[LINK] Plagiarism and Encyclopaedias

[Stewart Fist]

As a member of a profession that makes its living by plagiarising ... if not
words, certainly ideas ... the only rule I can think of that makes much
sense is that old adage that:

 if you copy one source, it is 'plagiarism', but with two, it is 'research'.


I've spent a lot of time recently researching the early history of
electricity and telecommunications.  The 'inventor' of electrical
networking, one Stephen Gray (1729), is described in the literature as "an
irascible old pensioner"  - by virtually by every historian, journalist or
network-hack writing about the subject.

Yet when you read Gray's own correspondence, there's not the slightest hint
that he was irascible.  To the contrary, he appears to be universally liked
by everyone he mixed with - and was treated with extraordinary kindness by
some key members of the Royal Society.

Yet irascible has stuck to poor on Stephen like a leach.  It has been used
to characterised him, ever since, in all the history books (Google turns up
41 entries alone) 

It's impossible to know who created this defamation.  And this is plagiarism
in action at its worst (in terms of defaming the man), yet there's no rules
or laws which could handle the problem.   It' just one word.


There's also the famous case of "Dord" which you'll find listed in many of
the older dictionaries, as a "Unit of density"

The story is this:

One of the major dictionary-makers (I think it was Websters) had numerous
card files for words, and a separate one for abbreviations.

Somehow, the abbreviation card for:
        "D or d = Unit of Density"
got transferred to the word file box, and reproduced as Dord.
 
>From then on, for about twenty years, the word turned up in virtually every
dictionary and encyclopedia published in English around the world -- until
finally someone realized what had happened and made a speech about it at a
lexicographers conference.

So much for the sanctity of encyclopedia/dictionary entries!