The Plagiarism Problem

Richard Jensen

Unremitting attacks in the media have alleged plagiarism against Stephen Ambrose. He is indeed a popular writer, as well as a recognized scholar. His multivolume biographies of Eisenhower and Nixon rank among the best scholarship. He shows a solid command of primary sources.

What is the meaning of “plagiarism?” It is defined in the American Historical Association Statement: “The expropriation of another author’s text, and the presentation of it as one’s own, constitutes plagiarism....The clearest abuse is the use of another’s language without quotation marks and citation.” The AHA’s statement on plagiarism is available at: <http://www.theaha.org/standard_02.htm>. Northwestern University defines plagiarism as “submitting material that in part or whole is not entirely one’s own work without attributing those same portions to their correct source....What we call originality is actually the innovative combining, amending, or extending of material from that pool [of pre-existing texts, ideas, and findings.]” Northwestern University’s statement is available at <http://www.northwestern.edu/uacc/plagiar.html>. The Chicago Manual of Style section 10.3 advises: “Whenever authors paraphrase or quote from sources directly, they should give credit to words and ideas taken from others. In most instances a note ... is sufficient acknowledgment.”

Careful definitions of plagiarism focus on deceit. The issue here is not the undergraduate term paper; it is what the standards should be for narrative storytelling history, and who should set them. Somehow we have reached a point where non-historians in the mass media have concocted a new rule, one that drops the deception requirement and instead searches for quotation marks around strings of identical alphanumeric characters. Journalist Timothy Noah on the NewsHour with Jim Lehrer asserted flatly: “The quotation marks are the key thing that defines plagiarism”(see <http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/law/jan-june02/history_1-28.html>). This definition, originally designed by programmers for computerized text searches, does not fit scholarship.

Forbes magazine has been leading the pack in sustained attacks on Ambrose’s “plagiarism.” I have looked at all their allegations, and not one meets the AHA test. In no case has Ambrose ever tried to deceive the audience or falsify evidence. Scholarship involves a chain of researchers stretching from the original documents, through editors of letterpress editions, to many fellow scholars. Every historian relies on this chain; any deceit or manufacturing of bogus sources is an egregious sin. Ambrose used the chain correctly. Forbes’s assertion that “college students are forbidden to do what Ambrose does” is a canard (see <http://www.forbes.com/2002/01/29/0129ambrose.html>).

How well does Forbes understand scholarship? It posted a long story alleging that Ambrose misused Cornelius Ryan’s work. False; indeed, Ambrose did not use a single word of Ryan’s. Repeatedly Forbes charged plagiarism when Ambrose used autobiographies, memoirs, and letters to report the actual words of one of his characters, such as George McGovern. According to Forbes, Ambrose also supposedly plagiarized Jay Monaghan’s description of Custer’s arrival at West Point. Both Ambrose and Monaghan used the same words taken from the same primary source. Whenever Ambrose used words that were in both a primary source and in a secondary source, Forbes alleged theft without tracing where the words actually came from. Even when no secondary source was involved Forbes charged Ambrose with plagiarism when he used and footnoted words from a primary source. Forbes repeatedly challenged the very act of retelling an old story—only new stories are allowed—and Ambrose has retold thousands of stories.

Who should set the standards? How competent is Forbes magazine for defining ethical historiography? I looked at the current issue: Forbes has many editors who generate tens of thousands of factoids and idealets, even some purported history. They have no use for footnotes, endnotes, text references, citations, acknowledgments, or bibliographies. Is not Forbes a rather unpromising seminary for the training of scholarly exegetes and ethicists? Forbes also publishes American Heritage magazine—that must be its graduate school. They use boilerplate academic prohibitions designed for undergraduates to grade the performance of scholars. Using their artificial definition they decree that academic “plagiarism” is a mortal sin, but that it can be absolved by a sprinkling of some quotation marks and repeating “Ibid. Ibid. Ibid.” This is an unacceptable standard for adult scholarship. Mark Twain once advised, never argue with someone who buys ink by the barrel. So instead of suing Forbes, Ambrose should ship them a barrel of quotation marks, and a thousand gross of Ibids.

Getting the facts right is what scholarship is all about. Piling up quotation marks inside of more marks is not our sacred duty; it is a disservice to the reader who cannot tell which quoted words came from a primary source and which were added somewhere along the chain. How can a scholar write narrative history? Must we physically examine every original document before we can use it, or should we be able to trust our colleagues along the chain? I think the goal of the professional historian is to get as close as possible to words and thoughts of the original actors; their exact language is vital. This fidelity to the past is what distinguishes our scholarship. Ambrose has done a very good job of that, and that’s what makes his books realistic, convincing, and popular.

Let me make a stab at identifying the implicit rules that historians actually follow:

• Deceit is never allowed; the writer cannot invent or distort sources, facts, or quotes. Footnotes are a device to mark the chain of scholarship. They are required in freshman papers to stop cheating, in graduate seminars and dissertations to demonstrate research skills (such as comprehensive grasp of the literature), and in monographs to help fellow scholars relate this work to the sources and to existing scholarship in the field. In many historical genres, including narrative, biography, autobiography, textbooks, book reviews, and newsletters, footnotes are usually dispensed with because they fit none of these needs. Our finest historians routinely publish books with no footnotes at all.
  
• Quotation marks are a rhetorical device to emphasize to the reader that the quoted material is both important and is taken unchanged from a primary document. Statements from other historians are quoted only when they are themselves a primary source in terms of historiography. And finally, historians stress exactness rather than originality. The facts we report have already happened; the words we analyze have already been uttered. Novelists are allowed to invent new facts and words; we are not.
  

The Forbes allegations have been widely repeated in the media and have done massive damage to the reputation of the entire history profession. Those charges are based on falsehoods, vast exaggerations, incompetent research, and a profound misunderstanding of historiography. We cannot allow celebrity-bashers capable of such errors to dictate the standards of the history profession.

Richard Jensen is Professor Emeritus of History at University of Illinois, Chicago.

Mark Lewis Responds