Jane Goodall’s Troubling, Error-Filled New Book, ‘Seeds of Hope’
Last week famed primatologist Jane Goodall was found to have plagiarized parts of her new book, but a deeper look reveals a work plagued by rampant copying, obvious errors, and ominous junk science.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/03/26/jane-goodall-s-troubling-error-filled-new-book-seeds-of-hope.html
"No one wants to criticize Jane Goodall—Dame Goodall—the soft-spoken, white-haired doyenne of primatology. She cares deeply about animals and the health of the planet. How could one object to that? Her list of awards and honorary degrees are too numerous to mention. She was tasked by Kofi Annan to be a United Nations Messenger of Peace, an appropriately meaningless, but distinguished, gong. In 2010, a Guardian writer noted that Goodall’s book Hope for Animals and Their World had a “written-by-committee feel of which must of course be forgiven because of its subject matter.” He felt “doubly guilty for criticising the book” when she generously inscribed his copy.
You see, everyone is willing to forgive Jane Goodall. When it was revealed last week in The Washington Post that Goodall’s latest book, Seeds of Hope, a fluffy treatise on plant life, contained passages that were “borrowed” from other authors, the reaction was surprisingly muted. The writer who discovered the plagiarism—an unnamed academic reviewing the book for the Post—alerted the newspaper and backed out of the assignment. When the Post and the New York Times reported his findings, both avoided saying that Goodall had plagiarized—which, even by the strictest definition of the word, she did—instead writing that she “borrowed” passages, fully intending, apparently, to return them upon publication.
The entire controversy has been clouded in euphemism. The Post presented a half-dozen examples of plagiarism (which can be viewed here) but downplayed their significance. “Appropriating another author’s ideas as one’s own and inventing material and presenting it as fact are among the gravest literary lapses,” wrote Steven Levingston, the newspaper’s nonfiction editor. “Neither appears to have occurred in Seeds of Hope.” The Christian Science Monitor stated that “in Goodall’s case, there is no suggestion that her intent was to pass off the ideas of others as her own.” Writer Marjorie Ingall argued that Goodall (or the book’s co-author, Gail Hudson) “didn’t commit the most hellacious sin associated with plagiarism—she didn’t pass off other people’s ideas as her own.”
This is both a bizarre redefining of plagiarism and a semantic sleight of hand: Goodall quite clearly passed off the words of others as her own (and presented interview quotes said to other journalists as having been said to her). But embedded in those words is both the original author’s accumulated knowledge and, in context and arrangement, ideas. Regardless, Goodall’s offense is one that would precipitate firing from all of those publications that are rushing to provide an elastic definition of her faults.
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Jane Goodall's work has been amazing, and an inspiration for all.
That does not make her perfect, and it does not mean that anyone should buy her proclamations, just because. Alas, like many famous scientists, she has pushed less-than-scientific claims in her later years.
I have talked with her, and I have seen her speak many times. I will never forget what I learned from her, but I will not turn the other way when she is not acting in a scientific manner.
Take care, Jane, and everyone.
= new reply since forum marked as read
fall despite their obvious genius...very sad. With Ms Goodall, I guess time will tell how she'll address it.
And it's being bought, hook, line, and sinker at DU.
--imm
