Karl E. Weick - Plagiarism

Plagiarism

In several published articles, Weick related a story that originally appeared in a poem by Miroslav Holub that was published in the Times Literary Supplement. Weick plagiarized Holub in that he republished the poem (with some minor differences, including removing line breaks and making small changes in a few words) without quotation or attribution. Some of Weick's articles included the material with no reference to Holub; others referred to Holub but without indicating that Weick had essentially done a direct copy of Holub's writing. The plagiarism was detailed in an article by Thomas Basbøll and Henrik Graham. In a response, Weick disputed the claim of plagiarism, writing, "By the time I began to see the Alps story as an example of cognition in the path of the action, I had lost the original article containing Holub’s poem and I was not even sure where I had read the story . . . I reconstructed the story as best I could." Weick did not give a plausible explanation of how this reconstruction led to the appearance of a story with wording nearly identical to Holub's. Basbøll and Graham write, "The American Historical Association acknowledges the existence of this common defence in specific cases of plagiarism, tersely remarking that it “is plausible only in the context of a wider tolerance of shoddy work.”