The media is always at its best when it’s examining itself in the mirror for flaws.
Recently, there was an interesting brew-up involving one of my favorite podcasts, Backstory. The short form of the story is that Backstory interviewed an author, Sarah Milov, about book that was being released soon, and then didn’t use any of the recordings of the author, or mention her or her book – but they did an entire episode that was informed by the interview and consequently by the book and discussion. NPR describes the situation here: [npr] It raises an interesting problem, which is the degree to which a podcaster or blogger is doing their own work, or summarizing someone else’s.
In today’s world of whirlwind media news cycle, it’s nearly impossible not to get caught by timely stories that lead you into a different idea. I’m sure you’ve notice that many of the topics I discuss, here, are related to current news. But it’s not really original reporting; I am not digging up the story from primary sources. Sometimes, I do dig into primary sources, sometimes I am putting my own spin on someone else’s analysis. That risks putting me into the situation that the Backstory team found themselves in: they used someone else’s analysis and research, and wound up sort-of plagiarizing the author’s content. Or, prematurely disclosing it. The author had not yet gotten a chance to even start her book tour, yet, so the audience had no way of knowing what was going on.
I feel as though the Backstory team handled their mistake fairly well; they did an entire episode discussing the problem with the author and were very apologetic and very open about the way the whole thing had happened. I also appreciated that the author was willing to confront them, in what had to be a fairly tense interview, and she did not cut them any slack. It was an interesting discussion and if you want to hear it, it’s here: [backstory]
For several years, BackStory hosts have appeared on WBUR’s Here & Now, discussing a range of topics that have been in the news. Last week, Nathan and Ed appeared on the program to talk about America’s relationship with tobacco. They relied on the research of Sarah Milov, an assistant professor of history at the University of Virginia, whose book, “The Cigarette: A Political History,” comes out in October.
As you may have seen reported in various media outlets, neither Nathan, nor Ed credited Prof. Milov on the air for her work. For that, we’re deeply sorry.
So in this special segment, Prof. Milov joins Nathan and Ed to talk about what happened last week, as well as broader issues facing historians who are regularly in the media.
By the way, that’s a nicely worded apology. “We did this thing and we are sorry” and a complete absence of excuses.
The things I write here are informed by a mix of:
- Current events and reporting on them
- Stuff I have learned about over the years, and my opinions on those things
- Books I have read years ago (or recently)
- Articles I have read, which consist of other people’s analysis from primary sources
I, myself, get lost when it comes to some of my sources. In my recent piece about Bonaparte at Gettysburg [stderr] my opinion about Robert E. Lee was probably assembled from several dozen books that educated me about Napoleonic warfare (John Elting’s Swords Around a Throne, David Chandler’s Napoleon’s Marshals, Memoirs of General De Marbot, Charles Fair’s From the Jaws of Victory, Cavalie Mercer’s Journal of the Waterloo Campaign, and a bunch of other stuff) Marbot and Mercer qualify as original sources, but even then, the opinion I have formed is digested from their opinions. It’s opinions all the way down. I’m not uncomfortable with that; I believe that’s how opinions are formed and that it’s acceptable.
Where things get complicated is situations in which an article depends heavily on an un-cited source. Whenever I depend heavily on any source for any given article I cite the source and pull direct quotes from it, to make it clear. For example, when I write anything about the Vietnam War, I will try to remember a particularly appropriate chunk from some book that influenced me greatly, and cite it as a reference. After all, if you believe that wars like Vietnam are useless, destructive, and unwinnable, you probably have been influenced by Howard Zinn or David Halberstam. And, if you want to illustrate pretty much any thing about how futile the Vietnam War was, Halberstam has said it better than I could. So, to honor Halberstam’s influence on my thinking, I go out of my way to find a citation from Halberstam. It is my opinion that this is appropriate, if not important. Chris Hedges famously got caught plagiarizing Hemingway [NewRepublic] and managed to survive with his career and Pulitzer intact, by claiming that Hemingway was so influential to him that it was not plagiarism so much as that Hemingway had formed his opinion to a degree that his opinion even sounded like Hemingway. “Pull the other one, Chris” comes to mind, because being influenced by Hemingway does not mean you write in Hemingway’s own words.
The story I just cited in New Republic is a good example. If I were writing a piece about Chris Hedges’ plagiarism, I would not have been the person to discover it; the analysis would not therefore be mine. In fact I read Hedges’ book when it came out and thought it was pretty good. I didn’t catch the ‘Hemingwayesque’ parts because I haven’t read Hemingway on war [Hemingway was a quintessential war poseur and a phony, I believe*]. If I read an article about Chris Hedges’ plagiarism and then went back and researched it and verified it, if I wrote an article claiming that I had just realized Chris Hedges was a plagiarist, I’d be lifting my entire idea from the first article, which would be plagiarism too.
