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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

#121
post #66

Off topic, but on Friday the minister of Science and Higher Education in Norway had to step down, after someone found out about 22 % of her master thesis was plagiarized. Why did someone look into this? Because she and her department is taking a case against a student to our highest court about "self plagiarism", which everyone thinks is unfair. So quite ironic she was the real plagiarist. And then media jumped on th…

I thought this is happening only in Romania, but looks like is been a common practice for politicians all over.

It seems nowadays a lot of politicians are effectively groomed for such a career from their teens when they see early success in some youth organisation. Sometimes a part of that process is to acquire some kind of academic background for them, justly earned or not.

Ed. I checked and both Sandra Borch and Ingvild Kjerkol seem to have been active in party politics from an early age. Exactly fits the mold of groomed career politicians.

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

#123
post #74
post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I got accused of plagiarizing myself once, and I've never even figured out what that phrase means. Isn't the assumption supposed to be that anything I haven't cited is my idea? What does it matter if it's not the first time I had the idea? It's not less mine because I still have it. I could sort of understand if I had published it somewhere and somehow given rights to it to another party, but this was just some rando…

You cannot copy from yourself. Reusing material and passing it off as new, no matter its author, is plagiarism.

I'll grant your definition of plagiarism. Now, under this definition (which differs from what any layman would think of "plagiarism" as) explain why plagiarism is bad. Who exactly is harmed when I repeat my own words?

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

#124
post #87

Off topic, but on Friday the minister of Science and Higher Education in Norway had to step down, after someone found out about 22 % of her master thesis was plagiarized. Why did someone look into this? Because she and her department is taking a case against a student to our highest court about "self plagiarism", which everyone thinks is unfair. So quite ironic she was the real plagiarist. And then media jumped on th…

> So quite ironic she was the real plagiarist. "A man does not look behind the door unless he has stood there himself." - W.E.B. Du Bois

The original attribution is not W.E.B. Du Bois as he was born February 23, 1868.

The 1857 book "A polyglot of foreign proverbs : comprising French, Italian, German, Dutch, Spanish, Portuguese, and Danish, with English translations and a general index" has that quote in the index, on page 413 at https://archive.org/details/b24867664/page/412/mode/2up?q=%2... .

On page 354 you can see it's described as a Danish proverb, https://archive.org/details/b24867664/page/354/mode/2up?q=do... : "Den leder ikke gierne bag Dören, som ei selv har staaet der. A man does not look behind the door unless he has stood there himself"

That phrase is indeed in the 1850 book "Danske Ordsprog, Tankesprog og Riimsprog", p153, #2385 at https://archive.org/details/danskeordsprogt00copegoog/page/n... .

FWIW, the 1897 book "Men in epigram" attributes that quote to Henri Du Bois.

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

#125

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.

The more interesting question is whether he lifted entire plots from other books or just used the collage-of-website-text to fill specific details

This just looks like a sloppy writer saving time on understanding typical California mansion layouts and features or how snipers set up or British music in the 1990s or what Juarez is like by minimally revising the first Google result he found to generate the descriptive passage. But how a sniper sets up might not be the only bit he's taken from a book about a sniper, and a couple of evocative bits of description in a parody article not the only bits he's taken from Bond.

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

#126
post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess it would be the point where it reaches copyright infringement, since plagiarism isn’t really a thing as far as I know outside of academia.

Genuinely asking: so if he basically copied the entirety of a Stephen king novel except he switched subject and verb ordering for all of the sentences, you don’t consider it at all unethical?

That would be copyright infringement. What’s with this trend of saying ‘genuinely asking’ that always seems to be followed by putting words in someone’s mouth? It’s the new less subtle version of ‘it sounds like you’re saying’.

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

#127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

A fair point and one I didn't even think of. At this point in my life I prefer more family time to anything like a luxury car. My old car gets me around town just fine.

It's how Tai Lopez got wealthy. Rented a house and lambo for his infamous "knowledge" video [0]. He seems to be a good marketeer though :)

Fake it till you make it.

---

[0]: https://www.bing.com/videos/riverview/relatedvideo?q=tai+lop...

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

#128

I've read a couple of Dawson books in the John Milton series but gave up as The Grey Man covers similar ground and seems mostly better crafted. Not to excuse anything but would be interesting to understand if some of this is potentially a result of using automated tools; I don't actually know what pulp writers use in their work.

And The Gray Man (by Mark Greaney) was awful, just a series of events seemingly conceived to demonstrate that the protagonist was indeed a badass, over and over. After awhile, the protagonist became Steven Seagal in my mind's eye. Had to quit before I finished.

No, I disagree - a fine action series on the lines of Jason Bourne; though I listened on Audible which perhaps makes a difference.

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

#129

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.

What bothers me most is that promotion is so important for solo entrepreneurs, that some people will placate the grifters in return for exposure. It's hard to call people out. We end up in a place where everyone is selling to everyone else.

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

#130
post #72

Off topic, but on Friday the minister of Science and Higher Education in Norway had to step down, after someone found out about 22 % of her master thesis was plagiarized. Why did someone look into this? Because she and her department is taking a case against a student to our highest court about "self plagiarism", which everyone thinks is unfair. So quite ironic she was the real plagiarist. And then media jumped on th…

I got accused of plagiarizing myself once, and I've never even figured out what that phrase means. Isn't the assumption supposed to be that anything I haven't cited is my idea? What does it matter if it's not the first time I had the idea? It's not less mine because I still have it. I could sort of understand if I had published it somewhere and somehow given rights to it to another party, but this was just some rando…

Most answers here show a misunderstanding of both "plagiarism" and the basis for granting advanced degrees. Research degrees are granted to persons who have demonstrated ability to produce work meeting some standard. It does not matter if the work was done some time earlier, and for a different purpose. There are many examples of people granted a PhD based on work done in a non-academic setting and then repackaged for the thesis.
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