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I believe bestselling author Mark Dawson is a serial plagiarist

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Re: I believe bestselling author Mark Dawson is a serial plagiarist

#31

Post by drxzcl »

Simon_ORourke wrote: post #24
isoprophlex wrote: post #4

Whoa, that's thorough. Damning, easily replicable, overwhelming evidence that this guy is indeed a fraud. > He runs the Self Publishing Formula course and podcast, he talks at the 20BooksTo50K conference in Vegas, and he’s part of a new initiative called Fuse Publishing. He’s a pretty big deal in self-publishing, so what he does reflects on self-publishing as a whole. Like instagram "buy my course to learn how I got…

I think in a court of law it may be more of a charge of plagiarism than outright fraud, but I get your point. And like you said, anyone who makes a career out of "how to be rich and successful at doing whatever", would probably be better off heeding their own advice and become rich and successful at doing whatever rather than yakking unendingly about it.

Plagiarism is not a legal thing. Copyright infringement is, but that’s a different beast.

Re: I believe bestselling author Mark Dawson is a serial plagiarist

#32

Post by nigamanth »

7thaccount wrote: post #17
isoprophlex wrote: post #4

Whoa, that's thorough. Damning, easily replicable, overwhelming evidence that this guy is indeed a fraud. > He runs the Self Publishing Formula course and podcast, he talks at the 20BooksTo50K conference in Vegas, and he’s part of a new initiative called Fuse Publishing. He’s a pretty big deal in self-publishing, so what he does reflects on self-publishing as a whole. Like instagram "buy my course to learn how I got…

>"don't trust the success of anyone who talks a lot about how successful they are" Always good advice. Someone sent me one of those day trader Bros that constantly shows their Lambo and I immediately saw warning lights. I had to tell my buddy that he didn't get the Lambo trading...he got it off suckers who think there's a magical formula for average Joe to make millions with nearly zero risk.

He could have also potentially got it off trading, since he'd have to show his Lambo first before getting suckers who think there's a magical formula for the average Joe to make millions.

Or, hypothetically, he could have rented it for cheaper and then bought an actual one with the money from the suckers.

Re: I believe bestselling author Mark Dawson is a serial plagiarist

#33

Post by ZeroGravitas »

I'm not really convinced by this or several other recent plagiarism scandals.

I have some experience of using the automated tools and I think people get a false sense of confidence from them, both in the sense of "this was definately copied from X" (rather than a shared original source) and "this is morally wrong, because the computer said so".

The example of the music description for example. It's obviously lifted from that source. The rephrasing doesn't really make sense, which I feel is a bigger crime than lifting a sentence about a music scene from a factual music source to use in a novel.

Re: I believe bestselling author Mark Dawson is a serial plagiarist

#34

Post by MattGaiser »

Erratic6576 wrote: post #23
dan-robertson wrote: post #14

What strikes me from the examples in the OP is that this method of plagiarism doesn’t seem very easy. How would you produce this kind of thing? Eg maybe you read a lot and collect a large number of flowery phrases to use over time or maybe you just pinch phrases you like from whatever you read today. I guess I usually associate plagiarism with less effort than seems to have been required here.

It’s a collage of flowery phrases taken from here and there. I don’t think it’s plagiarism, because it involves copying larger chunks than a convenient paragraph. Originality is the art of hiding your sources, which has become utterly impossible nowadays with the search engines. If he had studied after the 2010s, he would have paraphrased a bit more to confuse google

When I was in high school/university, they taught us that plagarism was taking even ideas and reusing them directly. Copying a sentence like that was an explicit example, even if generic. We were told that it gets suspicious at even 4 more complex words that are the same.

Even reusing your own work between classes was an example of plagiarism.

Plagiarism, at least as presented to me, is a very strict standard.

Re: I believe bestselling author Mark Dawson is a serial plagiarist

#35

Post by karencarits »

7thaccount wrote: post #22
karencarits wrote: post #9

Related: the Norwegian press is now examining the theses of Norwegian ministers and politicians after a Twitter/x user found plagiarism in the Master's thesis of the Minister of Science - she had to go on the hour and may lose her degree. Other ministers are now being scrutinized So if any of you are journalists - this may be a way to get new scoops!

