Bill Ackman, you’ll recall, is the billionaire who helped bring down Harvard President Claudine Gay. First he chastised her for her performance before the House committee, calling out the antisemitism that occurred at Harvard on Gay’s watch. Then he announced that he would no longer donate to Harvard until they cleaned up their act. Finally, when Gay’s plagiarism in her scholarly papers came to light, he bored down on that, and kept doing it until she resigned as President. There’s little doubt Ackman’s his stream of tweets about Gay promoted her resignation by calling everyone’s attention to Gay’s missteps and embarrassing the board of Harvard Overseers, which is Gay’s boss.
As I’ve said repeatedly, I think Gay shouldn’t have resigned until the evidence of plagiarism surfaced. Her remarks about antisemitism to the Representatives were wooden and unempathic, but a First-Amendment construal of Harvard’s speech code would indeed have deemed cries for genocide of the Jews as “conditional”. Sometimes it’s legal, and sometimes not. The problem was that Harvard doesn’t have a First-Amendment-based speech code, and it applied its own code unevenly, giving rise to hypocrisy. However, I would have given her a chance, for if she’d implemented something like Steve Pinker’s “fivefold way”, Harvard would have greatly improved.
In the end, her plagiarism, which also called attention to a rather thin academic resumé, brought her down, and made me agree that she should resign.
Now, however, Ackman is somewhat hoist with his own petard, for his wife, Neri Oxman, a designer and a professor at MIT until 2021, stands accused of plagiarism herself. It doesn’t seem quite as bad as Gay’s missteps, for Oxman, in her dissertation, did cite the sources of her information. What she failed to do, however, was put quotation marks around phrases and paragraphs she lifted from cited sources, and that’s a violation of MIT’s own plagiarism code.
Business Insider (BI), in the first two articles below, found examples of her plagiarism, and you can see that BI can barely contain its joy of catching an Ackman-adjacent person in the act of plagiarism. It’s almost tabloid journalism.
Click on either to read. The third article is a summary from CNN. In the end, Oxman admitted guilt and said she’d correct the quotations, but Ackman is pushing back against the charges, vowing reprisal against both MIT and BI while not denying what Oxman did. But since Oxman is no longer at MIT, she has no academic job to lose.
Click below or find this article archived here:
Again, click below or go to the article archived here:
And from CNN, not paywalled.
The accusation (from BI):
The billionaire hedge fund manager and major Harvard donor Bill Ackman seized on revelations that Harvard’s president, Claudine Gay, had plagiarized some passages in her academic work to underscore his calls for her removal following what he perceived as her mishandling of large protests against Israel’s bombardment of Gaza on Harvard’s campus.
An analysis by Business Insider found a similar pattern of plagiarism by Ackman’s wife, Neri Oxman, who became a tenured professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2017.
Oxman plagiarized multiple paragraphs of her 2010 doctoral dissertation, Business Insider found, including at least one passage directly lifted from other writers without citation.
. . .An architect and artist who experiments with new ways to synthesize materials found in nature, Oxman has been the subject of profiles in major outlets such as The New York Times and Elle. She has collaborated with Björk, exhibited at New York’s Museum of Modern Art, and had paparazzi stake her out after Brad Pitt visited her lab at MIT in 2018.
There are two kinds of accusations. First, that Oxman “self plagiarized”, using her own writing in her dissertation word-for-word in her published papers. That’s okay, and isn’t really plagiarism because a dissertation isn’t published, and in most cases is intended to be turned into papers. Thus, BI’s statement below isn’t incriminating:
She also recycled phrasing she used in her dissertation in subsequent papers. The opening paragraph of her dissertation, for instance, appears almost word-for-word in an article she published in 2013. While re-using material isn’t a formal violation of MIT’s academic-integrity code, a guide to “ethical writing” recommended by the university to its scholars and students warns against it.
Self-plagiarizing isn’t a good habit if you use the same phrases or paragraphs in one paper after another, but “plagiarizing” from a dissertation into a paper is not at all a violation. I suspect MIT’s dictum here refers to using your own words repeatedly in published work. And that’s not what Oxman did.
The evidence:
Then there are the other cases, in which Oxman did cite her original sources but also used big chunks of wording from them—without quotation marks. That’s a no-no, but it’s not as big a no-no as what Gay did, which was lift chunks of prose and then not include her using proper citations.
