Unlucky: 10 famous plagiarists

To give someone else's creativity for their own is the worst of what can make a writer. Naive students caught cheating, admit to cheating, and celebrity stubbornly saying "It's not me!" Journalist Dustin Korski remembered 10 cases of shameless plagiarism.

Isabella Mary Beeton

"The book of the household", written by Mrs. Beeton, was one of the most influential bestsellers in the nineteenth century — despite the fact that it was just a cookbook. Almost 900 pages it takes arguments, laced with a few dozen recipes, and in the end provides advice of a "famous doctor" and the attorney as knowledge of medical and legal issues.

Later critics have discovered that Beaton, considered one of the founders of the culinary literature, stole every recipe from the works of other authors — Florence Nightingale and Eliza Acton. She casually borrowed the texts, that even did not change the treatment of masculine. And attempts to edit the originals in order to avoid charges of plagiarism have led to the obvious error and absurdity, for example, the writer recommended to cook the pasta for 105 minutes.

Strange deception continued after the early death of Mrs. Beeton at the age of 28. Her husband, Sam Beeton, hid the news of the death of his wife and continued to republish the book from her face, rewriting the introduction and supporting readers the illusion that Isabella has updated the contents of the book.

Jason Blair

Reporter-analyst at The New York Times Jason Blair was caught in an unusual way: in 2003, the times found that 36 articles written by him for publication, was partially or fully copied. The investigation began when the journalist Macarena Hernandez of The San Antonio Express-News said that the fragments of texts Blair borrowed from her own materials.

The result of the analysis was the conclusion that Blair wrote about the area from Cleveland to Virginia, even not being there: he had just read and copied your own words, not approaching the texts of other authors, personally visited those regions. Would-be correspondent, not only destroyed thus his own career, but also dragged two more editors.

In 2004, Blair published her memoir "Burn down the master's house". He admitted that the scandal has pushed him to attempt suicide (and other issues like addiction to cocaine, only exacerbated the situation). The sale of this opus, written in an uncompromising tone, was catastrophic — for the first week readers have gained only 1400 copies printed although there were over 250 thousand.

Milton Berle

American comedian Milton Berle became a national star at the dawn of the era of television in the 1940s, because of the memorable numbers. He was known for his manhood — a fact in comic form beat even during his funeral. After the death of Burley left a huge card index, which the jokes were written on library cards, but only a few have been invented independently.

All was well known propensity of Burley to copy other people's jokes, why the comic is even called "the stupid thief" (an allusion to the then popular movie "thief of Baghdad"). His co-worker Carl Reiner told me that Berkeley not only stealing other people's gags, but also forced his mother to steal them for him.

Saddam Hussein

Compared to the political actions of Saddam and his accomplices, the plagiarism seems meaningless trifle. However, in 2003, Iraq has identified a case of plagiarism, which attracted public attention and received wide publicity.

A few months after the adoption of the UN resolution to declare Iraq's nuclear programme Iraq printed its response to contractural 12 thousand pages. In the column of the newspaper The New York Times U.S. Secretary of state Condoleezza rice showed that most of this opus was made illegally copied excerpts from the UN report on Iraq. However, the word rice looked as if this plagiarism was a sufficient ground for military invasion.

Interestingly, a love story "Zabibah and king," written by Hussein, plagiarism is not. So fans no need to worry.

Richard Owen

Few were able to fall in the eyes of the scientific community as low, as did Owen. Biologist and naturalist of the nineteenth century has left its mark with the introduction into scientific use of the term "dinosaur" and the base of the natural history Museum in London. Someone of the readers he may be known as the chief opponent of Charles Darwin.

Owen became famous because of the incredibly blatant cases of plagiarism — he managed to borrow the glory and achievements of the people who were alive and could respond to the incident. The most famous case was the theft of the title of discoverer of dinosaur fossils of the geologist Gideon Mantella. And one of the fake evidence in Owen's writing was that he wears the title of Professor of comparative anatomy at the State school of mines (Owen earned yourself a lifelong enemy of Thomas Huxley, who actually held this position). By the way, during a scientific debate Owen himself chose to discredit opponents with allegations of plagiarism. Ultimately, Owen was expelled from the Council of the Zoological and Royal societies.

