Earlier this year, we discussed the recent plagiarism scandals in Germany and analyzed why it is significant when a political figure is found to have plagiarized a dissertation or a work from their pre-political career.

The country has certainly seen its share of those scandals, which have led to the resignation of an Education Minister, a Defense Minister and a slew of other politicians.

However, today it is a U.S. politician in the plagiarism spotlight, Kentucky Senator Rand Paul, and the allegations are very different. Rather than standing accused of plagiarizing his dissertation, Paul is accused of plagiarizing in speeches, op-eds and even a book he wrote.

To the uninitiated, Twitter might seem to be something of a free for all, with people copying and sharing what others have said with little regard for attribution.

1

Rand Paul Addresses Plagiarism Claims: ‘I Gave Credit’

First off this edition, Paige Lavender at The Huffington Post reports that Rand Paul, a Republican Senator from Kentucky, has been accused of plagiarizing during a pair of speeches he made over the past few months. The initial allegations surfaced from Rachel Maddow, a liberal television commentator and staunch Paul opponent, accused Paul of lifting four lines from a speech from Wikipedia. In his speech, Paul was discussing the dangers of eugenics and was doing so by referencing the 1997 movie “Gattaca”. However, when describing the plot, Paul used several passages from Wikipedia verbatim or near-verbatim without attribution. Since then, Buzzfeed reporter Andrew Kaczynski has found another possible instance of Wikipedia-related plagiarism, a June speech that referenced the movie “Stand and Deliver”. There, according to Kaczynski, Paul repeated nearly three paragraphs from the Wikipedia entry on the movie but failed to attribute the site. In an interview with Fusion, Paul was asked if he had plagiarized and he responded, saying, “I gave credit to the people who wrote the movie… Nothing I said was not given attribution to where it came from.” No mention, however, was made of Wikipedia.

Chris Arnold is a radio personality well known among sports fans in the Dallas area. Having been on the air since 1980, Arnold, along with his co-hosts run the show “The Fan’s G-Bag Nation”, a popular midday sports program on a CBS affiliated station and he is also a game night emcee for the Dallas Mavericks.

Plagiarism detection software is accessible, affordable and effective, yet many common misunderstandings exist about its use, functionality and capabilities. With this in mind, we recently released a paper that revealed seven misconceptions of plagiarism software. To elaborate even further on these points, two of the creators of the paper—Hallie Kapner and Jonathan Bailey—have recorded a brief video discussion. Together, they explore practical details of plagiarism software, give advice about proper usage, and even touch on best practices of scholarly writing, editing and publishing as it pertains to plagiarism detection.

Recently, The Star in Toronto published a note from the paper’s public editor, Kathy English, drawing attention to a case of plagiarism committed by one of the paper’s interns. However, what made the case unusual was that the intern was not accused of lifting content from another paper, but rather, from an earlier article at The Star.