What Is a Plagiarist?

By Rick Pearcey

What is a plagiarist?

"First-class intellectual fraud" is how one newspaper describes a now-fired professor.

It seems rather odd, but there really are people who have no compunction about allowing their names to be slapped onto work done by others.

Sometimes it seems the bigger the name, the easier the slap.

It seems rather odd, but there really are people who knowingly and repeatedly allow themselves to be praised for work they did not do. And not just professors at universities.

"I love your commentary!"

"What a magnificent book on Christian worldview!"

"God has really used it."

"Thank you," says the ever-so-humble con artist.

But why the counterfeits? Perhaps money is to be made, reputations to be shaped, images to be projected, downfalls to be rehabilitated, legacies to protected, embarrassment to be covered.

But we can do better. Most people know this intuitively. It's the way we teach our kids: "Honesty is the best policy" and "tell the truth, even if it hurts you."

Some people are on a learning curve. Many simply haven't yet seen through illusion to the darkness and complicity. In certain respects, we've all been there. Sometimes we are not able to see the darkness until we are so far in that it seems almost impossible to escape.

What counts is what we do when we discover the emperor is rather naked indeed. Some turn around and move toward the light. Others move deeper into darkness. This can be a process that takes a moment -- or weeks, months, and years. By it, cultures are won or lost, lives lived fully or in vain.

When you move into the light, you get Reformation and renewal and humanity. When you persist in enablement, you get the status quo, enslaving praise, and mission failure.

Thus we witness intellectually and spiritually fraudulent books, articles, columns, film reviews, book reviews, blogs, blurbs, letters, and sermons.

Colluding in this con are the ghostwriters, who are paid to allow someone else to be credited with work that is not the putative "author's." Allowing someone to take your work and pretend it is theirs is just as much a form of plagiarism as when the other person steals it outright.

What the ghostwriter does is to join the fake "author" in defrauding the public. Both are stealing from the storehouse of the public trust. A contract simply legalizes the immorality and digs the hole of corruption that much deeper.

Thereby millions of unsuspecting people are involved in this deception. Publishers thereby sell more books, organizations thereby raise more funds. With particular callousness, an "author" might even boast of how royalties are donated to this or that ministry.

Should we ever be too important, too "Big," or too busy to tell the truth? Of course not.

We can do better. We can encourage authenticity in our own lives and elevate the individual and his creative gift instead of smashing him or her.

This is part of the high calling of "loving thy neighbor," of practising the truth that there are "no little people" and of doing "the Lord's work the Lord's way," as Francis Schaeffer so often emphasized.

It can be done with one word, a single phone call can get the ball rolling. Mere seconds can help change the culture and reform manners.

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Rick Pearcey is editor and publisher of The Pearcey Report (articles).

Plagiarism: Pretend People, Fake Work

By Rick Pearcey

White House aide Timothy Goeglein has resigned over admitted plagiarism.

The links below contain facts and may suggest a few whys and wherefores:

* White House Aide Resigns Over Plagiarism
* Blogger Spots "Copycat" Goeglein
* Goeglein Column: "... Honesty of Reflective Thought"
* Goeglein: "I Am Entirely at Fault"
* WPost: 20 Out of 38 Columns Tainted
* NYT: "Familiar Figure" to "Evangelical Christians"

Meanwhile, a passage from this February 28 tribute to William F. Buckley seems apropos. Regarding Buckley:

"In several respects one is reminded of Francis Schaeffer and C.S. Lewis -- deep, quick, sharp, but also humane in their brilliance, also caring for the human being next door, also real people doing real work. The contrast with the opportunistic 'mover and shaker' of Big Government, Big Celebrity, or, sadly, Big Christianity, encourages us to push forward to a higher calling,
a nobler practice, a loving dream awalk in the world."

Here are two dreams -- doable, humane, inspired by God: 1) Real work by real people, 2) Market the truth truthfully. Trot them out at the next big meeting of marketers, publishers, ghosters, blurbers, fundraisers, and other affiliates of Big Name, Inc. Then duck.

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Rick Pearcey is editor and publisher of The Pearcey Report (articles).

Oxford, Cambridge, Plagiarism, and Christian Worldview

By Rick Pearcey

Those who care about authentic living and the life of the mind may want to consult a report in today's Guardian. (See Pearcey Report link here.)

In a story titled "Their Dark Materials," readers will learn that the universities of Oxford and Cambridge are attacking plagiarism, ghostwriting, and "essay mills." Among other things, the universities condemn the practice of students who buy from -- or work for -- services such as Oxbridge Essays.

Sensitive people are concerned about the presence of this sort of unfortunate behavior not just on the so-called secular campus, but also in Christian circles (as has been reported on from time to time).

One might consider what would happen if one day the Bible-affirming world woke up and all the pretend authors, columnists, "thinkers," publishers, etc., and their staffs of enablers had disappeared. One wonders who in "Celebrianity" might be suddenly missing and how many real books and articles would be left on shelves if works by these "authors" departed along with them.

Imagine also that Jesus of Nazareth said, "OK, people -- from here on only real work by real people is acceptable. Anything else and you get a one-way ticket to AnaniasandSapphiraville." See the unhappy outcome of Ananias and Sapphira in Acts 5.

One way you know the flesh-and-blood Jesus meant business is that he applied truth to both the ends and the means of his methods of ministry. Even if that meant dying painfully and nakedly on the cross as a common criminal and apparent failure.

Nevertheless, he didn't cut corners to win influence, gain a wider audience, achieve access to power, protect his image, or enhance his resume to shape future biographies and the opinions of posterity. He practiced the truth the right way and was killed for it. It was ugly. It was right. And he won.

In contrast, how many books, essays, speeches, blurbs, magnum opuses, and so on would disappear if that same Jesus applied that principle of authentic living retroactively? "Lord, Lord, did we not 'write' wonderful, quiet-time inspired worldview books for you?," might protest the high and mighty after receiving a rejection slip from the Living God.

It's a sobering thought, but there may be some in this world who've so long succeeded at conning others that they even try it out on the Son of God. After all, the well-honed techniques of manipulation and PR have worked on just about everybody else (not really, of course, but in the tiny world of tin-horn celebrity, it may seem that way). "Dysfunctional systems are well-defended," says a book on abuse.

Perhaps the better path is to pull the plug on pretend authorship. Yes, the anti-intellectual money machine may grind to a halt, but a door necessary to a renaissance of authentic thinking (not to mention living) would be opened. The current strategy raises money in the millions, but it's misdirected and loses the spiritual-cultural battle.

What's especially interesting is that similar doors need to be opened in the face of similar challenges in so many other areas of life in this broken world. That doesn't mean we can't enjoy ourselves along the way, even if honest growth encounters big shots who resist change and try to redefine Biblical challenges and accountability as personal squabbles.

Publishing is just one area among many. In electoral politics, public policy, the arts, philanthropy, and many spheres of life and ministry, authentic Christian worldview remains in its infancy. One hopes it needn't run away from home to survive childhood. Oxford and Cambridge could be just the place for those kind of people.

Additional Resources
Pizza With Michelangelo, by Rick Pearcey
A Review of The Da Vinci Code, by Rick Pearcey
Francis Schaeffer: A Student's Appreciation of a Distinct Approach, by Rick Pearcey


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Rick Pearcey is editor and publisher of The Pearcey Report.