Here is how I feel about this: we exist within a culture and a time, and the things we learn and are exposed to are the things of that culture and time. We are capable of original thought, but more likely, what we are doing is re-arranging existing thoughts into original configurations. That’s fine, in my opinion: creativity does not require original thought, because original thought is both a) nearly impossible b) hard to recognize. The history of art and culture is full of examples of truly original creativity that blew right past its audience because it was too far removed from popular culture. As I write this there’s a chance that some of you know who Chris Hedges is, and others don’t. But, if I were writing a scholarly-seeming bit about whether or not one of Montaigne’s friends was a plagiarist, nobody’d know if that person existed it all, and it would be a legitimate question whether or not the alleged plagiarist mattered.
Shifting gears slightly: maybe some of you have noticed that my writing often starts off going in Direction A, then pauses, pivots, and marches off in Direction B. That’s not an attempt to be clever; it’s a reflection of how I think. What happens when I think about something is I see connections to other things. “History does not repeat itself but it does rhyme” [attributed to Mark Twain] I have a distractingly wide array of interests, and I deliberately let me writing reflect that. It’s not because I think that I’m particularly clever or well-read, but I feel that the connections between things are interesting enough to explore. In other words, I know this blog sometimes ricochets around – that’s not a bug: that’s a feature.
It also helps me address the topic which I started this post off with. If I read some news article about the F-35 being unable to do whatever thing, I can avoid just writing a summary of an article that someone else has written. I can start off with a description of the thing and a reference to the article, then pivot and charge off in my own direction with whatever thoughts I think might interest you from there.
This blog does not have a specific agenda, though it certainly has a trend: distrust of authority, interest in epistemology, rejection of government legitimacy, and fascination with how things go wrong. I consider a war a “thing that has gone very wrong” and there’s a similarity, for me, between the decisions that result in an overpriced, underpowered, design like an F-35 and those that result in a superpower attacking Vietnam and losing. I am very concerned with trying to understand causality and (as I have mentioned) [stderr] how we believe things. Isn’t it amazing that people will look at a bunch of marketing and believe it? If I thought that it was possible for me to make people more cynical about marketing and politics, I would probably try to encourage that, though it seems that you’re a pretty dark and skeptical bunch, anyhow.
When I am writing a piece that touches on matters of philosophy, I try to be as clear, accurate, and honest as I can. I feel it’s insulting to waste people’s time with bad arguments, and it’s dishonorable to make ones that are manipulative. That means that it’s hard to argue for something, and I prefer to drop facts that I believe are accurate, and analysis that I believe follows from those facts, hoping that whoever is on the receiving end will come toward the same conclusions I did. That’s another reflection, I believe, of the anti-authoritarianism and nihilism that pervade my perception of everything.
To me, honesty is one of the most important choices that a nihilist can make. There’s not necessarily a reason to be honest, so it’s a choice. For most people, I believe that we are expected to be honest – civilization depends on it; a lot of social mechanisms break down without honesty and I suspect that the creation of a divine overseer that demands honesty was an early hack to allow civilization to exist, that was suborned by authoritarians for their own reasons.
So, that’s some notes about my “method” for writing. I’m deeply concerned with enforcing and demonstrating a clear dividing line between facts and opinions. A number of years ago, NPR was doing a series called “this, I believe” in which listeners wrote in with little essays, some of which were read on the air. It was around the time that freethoughtblogs was open to new bloggers, and I was starting the process of tossing my hat in the ring. I sent in my entry:
This I believe: knowing the difference between fact and opinion is the most important, and hardest thing for people to do.
Writing used to be very hard for me, because I’d sit and let things build up and build up, until finally what came out was dense like neutronium and convoluted beyond repair. I used to sit on stuff and polish it in my head until I’d usually realize that it didn’t matter and convince myself that nobody cared. What got me interested in starting a blog was that it would force me to let go and write under the self-applied pressure of deciding to post something every week. My original plan was to post something insightful and deeply reasoned every week. But I went with what I could do, rather than what I thought I wanted to do, and that’s how I got here.
[* and where did I get my opinion that Hemingway was a poseur and a phony? From another poseur and phony, namely SLA Marshall, former US Army historian, who interviewed Hemingway about his supposed fighting alongside the French underground, and concluded that Hemingway spent most of his time drunk in bars. The point is: I am unable to go back to primary sources and unpack how I came to have the opinion I have about Hemingway.]
