grace.

https://www.shmoop.com/siddhartha/chapt ... mmary.html

Quote:

Siddhartha admires the Buddha’s teaching that the world is a complete, unbroken chain of cause and effect. However, he doesn’t understand the doctrine of salvation and escape from the world if in fact the world is eternally one.

I also suspect this bit:

Quote:

... to break the iron law of cause and effect, of karma, of justice. Mercy enters the world from the outside.

was wrangled from a google search of karma resulting in:

https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Karma

Quote:

An immutable law... is the law of cause and effect. Each cause sets free a corresponding effect. This law works everywhere as the most sublime rule.

The bit about mercy was probably a result from the wiki page also talking about mercy, but Mr. Peterson simply included it within his narrative.

Once again, we see Mr. Peterson claiming to read some deep tome about some aspect of philosophy, cosmology, or whatever. In reality, he gets an idea for a blog post, googles the topic, and then lifts concepts and phrases from an unsourced website.

BYU professor. Priesthood holder.

- Doc

Doctor CamNC4Me · **Joined:** Mon Jun 15, 2009 5:02 am **Posts:** 19116

Doctor CamNC4Me wrote:

It becomes immediately apparent what Mr. Peter$on is up to. He pulls his usual trick by insinuating he has to get back to his study or some other repository stocked with the knowledge of a thousand scholars where he says:

Quote:

Well, I'm in the Canadian Rockies on vacation right now, hundreds of miles from home and with no library resources. So I won't be able to do any checking for quite a while.

... thus deflecting what everyone knows, that he routinely googles some topic, finds a webpage or a wiki article to plagiarize, and then posts he's working on some 'manuscript' when in reality he just craps out some re-wording of someone else's work.

Quote:

I just want it pointed out that since that comment that he's 'much too busy vacationing in the Canadian Rockies' he has since posted, what, 11 entries on Patheos that are commensurate with the effort he put into the original plagiarized Arabian Nights post?

Please note from his, "What we should think of current science can quite properly depend, in part, on theology" post he oddly declined to mention the BYU professor's name while linking to his work, and then he linked to two other articles, in additional to liberally quoting from someone named Alvin Platinga.

Quite curious, if you ask me, that he can post robustly on a variety of topics researched from the tips of his Rubenesque fingers, but can't seem to *snap* provide a follow-up to his plagiarized article and, forgive me for my language, his humbling ass kicking by user 'lcmccabe'.

Will he do a follow-up? Based on his long and cantankerous posting history it's very, very unlikely.

- Doc

He never provided a follow-up.

- Doc

Physics Guy · **Joined:** Sun Aug 28, 2016 4:38 pm **Posts:** 928

I don’t think “unbroken chain of cause and effect” is plagiarism from schmoop. It’s in the passage from Hesse that Peterson quotes.

I don’t see what’s wrong with the green phrases, either.

Doctor CamNC4Me · **Joined:** Mon Jun 15, 2009 5:02 am **Posts:** 19116

Physics Guy wrote:

I don’t think “unbroken chain of cause and effect” is plagiarism from schmoop. It’s in the passage from Hesse that Peterson quotes.

I don’t see what’s wrong with the green phrases, either.

They weren’t sourced.

Again, PG, we’ve identified his MO, which is to claim he’s reading some brainy book on some brainy matter, or he has a manuscript (lol), whatever that means, and he does a google search on the topic, lifts and pastes content onto a “file”, and whips up a blog post. All I’ve done is back engineered his googling. I identify the small bits of plagiarized material in his articles by copying the phrases that don’t match his syntax, pasting those bits into google, and the results come up. He’s a frequent stealer of uncredited material from wiki (he took that last small idea from wikiquotes), and in this case I’ve narrowed down the first bit to schmoop.

Remember, all he needs for a blog post are bits and pieces of inspiration from quick google searches. Anyway, I’m genuinely surprised you’ve been so consistent in your defense of his behavior in the face of clear and obvious unethical conduct.

- Doc

Doctor CamNC4Me · **Joined:** Mon Jun 15, 2009 5:02 am **Posts:** 19116

So, this morning I was curious about any other articles Mr. Peterson might've cobbled together using the keyword 'siddhartha'. I googled 'site:deseretnews.com + peterson + siddhartha' and got these hits:

https://www.deseret.com/platform/amp/20 ... ate-buddha

https://www.deseret.com/2018/9/29/20654 ... umar-singh

https://www.deseret.com/2019/2/15/20666 ... avan-india

dated September 5, 2013, Sep 29, 2018, and Feb 15, 2019 respectively.

From the 2013 article Mr. Peterson doesn't take long to get right to his uncredited use of this source:

https://encyclopediaofbuddhism.org/wiki/Gautama_Buddha

Quote:

The word Buddha means "awakened one" or "the enlightened one". "Buddha" is also used as a title for the first awakened being in an era. In most Buddhist traditions, Siddhartha Gautama is regarded as the Supreme Buddha (Pali sammāsambuddha, Sanskrit samyaksaṃbuddha) of our age.

From his Deseret News piece:

Quote:

“Buddha” is a title, meaning “enlightened” or “awakened” in the ancient Pali language in which much of the Buddhist canon was written.

Remember. Mr. Peterson isn't some polymath who has such a vast repository of Buddhist teachings in his head that he'd inadvertently wordsmith a phrase together that just so happens to mirror the same elements in the wiki article. This is important to remember for the Peter$on apologists who, for some unknown reason, can't fathom how or why he'd do something like that over and over and over and over and over again.

Moving on, if you read the article and then compare and contrast against the linked wiki article you basically see how he just rewrote what's there. He does a good job of using his own words, but the ideas flow in order of the wiki article, and it's obvious he's just doing a rewrite. Here's just one example of many I could provide from the Deseret News piece:

Quote:

He spent the next 45 years, until his death in the late fifth century BC, as a wandering teacher in India, serving humanity, forming Buddhist communities and teaching mankind the path to enlightenment.

contrasted against the wiki article:

Quote:

The Buddha spent the rest of his life traveling throughout northeastern India and teaching the path of awakening he had discovered. He died at the age of 80 (note: in the wiki article it mentions Buddha is 35 when he makes his spiritual breakthrough, so Peterson just does the math here) in Kushinagar, India.

Anyway. The whole Deseret News article follows a thorough plagiarism of the wiki article, just rewritten in his words with no accreditation whatsoever. It's too onerous for me to sit here and parse out all the similarities (bolding and highlighting the similar words and phrases), idea-stealing, and demonstrating the flow of both articles when you can just read the two and see it for yourselves. Its' taken me half an hour to do just this little workup, and I don't have the energy to construct a Lemmian or Tomian takedown.

- Doc

DCP's ongoing problem with plagiarism

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