William Lauder

Most of the plagiarists just copy someone's work, but William Lauder came up with a much more original plan for the epic work of Milton's "Paradise Lost". He edited the works of poets of earlier eras — Andrew Ramsey, of Hugo Grotius and Jacob Mazenis: took Latin versions of their poems, leaving the story line from the classic poem by Milton, and so tried to prove that Milton copied the works of their predecessors.

Unfortunately for Lauder, preserved the original named poems, so that was not difficult to catch it in editing. Latin which he wrote, was low level, so the translation came out confused. Although Lauder has temporarily secured the support of the famous Samuel Johnson (Creator of first English dictionary, which has long resented because of popularity, which was the work of Milton), fraud was revealed. The reputation of the hapless editor was destroyed and they say he ended his life in poverty behind the counter of the little shop in the West Indies.

Nick Simmons

The son of a famous musician Gene Simmons started working on the comic book "Incarnate" for publishing Radical Comics in 2009. He managed to release three volumes before the critics found that a comic book compilation of drawings from Deviant Art portal and famous Japanese manga "Bleach" published in 2002. Compare pages with the originals revealed that the poses of the characters, shading and even markings StreetPilot copied.

Because of the pedigree of Nika scandal was widely publicized and even attracted the attention of CNN and The New York Times. Despite the fact that Simmons denied his guilt, the publisher decided to stop printing new editions until, until the situation becomes clearer. To date, the comic has not been issued.

James Alexander McKay

Releasing more than one hundred books under his own name, including internationally recognized biography, McKay somehow left a mark in the historiography of his era — even if stolen written. In 1972 he was convicted for stealing clichés of stamps from the British Museum to create the fakes — any harbinger of scandal in the late 90s.

In 1997, the Pulitzer prize winner Robert Bruce Mackay was accused of plagiarism in his biography of the inventor Alexander Graham bell — "Alexander Graham Bell: A Life". McKay borrowed 95 per cent of the books and even copied the author's dedication of thanks the National geographic society, keeping a collection of things Bella, — though by the time he began work on the book, the collection wasn't there.

The same fate was waiting for and his book "I Have Not Yet Begun to Fight: A Life of John Paul Jones". Publisher Atlantic Press destroyed 7500 copies, but McKay continued to claim that he had copied the text unintentionally.

Quentin Rowan

At the age of 19 Rowan published his first book — a poetry collection "Best American Poetry". 20 he turned to prose and began to write the stories-compilation, compiled from other works. That's exactly what he produced book after book for many years. In 2011, the publisher has printed his novel in the style of copy-paste, entitled "Assassin of secrets". On theme forum fans of James bond have revealed all the fragments of plagiarism and the book for the week was removed from the shelves.

Some time after the public condemnation Rowan decided on a questionable form of the answer. He used the website TheFix.com dedicated painful addictions, and wrote a post in which you blamed your quick success: Rowan felt that his level is not high enough, and therefore used fragments from the works of recognized authors.

This pathetic excuse worked surprisingly well: although plagiarism were withdrawn from public sale, the cost of electronic copies on Amazon went up to$ 63, and Rowan even attracted the attention of the newspaper the New Yorker.

Tony Blair and the staff of the residence at Downing street

In 2003, together with the plagiarism of Saddam, British Prime Minister tried to justify the invasion of Iraq. Devyatnadtsatiletnyaya dossier, known as "Iraqi" or, later, "Quirky" has become the main reason of the war.

The document contained a lot of borrowing — for example, from dissertation Professor of California University Ibrahim al-Marashi. The resemblance was even typos. In 1998, however, the same members of the administration have succeeded, he was accused of plagiarism by rival Tony Blair. Indeed, plagiarism is reminiscent of the special relationship, about the fraud and did not dare to think.

Source: theoryandpractice.ru