Dec 2011 - TheAtheistBiker blog no longer exists. Deleted, rather than simply private. Also, TAB's real name profile has disappeared from Facebook too. How odd.
update - Wed 26/10/11: after I publicly revealed late on Monday (24th) on the NSS Facebook page concerning TAB's habits, his whole blog was set to private by Tuesday (25th) afternoon and his recent comments on his Facebook profile concerning 'How awesome it is when groups like the NSS like your musings' were removed. I don't wish to put ideas into others' heads but that implies to me that he's either worried he's done something wrong, or knows he has. I invite him to comment on it, but I imagine it'll be along the lines of "I didn't realise what I was doing was wrong." Not that it matters any more really.
I originally wrote this article back in late August but sat on it whilst waiting to see what would happen. I should note that the NSS is happy for others to use its material in the promotion of secularism.
Back in August I 'liked' a blog post the NSS had posted on their facebook page. The blog was a piece entitled "What is secularism and why is it important?" by TheAtheistBiker (TAB). It was well written, concise, entertaining and informative, even to someone who already is aware of and understands secularism and the motivation behind most secularists.
Then a friend, Dominic Wirdnam, emailed me and mentioned that he'd seen my 'like' on facebook. He was wondering if I would mind taking a look at a letter he'd written a couple of years ago as it seemed that some if it appeared word for word in that blog post. He wondered if this was common practice among bloggers and whether there were any rules they normally followed when it came to using others' material. So I had a look.
The letter was written in 2009 to the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, and the Catholic Archbishop of Westminster and the leader of English and Welsh Catholics, Vincent Nichols.
If you haven't already done so, check out the article 'written' by TAB. Actually I'll make things easy for you by use of a high lighted copy of the letter in tandem with the blog.
As the key says: Red underlined text is word for word copy; blue is where words or phrases have been altered slightly; grey text is either omitted from the letter or new in the blog.
Pretty extensive plagiarism there. A conservative estimate would say about 60% of Dominic's letter was lifted and pretty much word for word copied into the blog without even an attempt to disguise the text, save for a few alterations which I assume TAB did for his own enjoyment. Not a mention of where the material came from or who authored it. In fact the tone of the blog ("...let me outline...") implies that this is TAB's own work, it is what he is saying.
But hold on. It gets so much better.
"I wonder if that's all." muse I. "Let's see what else google can turn up."
So off I went through the rest of the piece.
A phrase jumped out at me and a search turned up a hit other than TAB. From TAB:
Many religionists do not understand this and are inclined to ignore this fact and continue to endorse or privilege religion on the grounds that it is the defining characteristic of being human.
Many religionists do not understand this. Ignoring the fact that their government is already much more secular than religious in its actions, they argue, as did their nineteenth century predecessors (a) that religion is above government and government should recognise that as a fact, or (b) government should continue to endorse or privilege religion on the grounds that religion is the defining characteristic of being human.
Almost word for word again? To the underlining machine!
Pretty similar to the first case above, but with a bit more thought here. More words changed, more snippets trimmed and removed.
So we could say that this isn't a simply cut and paste job, rather this is carefully considered plagiarism. Some bits that aren't relevant to the UK have been stripped and ditched, quite correctly considering TAB is based outside of the country in which this piece was written.
It was written by Meg Wallace who is (or was at the time) writing a thesis to gain a PhD at Macquarie University in Australia, researching the right to freedom of belief. That information is quite clearly displayed at the bottom of the article from which a large section of material in TAB's blog post is taken. As it happens Mrs Meg Wallace is an Australian humanist and a barrister with degrees in Social Science and Law which she has also taught, as well as authoring a widely used text book and advising the ACT government for 14 years. You can read more here.
Incidentally, the material TAB has used here is under Creative Commons Licence. He is perfectly at liberty to reproduce the material provided he does so in full and references the author. Unfortunately he has both changed the material and failed to attribute the work. Also his own blog is "Copyright".
He doesn't seem to understand how these things work.
Is that all? No! The best, in my opinion, is yet to come.
Shown here are two pages from the National Secular Society's website itself (note: The NSS is happy for people to use their material to promote secularism, but of course would prefer correct references). As you can clearly see, not only have several sections been lifted wholesale, but TAB seemingly only stops to change the word "We" to "I". He also quotes verbatim another named author without accreditation: Muriel Fraser. That's a total of three, not including the unnamed people who wrote the other pieces on the NSS site. Even the stock photo the NSS use is deemed appropriate to illustrate TAB's page, though I will admit he managed to find a few others that seemingly came from his own thought. An original idea? Heavens.
That should be enough. Apart from his first and last paragraphs, that's the entire blog that is various other peoples' work.
But no. The last, worst and most amusing is the case of the final paragraph. The one that starts
On a more personal note...
This implies to me that it is TAB giving us his own personal thoughts, his inner feeling, rather than the external manifestations of secularism. And yet... No.
It's lifted almost verbatim from the NSS website. Pretty much the only words that have been changed is to substitute "I" instead of "the National Secular Society".
'On a more personal note...' TAB has to rely on someone else entirely to describe his opinion. I can understand that someone who has a flair for writing and is spending a good deal of time thinking about a topic may well be able to describe my feelings on subject far better than I could. But I for one would feel a niggle in the back of my brain if I was plagiarising their material so completely.