Here are a couple of examples of how Oxman used wording from previously-published papers in her thesis. Notice that she does cite the sources in parentheses, though:
and one more:
The MIT academic integrity code (below; click to enlarge) says that even though sources are cited, this is a no-no. But remember, this is plagiarism in a dissertation, not in a published paper. I’ve circled the bit that Oxman violated:
Oxman apologized for these errors in a tweet, though she couldn’t verify one of the accusations because the source was online. She’s going to get MIT to correct the citations. BI notes:
Neri Oxman, the wife of billionaire hedge fund manager Bill Ackman, admitted to failing to properly credit sources in portions of her doctoral dissertation after Business Insider published an article finding that Oxman engaged in a pattern of plagiarism similar to that of former Harvard president Claudine Gay.
BI identified four instances in Oxman’s dissertation in which she lifted paragraphs from other scholars’ work without including them in quotation marks. In those instances, Oxman wrote in a post on X, using quotation marks would have been “the proper approach for crediting the work. I regret and apologize for these errors.”
. . .Oxman wrote on X that after she has reviewed the original sources, she plans to “request that MIT make any necessary corrections.”
“As I have dedicated my career to advancing science and innovation, I have always recognized the profound importance of the contributions of my peers and those who came before me. I hope that my work is helpful to the generations to come,” she wrote.
Oxman now leads an eponymous company, Oxman, focused on “innovation in product, architectural, and urban design,” she wrote on X. “OXMAN has been in stealth mode. I look forward to sharing more about OXMAN later this year.”
I don’t know how MIT will correct these errors, because I don’t think most Ph.D. theses are online (mine certainly isn’t). If it is they can fix it, but perhaps they’ll just append the corrections in her thesis that reposes in MIT’s library.
If you read the Business Insider articles, they come off as hit jobs, as if somehow they’re joyfully getting back at what Ackman for what he did to Claudine Gay by showing that Ackman’s wife did the same thing. But Oxman didn’t do the same thing: she is guilty of not using quotation marks around quotations taken from an attributed source in a dissertation. Gay, on the other hand, is guilty of not using quotation marks around unattributed quotations, and doing this in published papers, not in a dissertation. Further, Oxman is no longer a professor at MIT, and was never dean or president of any university, so it’s not such a big deal. Yes, she should have cited sources correctly, but in the end the damage is minor. Her missteps are far more excusable than Gay’s. But they are missteps, and academics need to know what constitutes plagiarism.
Business Insider keeps mentioning Ackman in their two pieces, which of course is what gives this story its legs, but BI also adds superfluous material to make both Ackman and Oxman look bad, like this:
In 2019, emails uncovered by the Boston Globe showed Ackman pressured MIT to keep Oxman’s name out of a brewing scandal over an original sculpture she gave to Jeffrey Epstein in thanks for a $125,000 donation to her lab.
So what? This is irrelevant to the story, and is pretty much of a smear.
As for Ackman, he’s not denying that his wife did what BI accused her of, but is standing by her nonetheless (see the linked tweet below):
Her husband, Ackman, lauded her transparency in his own post on X following the publication of Business Insider’s article.
“Part of what makes her human is that she makes mistakes, owns them, and apologizes when appropriate,” he wrote.
This is an excellent idea. We will review the work of the reporters and staff at BI for completeness. https://t.co/4VImfFN4A6
— Bill Ackman (@BillAckman) January 6, 2024
. . . and he’s going after plagiarism at MIT, too!
We are going to need help with our review of @MIT faculty and affiliates. Please contact Fran McGill at mcgill@persq.com if your company has the capabilities to assist us.
— Bill Ackman (@BillAckman) January 5, 2024
The guy is combative, that’s for sure! It’s not seemly for him to strike out at everybody, trying to find plagiarizing skeletons in their closets. Gay is gone; Oxman admitted fault and will correct her writing. It’s time to move on!
Here are Oxman and Ackman from NBC News; the caption is from NBC:
h/t: Greg Mayer
PCC(e):L you wrote “Further, Gay is no longer a professor at MIT, and was never dean or president of any university”, but meant to write Oxman rather than Gay.
I fixed it, thanks.
There are also new allegations that she plagiarized even more not just from Wikipedia but from other types of sources as can be seen in the link below: https://www.businessinsider.com/neri-oxman-plagiarize-wikipedia-mit-dissertation-2024-1
Yes, she should have cited sources correctly, but in the end the damage is minor. Her missteps are far more excusable than Gay’s. But they are missteps, and academics need to know what constitutes plagiarism.
Absolutely this!
