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May 16, 2006
Ward Churchill's House Of Cards Goes Tumbling
A University of Colorado at Boulder committee has released a report on its investigation into whether Ward Churchill committed academic fraud. Eugene Volokh notes that the committee found that Churchill's methods were quite elaborate (via Instapundit):
Here's an interesting item that I haven't seen much discussed: Churchill is found guilty of passing off others' work as his own (plagiarism), but also of passing off his own work as others'. The latter is faulted as a general departure from "established standards regarding author names on publications" (p. 89); but it's also more specifically, and more seriously, faulted because Churchill then used the work published under another's name "as apparently independent authority for claims that he makes in his own later scholarship" (p. 89). This "permits the author to create the false appearance that his claims are supported by other scholars when, in fact, he is the only source for such claims" (p. 90).
I'm sure Ward will claim that this is just another example of the Man keeping him down. In any event the report will probably only serve to drive up his appearance fees.
But here's something else that's interesting: Volokh quotes a passage from the actual report that notes how Churchill cited as references the two different essays by authors Jaimes and Robbins:
Since both essays do contain statements of the type that Professor Churchill claims, that might have put an end to the matter of research misconduct regarding this allegation, except for the fact that [...] Professor Churchill said in Submission E that he had in fact ghostwritten both the Robbins and the Jaimes essays, in full....
Emphases mine. So except for the fact that Churchill actually confessed to ghostwriting the essays he then cited, the committee would have suspected notthing and accepted Churchill's bogus citations?
I wonder how much more of this is happening throughout academia? There are surely a lot of professors who are much more clever than the bumbling Churchill--and when there's only a small degree of intellectual diversity between hiring committees and their hires; dissertation directors and their candidates; and tenure committees and their applicants, a person has to wonder what "scholarship" really entails.
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Comments
So except for the fact that Churchill actually confessed to ghostwriting the essays he then cited, the committee would have suspected notthing. . .
The allegation was that Churchill was citing works that didn't support his point (in other words, that he was making up and deliberately misinterpreting citations). But, the authors of the report note that Churchill was right*: the passages cited generally supported his claims.
So that allegation was found groundless, in that his citations actually supported his point. However, the problem now is that, if he ghost-wrote the passages, he's basically citing his own interpretations to back his other interpretations.
One problem is solved, but the solution opens up a new problem.
* There were other problems with his method of citation; instead of citing to a few passages, Churchill refers readers to whole books. That's obviously problematic, so Churchill wasn't wholly in the right.
Posted by: jpe at May 17, 2006 02:06 PM
So that allegation was found groundless, in that his citations actually supported his point.
Exactly my point. The committee very nearly repudiated the allegations--the correct call based upon the evidence they started with. And it looks like it would have stood had not Churchill outed himself.
Posted by: Jeff at May 18, 2006 11:40 AM
