thing this would make judges of prizes and examiners ofrndoctoral students more conscientious at their work.)rnThe reader will not, however, find this passage in Wills’rnchapter-long paean to King: he buried this at the end of thernbook in a long footnote on pages 311 and 312. But if Wills didrnthis in propitiation for his sin of candor, the literary elite andrnthe fourth estate were unimpressed. As Frank Kermode whinedrnin the New York Times Book Review, Wills “doesn’t even suggestrna posthumous honorary doctorate [for King] in its place.”rnA university unafraid to condemn a plagiarized thesis and tornrescind a fraudulently earned degree is Oxford University. Asrnthe London Daily Telegraph and the Philadelphia Inquirer reportedrnin April, Oxford’s Trinity College has revoked the 1986rndoctorate of historian Gary Owen Hughes because he plagiarizedrnhis dissertation from one written at Princeton. This is reportedlyrnonly the second time this century that Oxford has rescindedrna degree because of plagiarism. “I had been surprisedrnby the great improvement in Gary’s work,” said don Jack Pole,rn”but 1 suppose I attributed this to my teaching.” Impressedrnwith what the Inquirer called his “pearl-like diction” (British accent?)rnand “golden” credentials. Temple University had hiredrnHughes and brought him to the United States in 1987 to helprnwrite its multivolume Biographical Dictionary of Early PennsylvaniarnLegislators, but he was fired the next year when thernuniversity discovered that a number of his articles had beenrnscissor-and-pasted together from cabbaged work. Unsurprisingly,rnother works plagiarized by Hughes have been discoveredrnsince his firing, both here and in England. It is debatable whichrnis most disturbing: Hughes’s many thefts, the academy’s silencernon this story since 1988, or the fact that the best personrnfor writing a state’s colonial history is not only not an American,rnbut a Brit.rnIt may appear from these examples that our “Age of Plagiarism,”rnas Andrei Navrozov in the London Times recently termedrnour day, comprises only students of the humanities and socialrnsciences, but the “other culture” continues to contribute its fairrnshare. The June 1993 conference of the American Associationrnfor the Advancement of Science, for example, was devotedrnentirely to “Plagiarism and Theft of Ideas.” The notorious disputernbetween two epidemiologists at the University of HongrnKong finally resulted this winter, after seven years of litigationrncosting 16 million Hong Kong dollars (2.1 million Americanrndollars), in what Nature magazine called “the world’s first legalrnverdict in which a scientist has been found guilty of plagiarism.”rnThe case involved the plagiarizing of a questionnairernthat a team of scientists had developed for researching lungrncancer in female nonsmokers. “Success or failure of a studyrndepends on the quality of the questionnaire,” said researcherrnTakeshi Hirayama.rnConsidering the cut-throat climate in which scientific researchrnis now conducted, Mr. Hirayama is absolutely right.rnWashington attorney Barbara Mishkin, who often deals withrncases of scientific fraud and plagiarism, said in a recent issue ofrnthe Chronicle of Higher Education that “coUegiality amongrnscientists has been lost, especially among those in fast-pacedrnfields where scientific breakthroughs produce not only momentsrnof glory but also the potential for commercially valuablernproducts. Collaboration and communication among peersrnoften have been replaced by competition and mistrust.” Inrnlight of the ongoing scandal involving Dr. Bernard Fisher of thernUniversity of Pittsburgh—who took an “arrogant and cavalierrnattitude,” according to a U.S. House committee, toward falsifiedrndata in a federally financed study of breast cancer treatmentsrn—one might think that faked research is more prevalentrnthan plagiarism in the sciences. But Marcel LaFollette inrnStealing into Print: Fraud, Plagiarism, and Misconduct inrnScientific Publishing (1992) says that “the NSF [NationalrnScience Foundation] and NIH [National Institutes of Health]rnnow report that they investigate substantially more allegationsrninvolving plagiarism and stolen ideas than allegations involvingrnfalsified or altered data.”rnMs. Mishkin, however, predicts better days ahead andrnbelieves fraud and plagiarism can be combated by teachingrnconflict-resolution theory to university administrators. Thernspecific program she celebrates was designed by . . . BostonrnUniversity. What commentators like Ms. Mishkin refuse tornconsider is that dishonesty and duplicity are not problems ofrnmanagement—not cause for improving the counselor-tostudentrnratio, not signals that our organizational skills needrnhoning nationwide—^but rather signs of an ominous trait in ourrncountry’s moral character that no academic seminar couldrnpossibly eradicate. Though this is the last thing our therapeuticrnstate’s minions want to hear, the problem of fraud and plagiarismrnis like the old joke about the man stabbed in the back.rn”Sure, I can remove the knife,” the doctor tells the patient.rn”But I think you have a deeper problem.”rnDante understood these “deeper problems,” and it is becausernhe understood them that he chose the formidable monsterrnGeryon to represent fraud and to rule the falsifiers, thieves, andrn”all such filthy cheats” in the darker and deeper recesses of Hell.rnHe held special disdain for miscreants of this sort because,rnunlike gluttons and hoarders and other persons guilty of merernincontinence, these sinners had perverted the divine gift ofrnintelligence by which man can discover truth and used it torndeceive for temporal gain. However, weaned not on the DivinernComedy but on Slim-Fast reform, we believe rectitude andrnredemption are only phone calls away, that issues of characterrncan be solved by committee, and that with hugs, 12-step programs,rnand conflict-resolution theory, there is a quick anodynernfor every social and personal ill. For understanding plagiaristsrnand forgers, adulterers and murderers, and the many otherrntransgressors of our secular hell, it is clear where we now searchrnfor wisdom and truth. Donahue and Dear Abby, not Dante,rnshine the way. ^^>rnTHE MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR.,rnPLAGIARISM STORYrnEdited by Theodore Pappasrn• puhhcaiii’ti of lliL’ KockfurdrnIllMlIlltC. Id” p:ii^..’Mp;ipiT). ()lllrnSIO Khippinj! .IIKI handlinii vliiirucsrnmcliiik-ijirniDOKiJl K i n ( Ki p i l ( Kii.f u i l-8U0-383-()6KUrno k M M H UK k i i « t l i l llkPrR:MPM’Y-Vmi: H’rnll[l K<)« M i i U I i l N S i n r r i i m Kin.’K».k.«’-ISi.iihUiiirn’iiii.-i.-i KK^KIITJ. II ii|lil.*il).M.>>iii’.r,ik,iiLit)k-tiii tMJkiircliP- •rnSEPTEMBER 1994/25rnrnrn