The Raw Story has some damning evidence that Ann Coulter plagiarized a section of her book from a pro-life web site.
To prove the Times science writer wrong, Coulter then provides a “short list” of sixteen “successful treatments achieved by adult stem cell research.”But fifteen of Coulter’s examples (listed at the end of this story) are nearly identical to items in a longer list of seventeen compiled by the Illinois Right To Life website, that has been available since at least September of 2003.
[...]
For these fifteen items, Coulter appears to do little more than remove the parentheses and slightly change a word or two, such as “using” into “with.”
That, my friend is plagiarism.
Further, it isn’t very good research and is poor argumentation. If one just find a list on the internet that support one’s point of view, that’s pure laziness. And, to make matter worse, if it is a list that itself lacks substantial sourcing to undergird its claims, the list is worthless.
I wouldn’t accept that kind of work from an undergraduate.
Here are some example, the linked story has all of them:
Illinois Right To Life: Repair heart muscle in cases of congestive heart failure (using stem cells from bone marrow)Coulter: Repairing the heart muscles in patients with congestive heart failure using adult stem cells from bone marrow.
Illinois Right To Life: Repair heart attack damage (using the patient’s own blood stem cells)
Coulter: Repairing heart attack damage with the patient’s own blood stem cells
Illinois Right To Life: Restore bone marrow in cancer patients (using stem cells from umbilical cord blood)
Coulter: Restoring bone marrow in cancer patients using stem cells from umbilical cord blood.
This is all thoroughly unacceptable, and quite sloppy.
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June 15th, 2006 at 10:56 am
As a conservative I must admit that I am emberassed by Anne Coulter and the way she acts and by the comments she makes. As an ordinary citizen I must say that she isn’t helping in the effort to sway independent voters for Republicans in the upcoming mid-terms.
June 15th, 2006 at 12:02 pm
I wouldn’t accept that kind of work from an undergraduate.
I have this same reaction whenever I hear Bush try to explain some of his more questionable policies. His lack of understanding of “freedom,” for instance, always is irksome. I guess we should expect as much from someone whose favorite political theorist is Jesus. Some exposure to Aristotle, Aquinas, or Kant would do Bush some good.
At least Coulter isn’t in a position of power and she has long been considered a buffoon by people interested in serious discourse.
Bush, of course, is a different matter.
June 15th, 2006 at 2:20 pm
[...] ille professor’s response to Former VP AL Gore’s Global Warming crap opinion. Steven Taylor is providing some details of Ann Coulter’s plagarism in her new book. Red State Diaries [...]
June 15th, 2006 at 6:42 pm
Glad you liked it. Do I get an A?
July 6th, 2006 at 11:14 pm
I am not sure what she did was plagiarism, but it was dishonest non the less. She did list a source for that portion of her book on page 197, but the source that was listed didn’t have the information supporting her list.
I don’t know if anyone else noticed but in Chapter 5 of her book on page 104, she goes through the timeline of 911 and lists a National Geographic website (source #3 chapt. 5) as her source. National Geographic’s source for that same information was the 911-commission report. After calling the commission a scam and fraud on page 108 of her book, she could hardly use their report as an accurate source of her information, so she buried it under National Geographic hoping no one would notice.
Deceitful and dishonest she is, but not yet a convicted plagiarist.