Smashing two chains of thought together to see what flies out is awesome. It’s how I think. There’s at least one very formal and precise method of mathematics that works exactly this way. I wrote a little book about some things using it, and then they made me go get a job :(
Marcus: I really enjoy reading your posts. The variety of topics make it interesting and very readable. I first found FtB several years ago through The Atheist Experience. I started reading some other blogs regularly, and I eventually stopped reading TAE altogether. I have watched bloggers go and new ones come in. Yours is one I check every day. Pharygula used to be on that list until it became all spiders all the time with no content warnings and pictures above the fold. Too creepy for me. Caine at Affinity was definitely on the daily check list for me as well. She had such fire in her that you could just feel through her writing. Your path through life has provided you with great knowledge in some really diverse topics and your writing style is kind of conversational. It is almost like listening to the music of one’s favorite artist. I have said before that I don’t know how you have packed so much in your life. I do know that I hope you continue to share it with us for a long time.
The “fact”/”opinion” dividng line gets very fuzzy under close examination; remember, the word “fact” originally meant “something made”, as though manufactured in a factory.
So how did you decide SLA Marshall was “another poseur and phony”?
When I’m writing an article that’s heavily influenced by only a few sources, then I will credit those. On the other end of the spectrum, if my writing is influenced by numerous varied bits of information that’s common knowledge, then I won’t give a reference for every single fact or idea I mention in a blog post.
By the way, often enough I have no clue where exactly I got some idea. I have some opinions that cannot possibly be something original that I came up with on my own, but nonetheless I still cannot trace from where exactly these ideas originated in my mind. To give a tangible example, https://andreasavester.com/why-the-society-wants-you-to-feel-ashamed/ in this blog post I wrote about my attitude towards public shaming, and I have no clue where or how I acquired these ideas. I’m pretty certain that I’m not the first person out there who tried to deconstruct humiliation or who looked at how shame can be used as a tool for controlling others. Nonetheless, I just have no memories about where I got all of these ideas. One of the sources must be all those writings about how religion is used by the powerful as a tool for controlling the masses. But there must be also other sources, and I just don’t remember them.
Marcus, yours is the only other blog I read almost daily, along with Pharyngula (I don’t mind pictures of spiders). I started with PZ Myers, back in the ScienceBlogs days. I had expressed some Ayn Rand-ish thoughts at a good friend; he replied with concern and disappointment at my shallow thinking and with links to a few of PZ’s blog posts. That was the second of two events that radically changed the way I thought. In my defense, libertarianism can be seductive and its evils are not immediately obvious. (The other event was reading Dawkins’s The Selfish Gene, which gave me the insight I needed to cure the vague pantheism I was afflicted with in my early twenties.)
I sampled all the other blogs on Freethought Blogs over time. Yours attracted me because you got to live in interesting times, professionally speaking; we seem to have a number of shared interests; and you have earnest opinions, know interesting people, and share entertaining anecdotes. Overall, we have a similar way of thinking, although you’re much better than me at putting it in writing.
I think there’s some selection bias happening here. There are plenty of people who are less sceptical about the political and commercial propaganda that bombards us. They’re probably going to dismiss us as mild conspiracy nuts (sometimes i feel like a conspiracy nut; i don’t believe in the Illuminati, but i know Rupert Murdoch and old boys clubs exist…)
@Pierce R. Butler
There’s also the problem that facts are often dependent upon opinions. The F35 is the best option for Australia’s needs, if you define our needs as including keeping the USA happy with us.
The question of how I formed my opinion(s) about SLA Marshall is a good case-study on “having an opinion” and the degree to which it is based on fact or apparent fact. I’m going to let that noodle around in the back of my brain and see if I can write about it.
Thank you all for your kind thoughts.
dangerousbeans@#6:
I think there’s some selection bias happening here. There are plenty of people who are less sceptical about the political and commercial propaganda that bombards us. They’re probably going to dismiss us as mild conspiracy nuts (sometimes i feel like a conspiracy nut; i don’t believe in the Illuminati, but i know Rupert Murdoch and old boys clubs exist…)
I’m with you – I often feel that I am verging on a conspiracy buff. It’s … interesting. Especially since things that we now believe are matters of fact have revealed that other things purported to be matters of fact are lies (i.e.: the Gulf of Tonkin incident) – there are so many that I believe we risk flipping our rules to something like: “If it sounds like the government is lying they probably are” which, I believe, is the mental shift that makes a conspiracy nut instead of a skeptic. (A skeptic says “if the government says something, investigate more closely because they lie a lot.” – presumption is that they are not very honest, not that they are automatic and reflexive liars)
Andreas Avester@#4:
When I’m writing an article that’s heavily influenced by only a few sources, then I will credit those. On the other end of the spectrum, if my writing is influenced by numerous varied bits of information that’s common knowledge, then I won’t give a reference for every single fact or idea I mention in a blog post.
That’s not unreasonable and I think it’s what most of us do. But, the result is a sort of epistemological democracy which is subject to “astroturfing” propaganda. In fact, that is exactly why they astroturf and how – it’s trying to get memes into the zeitgeist and thereby control it.
By the way, often enough I have no clue where exactly I got some idea.
