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These days, though, de Borchgrave is involved in some less praiseworthy pursuits. Alongside his other activities, the veteran newsman is a columnist for the Washington Times, the influential conservative broadsheet, where he once served as editor in chief. And in a handful of columns over the last year he has lifted passages verbatim, or nearly verbatim, from the Internet and other sources, without attribution — a fact the Washington Times' leadership tried to sweep under the rug, according to insiders at the paper.

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Little, Brown recalled and pulped the book, issuing the mortified admission that they had "published a book that we can no longer stand behind." Rowan's nerviest steals, laid out in exhausting detail on Reluctant Habits, suggest he was unaware of the existence of Google. Of course he was going to be found out. So why did he do it?

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The Telegraph accuses Hari of inventing an atrocity in the story that won him the Orwell Prize. Hari took a trip to the Central African Republic in 2007, where he documented a covert French war being waged in support of a brutal dictator.

One of the most shocking claims: French soldiers told Hari that while serving in Rwanda, they were ordered not to help children who came to them holding their parents' severed heads. But Hari's translator said no one ever told Hari this. Here's a section from an email she wrote to Hari in 2007:

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The answer to this theoretical film query has been answered by none other than Michael Bay, whose auteur work can be boiled down to "big things blowing up or hitting other big things." But even with that not-too-original concept, Bay has gotten sloppy: allegedly taking direct shots from his 2005 flop "The Island" and putting them in "Transformers 3: Dark of the Moon."

Last week, a viral-video pirate named Jermain Odreman spent a considerable amount of time watching Bay's movies in slow-motion in order to catch almost identical sequences from both films. The footage is unquestionably similar, down to the type of car that flips over, the angle of the smoke from the explosion, and the damage done by flying shrapnel.

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This quote-recycling (or inventing) is apparently a not-uncommon practice, Young says, though it's rare among the famous and successful:

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Wonkette caught him plagiarizing Fox News and the right-wing Middle East Quarterly in yesterday's column on the Sharia menace, then went back and noted multimple instances of pretty blatant lifting of material from sources without attribution in other recent Norris columns. This is maybe why we shouldn't ask famous kickers-of-other-people to write so many political columns, every week. It's hard!

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The report criticized some statistics used to prove that the last century was the warmest one in centuries, which means it proved that global warming is pretend, in the eyes of most Republicans. (Although a follow-up report by the National Research Council "found that Wegman report-style criticisms of the type of statistics used in 1998 and 1999 papers reasonable but beside the point, as many subsequent studies had reproduced their finding that the 20th century was likely the warmest one in centuries.")

And also huge chunks of the whole thing were plagiarized -- from the textbook written by one of the attacked scientists himself, and from Wikipedia.

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Hegemann lifted as much as a full page of text from an obscure, independently published novel, "Strobo," by a blogger known as Airen. Another German blogger, Deef Pirmasens, was the first to point out the passages from "Axolotl Roadkill" that are said to be largely duplicated from "Strobo," with small changes. Despite the uproar caused by this revelation, "Axolotl Roadkill" has been selling better than ever and has been nominated for the $20,000 fiction prize at the Leipzig Book Fair. "Obviously, it isn't completely clean but, for me, it doesn't change my appraisal of the text," a jury member and newspaper book critic told the New York Times, explaining that the jury knew about the plagiarism accusations when it selected the novel for its short list. "I believe it's part of the concept of the book."

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Since you seem to have become the unofficial voice of reason for adrift academics, I thought I'd write. A little over a month ago, I discovered that my closest friend in the department, N., was plagiarizing in her work. I entered in the first two sentences of her summary in Google and found the Web site that she had literally cut and pasted from.

I don't really feel like making this an issue, but at times I want to. It angers me that she's going to get the same degree I am. I mean, this is graduate school and we've all given up a lot in our lives to be here. I think I deserve a classmate who at least attempts to do the work.

I decided to confront her instead of the professor because I thought to myself that that's what a friend should do. But even though I'm no longer her friend, I'm still angry.

Do I tell the professor? My classmates? The department chairperson? Or do I just keep a keen eye on her work next quarter to make sure she has ended her Google habits?

Angry Classmate

Dear Angry Classmate,

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She was being modest. The truth is that Scott used a great deal of Zelda's writing, credited to characters he modeled after her, in every book he completed in his abbreviated life. That Zelda was Scott's muse is hardly news, and it comes as no surprise that her frank sexuality, the wild abandon with which she flaunted her body at parties, gave color to his stories: More has been written about the Fitzgeralds, their antics and affairs, than they can possibly have known about themselves.

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I wrote Beverly a short note: "Beverly, please see me. Your paper is about Gen. Obregon, not Fuentes' novel. David." Beverly appeared about a month later, after ignoring at least four reminders. She said, "What's wrong with it? I did the assignment."

"The assignment was to write something about the Fuentes novel," I said. "You barely mention the novel in your paper. There is only a bunch of stuff about Gen. Obregon."

Then she pulled out her notes from the day I gave the assignment and pointed to No. 14, which said, "Consider the historical context for the novel." She declared, "I did that."

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At least, that's what an online plagiarism-testing service report says. After analyzing my senior thesis, it said flatly that my
30-page paper was "plagiarized," and said that it had found a source on the
Internet that matched my document. At first, I panicked. I hadn't copied anyone
else's work, so what was going on? Was it unconscious, a phrase I'd once read and
kept hidden in my memory? Had I been careless in paraphrasing or quoting? I
didn't know; all I did know what that the report said I was guilty of ripping off
my senior thesis from some source on the Web.

Baffled, I went back to the report, and there, I found less-than-intuitive links
to a more detailed analysis. Clicking through, I found the section that listed
the URL of the source I was accused of plagiarizing from. I clicked to find ...

To find that Plagiarism.org had just discovered a copy of my own thesis online.
Instead of realizing that it was my work and ignoring it, the service had accused
me of plagiarism. It seemed an odd thing to overlook, and an odd way of doing
business to announce the crime, and let the recipient of the report figure out
whether it was justified or not. I took the time to investigate the report's
charges; what if a professor hadn't?

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Deciding I can think more clearly about this with latte at hand, I drive to the local book superstore/cafe, where the magazines are all abuzz over a plagiarism scandal in the romance world. "There IS a reason all romance novels read alike," trumpets the Associated Press. The Washington Post: "Heaving bosoms and throbbing loins are all very well, but if you really want to make a romance writer breathe heavily, try pinching her prose." And from Newsweek: "Plagiarism? How can you tell when all this stuff sounds the same anyway?" I read on. Janet Dailey, the one-time queen of the romance novel, has admitted stealing words and ideas from bestselling writer Nora Roberts, and now blames the whole thing on a personality disorder caused by the deaths or illnesses of several family members, including her dog.

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