Forwarding this from another mailing list, thought it'd be interesting to share here... - Sarah ---
Jane Goodall is getting the wrong kind of attention for her new book. She lifted a few passages nearly word-for-word from Wikipedia, but failed to attribute them.
1. Mail Online (UK) - Conservationist Jane Goodall Admits "Borrowing" Entire Passages From Wikipedia in Her New Book http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2296362/Chimpanzee-expert-Jane-Goodall-accused-plagiarism-passages-Wikipedia-websites-appear-new-book.html
By DAILY MAIL REPORTER PUBLISHED: 09:32 EST, 20 March 2013 | UPDATED: 09:43 EST, 20 March 2013 One of the world's leading chimpanzee experts has been accused of plagiarism after entire passages from Wikipedia and other websites appeared in her latest book without proper accreditation.
Dame Jane Goodall's new book 'Seeds of Hope: Wisdom and Wonder From the World of Plants', was shown to contain a minimum of 12 passages borrowed from a variety of websites. However the respected British primatologist failed to include proper attribution, or footnotes.
The similarities were spotted by a botany expert who had been invited by The Washington Post to review the book and raised the alarm.
Among the suspicious passages is a discussion of sustainable tea farming in which Goodall writes: 'According to Oxfam, a British nonprofit agency working to put an end to poverty worldwide, the spraying of pesticides on tea estates is often done by untrained casual daily-wage workers, sometimes even by children and adolescents.'
However the website of Choice Organic Teas, a company which donates a slice of its profits to the Jane Goodall Institute, carries exactly the same paragraph word for word.
Another excerpt from the book reads: 'Bartrams Boxes, as they came to be known, were regularly sent to Peter Collinson for distribution to a wide list of European clients.' Meanwhile a suspiciously similar entry on Wikipedia reading: 'Bartrams Boxes as they then became known, were regularly sent to Peter Collinson every fall for distribution in England to a wide list of clients.'
Seeds of hope, which was co-authored by Gail Hudson, who worked on two of Goodall's previous books, is due out next month.
In an email to the Washington Post Goodall said she would she would correct future editions and raise the issue for discussion on the Jane Goodall Institute Web site blog.
She wrote: 'This was a long and well researched book and I am distressed to discover that some of the excellent and valuable sources were not properly cited, and I want to express my sincere apologies.
'I hope it is obvious that my only objective was to learn as much as I could so that I could provide straightforward factual information distilled from a wide range of reliable sources.' Dame Jane spent 45 years studying the social interactions of great apes in Tanzania, and founded her institute in 1997.
2. Washington Post - Jane Goodalls Seeds of Hope book contains borrowed passages without attribution http://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/books/jane-goodall-book-seeds-of-hope-contains-borrowed-passages-without-attribution/2013/03/19/448ad1f6-8bf3-11e2-9f54-f3fdd70acad2_story.html
By Steven Levingston, Published: March 19
Jane Goodall, the primatologist celebrated for her meticulous studies of chimps in the wild, is releasing a book next month on the plant world that contains at least a dozen passages borrowed without attribution, or footnotes, from a variety of Web sites.
The borrowings in Seeds of Hope: Wisdom and Wonder From the World of Plants range from phrases to an entire paragraph from Web sites such as Wikipedia and others that focus on astrology, tobacco, beer, nature and organic tea.
Goodall wrote Seeds of Hope with Gail Hudson, who has contributed to two other books by the 78-year-old naturalist. Hudson is described on literati.net http://literati.net as a newspaper and magazine editor, freelance writer, former spirituality editor for Amazon.com and longtime devotee of organic foods and holistic living.
This was a long and well researched book, Goodall said in an e-mail, and I am distressed to discover that some of the excellent and valuable sources were not properly cited, and I want to express my sincere apologies. I hope it is obvious that my only objective was to learn as much as I could so that I could provide straightforward factual information distilled from a wide range of reliable sources.
Goodall said she will discuss the issue on her Jane Goodall Institute Web site blog and will correct future editions.
The books publisher, Grand Central, said in an e-mail it was surprised to hear of the assertions. It added: We have not formulated a detailed plan beyond crediting the sources in subsequent releases.
Hudson said she had no comment.
Goodall joins a list of famous authors who have recently faced questions about material they included in their work. Often, the cause is speed and sloppiness in the research, sometimes performed by co-authors and abetted by technology that allows a writer to swiftly transfer passages from one place to another and just as swiftly to forget it was done. An expert in botany invited by The Washington Post to review Seeds of Hope noticed some of the echoed passages, notified theeditors and declined the assignment.
In Seeds of Hope, Goodall has crafted a passionate narrative about plants, their effect on our lives and her desire to preserve the natural environment. Her first-person reflections are full of her well-known charm and humanitarianism. It is when the book moves away from Goodalls own stories to deliver background information on plants and their history that the instances of borrowing creep in. Goodall, whose reputation was founded on observations of chimps in Tanzania, acknowledges early in the book that her training in botany is limited. I have spent a lifetime loving plants, she writes, even though I have never studied them as a scientist.
In the book, Goodall extols the benefits of sustainable farming. She expresses her shock at learning of dangerous conditions for workers who harvest tea.
According to Oxfam, she writes, a British nonprofit agency working to put an end to poverty worldwide, the spraying of pesticides on tea estates is often done by untrained casual daily-wage workers, sometimes even by children and adolescents.