I'd like to point out that, on Facebook, TAB "liked" both the post by the NSS and also the first comment underneath that, as well as waxing lyrical about having been promoted by the NSS and getting an increased number of hits on his blog.
As I mentioned earlier, the NSS is happy for people to use their material in the promotion of secularism, though of course references would be nice. It is none of my business whether or not they are happy for TAB to publish their material as his own, but I do care that others are assuming this is all TAB's work. That's not on.
Assuming it is still there, if you scroll down to the comments section of the original blog post, you'll see a comment from one Dominic Wirdnam. It says:
I couldn't have put it better myself!
I'm not sure I would have been so polite as Dom.
After having found ~90% of one article to be someone else's work, I went on to look at other posts TAB had 'written'. I was not surprised to find other material had been quoted almost word for word without attribution in nearly all the other articles I looked at. You don't have to take my word for it, of course, though I shan't go through them in detail as I have done above. None of them are as bad at all, but there are still one or two lines lifted, or outlines of articles that follow other sites quite obviously. And of course there are photos that appear in both pages.
Adrew Dart - The Skeptical Toolkit: Cold reading - 19th March 2009 - A quick scan of both articles revealed several similarities in terms of content and structure, including quotes lifted verbatim.
TAB: Atheist labels - 20th Aug 2011 (plagiarised material towards the end of the article)
The Out Campaign - (To be fair TAB is talking about the aims of the organisation, but he lifts word for word a number of times)
TAB: National Curriculum Review - 7th April 2011 - Links to the BHA website, but lifts text directly without attribution from the linked page.
Another friend of Dom's asked a question on TAB's blog here, concerning whether or not TAB thought it would be fair to credit others when it comes to using their material. TAB mused and made it clear he didn't think blogs were that important or had to follow the same rules. Well, good for TAB. Unfortunately for him, plagiarism is plagiarism and it is the case (though not here, I think) that blogs can make money for the blogger. It's not like TAB doesn't self promote all over the place either. Reddit, SkepticForum, omgili. He's perfectly within his right to do this, but it means that he's reaching more people who won't realise that he is not the person who came up with this work. TAB went on to explain he would soon be publishing details of his ideas about Blog Ethics. He did so this weekend. I'll get to that in a second.
However, after that short discussion whereby he explained that yes he will be rethinking his citations and what not, he posted an article on holocaust denial. One guess as to whether or not there were some sources that went un-cited.
If I was Mr Martin Frost I would want my work to be referenced. Search for "humpty dumpty" in both articles and you'll see where TAB got some inspiration for his article. At least he gives the name of the person he directly quotes, as Mr Martin Frost did on his article too. And that photo of the KKK looks similar. Nothing wrong with that, but it seems to give an insight in to how TAB's creativity works. But it's ok! We've got a list of citations at the end of the article. Oh wait no, it's suggested reading.
And so to the Blogging Ethics post that appeared this weekend. All very good and proper. It's nice to see a list of bullet points that TAB thinks very important. The first bullet point:
Bloggers should
That's exasperating and funny, as is the rest of his "Bloggers Code of Ethics and Best Practices" considering his past activities. At the end of the article he gives a short list of links saying "This is based on..."
Too right they're based on. Some of the phrases are exactly the same. For example, search "unmediated" in his post and in Rebecca Blood's article here. TAB, you might be reading your code slightly differently to me, but I would have thought you could have used some quotation marks in your post. No? I'm not sure linking to 'an article' at the end of your post makes up for copying and pasting. "Based on" does not mean the same as "word for word" even if it's only in places.
Ok, that's one quote and look at the code, he's mending his ways. I'll believe it when I see it. So far all I've seen from TAB is passing off a good deal of the work of others, which far outweighs anything he might bring to the proceedings. His cheerfulness after being given a nod from the NSS, a group he copied work from directly, only served to irritate me further.
And I have no idea why he has not referenced his influences in the past or given his own take on their ideas. From the few articles I've flipped through, TAB demonstrates the ability to write well, assuming I was actually reading his words - you can understand why I have reason to be suspicious. I really don't see why he's cut and pasted from so many places when he obviously as both the ability and training to write well.
I think it's worth bearing in mind that TAB is an academic, in so far as he has completed both undergraduate and postgraduate degrees in War Studies. This is displayed clearly on his website. He knows how to research and cite material. He knows about plagiarism and intellectual honesty.
I don't think I can easily accept that he thought blogs weren't held to any standard of honesty. Where does personal integrity come in to play? Even if there isn't a universal a high standard in blogging, it's not like he himself doesn't know that such behaviour isn't right. I doubt that of anyone who has a blog and has had academic training. It should be at the forefront of anyone's mind who is copying and pasting text in that way, stopping only to change the odd word like "We" to "I". That coupled with "liking" your own article when a group links to it results in the situation not sitting well with me at all.
Hence a blog calling out such activities.
This behaviour is unacceptable and, even though it hardly matters, I shall be keeping an eye on TAB in the future to make sure he sticks to his Code of Ethics.
Why? Because I'm annoying like that.
