Thank you for laying out a case. It's rare that people give actual examples. But the case you've laid out thus far appears more of a complaint about form, not substance.
What you cited was essentially literature review, not the substance of his thesis - a few small snippets often citing several primary sources in a three hundred page research paper. Most people get their literature review from secondary sources such as treatises or other research, as opposed to constructing the whole thing themselves. The purpose of such a thing is usually to situate the research, not serve as a creative or interpretive writing endeavor. And you're supposed to give a canonical account anyways - not necessarily your own.
He cited the primary sources. What he didn't cite was the secondary source, but little of this was offered by the secondary source as the secondary source's own research! At most he's guilty of taking a secondary source's bland obligatory literature review and representing that writing as his own. But notice that this "plagiarism" could be cured by changing the form of the writing even if all the substance was retained. So what did he harm? If plagiarism is bad because of harm, did he act in a way that created such a harm? I think what you've presented thus far is meager complaint about form based on a formal rule, and I wouldn't be surprised if you looked up papers, that this was a common phenomenon, especially given research about how about how commonly broken citations are in academia anyway and how rarely secondary sources get cited in literature reviews. People want to get the account they read in as an account of the background literature, but they sometimes have a failure of imagination to figure how to retain the sense of that account using a different wording, especially when the canonical account they want to borrow is quoting several other primary sources and using direct quotes.
Translation is a different field where the translation itself is the substantive self-made work being proffered and where form is arguably just as important as sense and substance.
I am familiar with this defence. It was already offered here (https://substack.com/home/post/p-209020842) and I don't find it convincing, for a few reasons. The first reason is that even accepting your premise that the plagiarism was largely or entirely confined to the literature review, a literature review is supposed to show an aspect of your training as a scholar, especially in the PhD. In the case of the PhD, it should show that you can conduct your own research into existing literature, present your findings on that research and identify a gap where your thesis is going to make a contribution. Copying verbatim sections of someone else's literature review- and in some cases making minor changes of phrasing in what is a conscious attempt to disguise the plagiarism- and falsely presenting that research into the existing literature as your own is research fraud. It's not normal as you seem to think.
Besides this, I would suggest you look at all the examples Cofnas presented. They go beyond the literature review. There is also a Turnitin analysis of the entire thesis here (https://batheticfallacy.substack.com/p/jason-ardays-phd-turnitin-report/). Download the report for yourself and you can see the plagiarism was not confined to taking from Zwozdiak-Myers' thesis in the literature review.
The behaviour here is part of a wider pattern of fraud and deceit on Arday's part, including plagiarism and fabrication of data in research papers, making up accomplishments, telling the Daily Mail to quote a clarification he gave as coming from a 'source close to Professor Arday', falsely claiming to have published a book on his CV that was never actually published, and so on. Moreover, he resorted to intimidation to try to shut down legitimate investigation into his work.
And to top it all off, he has refused to show actual remorse or insight into what he has done. He instead portrays himself as the victim.
Thank you for laying out a case. It's rare that people give actual examples. But the case you've laid out thus far appears more of a complaint about form, not substance.
What you cited was essentially literature review, not the substance of his thesis - a few small snippets often citing several primary sources in a three hundred page research paper. Most people get their literature review from secondary sources such as treatises or other research, as opposed to constructing the whole thing themselves. The purpose of such a thing is usually to situate the research, not serve as a creative or interpretive writing endeavor. And you're supposed to give a canonical account anyways - not necessarily your own.
He cited the primary sources. What he didn't cite was the secondary source, but little of this was offered by the secondary source as the secondary source's own research! At most he's guilty of taking a secondary source's bland obligatory literature review and representing that writing as his own. But notice that this "plagiarism" could be cured by changing the form of the writing even if all the substance was retained. So what did he harm? If plagiarism is bad because of harm, did he act in a way that created such a harm? I think what you've presented thus far is meager complaint about form based on a formal rule, and I wouldn't be surprised if you looked up papers, that this was a common phenomenon, especially given research about how about how commonly broken citations are in academia anyway and how rarely secondary sources get cited in literature reviews. People want to get the account they read in as an account of the background literature, but they sometimes have a failure of imagination to figure how to retain the sense of that account using a different wording, especially when the canonical account they want to borrow is quoting several other primary sources and using direct quotes.
Translation is a different field where the translation itself is the substantive self-made work being proffered and where form is arguably just as important as sense and substance.
I am familiar with this defence. It was already offered here (https://substack.com/home/post/p-209020842) and I don't find it convincing, for a few reasons. The first reason is that even accepting your premise that the plagiarism was largely or entirely confined to the literature review, a literature review is supposed to show an aspect of your training as a scholar, especially in the PhD. In the case of the PhD, it should show that you can conduct your own research into existing literature, present your findings on that research and identify a gap where your thesis is going to make a contribution. Copying verbatim sections of someone else's literature review- and in some cases making minor changes of phrasing in what is a conscious attempt to disguise the plagiarism- and falsely presenting that research into the existing literature as your own is research fraud. It's not normal as you seem to think.
Besides this, I would suggest you look at all the examples Cofnas presented. They go beyond the literature review. There is also a Turnitin analysis of the entire thesis here (https://batheticfallacy.substack.com/p/jason-ardays-phd-turnitin-report/). Download the report for yourself and you can see the plagiarism was not confined to taking from Zwozdiak-Myers' thesis in the literature review.
The behaviour here is part of a wider pattern of fraud and deceit on Arday's part, including plagiarism and fabrication of data in research papers, making up accomplishments, telling the Daily Mail to quote a clarification he gave as coming from a 'source close to Professor Arday', falsely claiming to have published a book on his CV that was never actually published, and so on. Moreover, he resorted to intimidation to try to shut down legitimate investigation into his work.
And to top it all off, he has refused to show actual remorse or insight into what he has done. He instead portrays himself as the victim.
Excellent article, thank you