When I started realizing what a sea of propaganda we float in, I started annotating important facts with where they came from, if they are “high resolution detailed facts” For example, there was a battle at Waterloo on June 18, 1815. I accept that as a low-resolution fact that I have heard from so many places that it’s not worth tracking it. On the other hand, there has been a legendary (and oft-discussed) “sunken path” at the battlefield which some people claim slowed the French cavalry down enough that the British infantry in the center survived Ney’s repeated charges. People have claimed that, and other people have counter-claimed that it was not there. Was it there? I do not know. That bothers me because it is a hole in my reality. Normally, I would discuss such a thing by saying “so and so says there was a sunken path but so and so says there was not.” Bring in the source. I.e.: the Iraqis said they didn’t have WMD and George Bush and Colin Powell said they did. There are probably people who still believe Bush but I am not one of them. We collectively had to unwind our belief system.
Pierce R. Butler@#3:
The “fact”/”opinion” dividng line gets very fuzzy under close examination; remember, the word “fact” originally meant “something made”, as though manufactured in a factory.
Exactly! Facts can be fractally complicated. Lies generally aren’t. Where is gets ugly in my head is when the facts (as I understand them) lead to vague concepts (“it is a fact that bob is bald; he has only 49.99% of his hair”) and value judgements.
When I think about this stuff too closely, I start to feel like reality is a fragile, pretty soap-bubble and we all look at the swirlies on its surface.
Marcus @10:
If only it were that simple. Facts can also be lies, if you only present some and carefully ignore others. In other words, omissions can be used to mislead, which is (in my mind) equivalent to lying, even if you can claim “everything I told you is true”. I’ll give an example, which is probably far from the best one, but it’s been bugging me.
In the last provincial election campaign in Ontario, the Tories made a big deal of the debt that had been run up by the Liberals. It’s true! It had, I think, something like doubled, and was around $300 billion. The message, even if not explicitly stated was “oh, those horrible tax-and-spend Liberals, throwing your hard-earned money away”.
Of course, context-free numbers are almost always crap data.
For debt, a more useful number is debt/GDP ratio. For Ontario, it’s about 40%. About the same for Canada as a whole. For the USA, it’s more than 100%. UK, France and Germany all have about 80%. So, it doesn’t look quite so awful any more. And of course, all those numbers have run up largely because of the crash in 2007-2008.
But how many voters check this stuff? Not many. That’s what the Tories counted on.
That’s not what I had in mind. Let’s say I’m writing a blog post about beauty ideals and how those changed throughout the ages. I make a point that in past “the perfect female body” was supposed to have more fat than what’s seen as ideal in 21st century. I make a point that many old masters painted curvy women. I mention Rubens as an example for that. I believe that in such a situation I do not need a reference to some art history textbook that confirms that Rubens did, indeed, paint curvy women. Firstly, that’s common knowledge. There even exists an adjective “rubenesque.” If any of my readers have doubts about whether old masters really painted curvy women, they can just look it up on Wikipedia. Secondly, my own education about art history was scattered and I learned these facts from a number of textbooks. Thus there was no one art history textbook which I could conveniently quote as the source of my art history knowledge. (By the way, here I’m referring to this https://andreasavester.com/history-of-the-always-changing-female-beauty-standards/ blog post in which I didn’t use references or quotes.)
For obvious reasons I try not to get my opinions from anonymous online memes. So, yes, I see your point about epistemological democracy, which is subject to “astroturfing” propaganda, and I agree with you about its dangers, but that’s not what I had in mind.
That’s a reasonable approach. Unfortunately, I often find that hard to do. When I read only one book about some topic, then it’s easy for me to know the source for whatever facts I remember about said topic. If there were two or three books I have read about some topic, I can still manage to some degree. But what if I have read multiple books and dozens of articles about some topic? What if several of them mentioned the same facts? At this point I can no longer remember the exact source for some fact that I remember about some topic.
To be honest, I can see Hedges mucking it up even if in the end it was plagiarism.
I find Hemingway a pain in the ass and really have read almost nothing he has written but I am reminded of some well-known Canadian musician ( I find most modern North American music as much as a pain in the ass as Hemingway so I do not remember his name) who when challenged by his daughter suddenly realized and admitted that he had unconsciously stolen an entire song from another artist. In his case, he immediately transferred most or all of the funds from the song to the original artist.
Unfortunately it is too easy to commit plagiarism even if one does not intent to do it.
On the other hand, there are a lot of people that seem to think that “Copy and Paste” means that plagiarism is a new may to succeed.
I remember reading a post from a climate science researcher who remarked that he would not have stated the argument presented in the US Congress better. He then said, wait a minute, pulled down a book and said, oh right, that was what I wrote 5 years ago.
I remember a friend telling about the great history essay one student turned in. The professor said that he thought it was an outstanding piece of work just as he had when he wrote it 15 years before.
Opps that should read “new way”