Did they find real plagiarism that was obviously fraudulent or did someone cite an author improperly. I know in academic circles it's basically the same, but some things I've seen recently accusing people of plagiarism are just draconian IMO like they cited the person, but screwed up the quotes somehow.

More than 20% of her thesis was copied almost verbatim from other sources [1], including typos [2], mostly without citation. This wasn't discovered at the time (2014)

What's more - self-plagiarism has been a huge topic in the university sector and the Minister has been quite strict towards students re-using text on exams without citation (to their own previous exams), with several cases going to the court.

[1] https://e24.no/norsk-oekonomi/i/wA1Kvo/saa-mye-av-sandra-bor...

[2] https://e24.no/naeringsliv/i/y6Wzw2/deler-av-forskningsminis...

Re: I believe bestselling author Mark Dawson is a serial plagiarist

#36

Post by nigamanth »

I still don't see how this is a crime though, I mean sure, he has a sense of inspiration and borrows sentences and phrases from somewhere. But, that doesn't mean the entire plots of his books, or the primary reason they sell is because of him stealing a few sentences from others.

Re: I believe bestselling author Mark Dawson is a serial plagiarist

#37

Post by geerlingguy »

7thaccount wrote: post #17
isoprophlex wrote: post #4

Whoa, that's thorough. Damning, easily replicable, overwhelming evidence that this guy is indeed a fraud. > He runs the Self Publishing Formula course and podcast, he talks at the 20BooksTo50K conference in Vegas, and he’s part of a new initiative called Fuse Publishing. He’s a pretty big deal in self-publishing, so what he does reflects on self-publishing as a whole. Like instagram "buy my course to learn how I got…

>"don't trust the success of anyone who talks a lot about how successful they are" Always good advice. Someone sent me one of those day trader Bros that constantly shows their Lambo and I immediately saw warning lights. I had to tell my buddy that he didn't get the Lambo trading...he got it off suckers who think there's a magical formula for average Joe to make millions with nearly zero risk.

Or more likely he rents/leases or otherwise borrows it to make the social posts and it will be repossessed at some point, always a good possibility.

It's amazing how some people can pull a long con.

Re: I believe bestselling author Mark Dawson is a serial plagiarist

#38

Post by nigamanth »

MattGaiser wrote: post #34
Erratic6576 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s a collage of flowery phrases taken from here and there. I don’t think it’s plagiarism, because it involves copying larger chunks than a convenient paragraph. Originality is the art of hiding your sources, which has become utterly impossible nowadays with the search engines. If he had studied after the 2010s, he would have paraphrased a bit more to confuse google

When I was in high school/university, they taught us that plagarism was taking even ideas and reusing them directly. Copying a sentence like that was an explicit example, even if generic. We were told that it gets suspicious at even 4 more complex words that are the same. Even reusing your own work between classes was an example of plagiarism. Plagiarism, at least as presented to me, is a very strict standard.

> Even reusing your own work between classes was an example of plagiarism.

As a high school student, this is still true. People literally get suspended/expelled for plagiarism.

Re: I believe bestselling author Mark Dawson is a serial plagiarist

#39

Post by katzgrau »

7thaccount wrote: post #17
isoprophlex wrote: post #4

Whoa, that's thorough. Damning, easily replicable, overwhelming evidence that this guy is indeed a fraud. > He runs the Self Publishing Formula course and podcast, he talks at the 20BooksTo50K conference in Vegas, and he’s part of a new initiative called Fuse Publishing. He’s a pretty big deal in self-publishing, so what he does reflects on self-publishing as a whole. Like instagram "buy my course to learn how I got…

>"don't trust the success of anyone who talks a lot about how successful they are" Always good advice. Someone sent me one of those day trader Bros that constantly shows their Lambo and I immediately saw warning lights. I had to tell my buddy that he didn't get the Lambo trading...he got it off suckers who think there's a magical formula for average Joe to make millions with nearly zero risk.

Even worse, probably rented the Lambo for a day for a photo shoot because he knows that’s what suckers will go. Cars, penthouses and watches - like flies to poop, as they say.

Re: I believe bestselling author Mark Dawson is a serial plagiarist

#40

Post by tussa »

I still don't see how this is a crime though, I mean sure, he has a sense of inspiration and borrows sentences and phrases from somewhere. But, that doesn't mean the entire plots of his books, or the primary reason they sell is because of him stealing a few sentences from others.
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