It seems Neri Oxman includes many passages from Wikipedia entries that are not enclosed in quotation marks and not credited at all . . . https://www.businessinsider.com/neri-oxman-plagiarize-wikipedia-mit-dissertation-2024-1
Both Gay and Oxman seemed to have plagiarized in ways that are not acceptable. according to standard academic norms. One could argue that in both cases, the majority of their works isn’t derivative of uncredited sources but that these omissions are still significant. Were these innocent oversights? Or, did the pressure to complete/publish and compete for recognition overwhelm the need to pay close attention to academic integrity? Or, was there another reason?
A thought that occurred to me:
In all of the above instances of plagiarism by Oxman (and other ones seen on Twitter), the information is purely factual. It’s not stuff that anyone would dispute. She’s not claiming that she originated this knowledge (indeed she cites where she got it from). She is being somewhat lazy in reproducing the exact text (and technically, yes, it should be quoted), but she’s not really claiming any credit for that information, she’s presenting it as context.
Now let’s consider the example in the MIT code cited above. A sentence like: “Americans fear globalisation less than anyone else, and therefore think about it less than anyone else” is not a raw “fact”, it’s a claim, it’s an interpretation. Others could dispute that interpretation. It thus matters a lot more who is saying it, and thus it should be made clear whether this claim/idea is original to the author or a novel paraphrase or a quote.
Does this make a difference? Hmm, not sure.
The other researcher, who originally stole the same content and ideas from the same paper and author in a Sports Medicine journal, has had a many of his papers retracted and has lost/is losing his entire career.
Do you hear yourself speak these things out loud? The pretzel twists in logic to defend this woman versus another woman who did LESS than Oxman reeks of racism. She is a celebrated materials scientist launching a new company on the back of her career built, at first, on her education and dissertation. She cheated, who cares if she’s still at MIT or ANY Education institution for that matter? Here, let me help you:
“The new allegation is that Oxman’s thesis also lifted about 100 words from a 2000 article in Physics World without quoting or citing the piece. (See a comparison here using the Vroniplag similarity detector set at a minimum of six consecutive words of overlap. The 2000 article text is on the left, and part of the thesis is on the right.) That article was plagiarized in 2005 by a then-leading sports medicine expert, Paul McCrory, who resigned from a key post in 2022 following revelations of that and other pilfering. McCrory has now had more than ten papers retracted.
Steve Haake, a sports engineer who wrote the 2000 Physics World article, was alerted to the overlap, and who in turn alerted us to it told Retraction Watch that Oxman: had done what Paul McCrory did:” https://retractionwatch.com/2024/01/11/neri-oxman-accused-of-lifting-from-article-whose-plagiarism-led-to-downfall-of-concussion-expert/
Sounds like she should have checked her style manual. Sloppy.
Evidently we can now look forward to the “culture wars” evolving into “duplicative language” wars. This is great, especially because it will inevitably spread to other genres. Someone is bound to discover a Heterodox Academy participant (or wife or cousin of same) who was duplicative. In music theory, we had a little tempest about the “whiteness” of something called Schenkerian analysis of tone structure, which scarcely anyone understands. But now, the combatants might start exchanging fierce charges and counter-charges about the use of notes, such as G and B-flat, without attribution.
I was also delighted to learn that Brad Pitt had visited Neri Oxman’s lab at MIT. Alas,
In my own lab’s history, the closest we can get to something like that is this: in a ghost story movie with George C. Scott, there was one frame showing a spot not very far from where my lab used to be located.
The complaint about using text from her own dissertation as text in her published articles is just dumb. Indeed it can work the other way. Many university STEM programs (like mine) specifically tell students to publish their research *before* writing the dissertation, then turn the published articles into dissertation chapters. This focus on the dissertation is in many ways a fetish of the humanities where the dissertation is assumed to come first and is supposed to become a book. Most STEM programs and dissertations don’t work that way.
Thank you
For my dissertation, my third supervisor had just learned about plagiarism software and presented to me all the paragraphs, that I had self-plagirized from my diploma thesis. 90% of it was the method section – since it was the same protocol. He insisted, that I had to fix it. Trying to come up with completely de novo descriptions of basic molecular biology methods was the most painful night I spent on my thesis.
That is just wrong. Real plagiarism is a real problem and should be fought. So-called self-plagiarism is not plagiarism at all.
Yes, I agree with Ceiling Cat that Ackman should’ve stopped while he was ahead. However, female over here. It is sexy that he has defended his wife’s honor and is going after the jerks. I know it’s a poor strategy in the overall battle. But he is so in-love with Oxman. I’m not sure I’ve seen any other educated man be so chivalrous. I’m crushing on the dream that some man would do as much for me! Ackman is a keeper.
Me too, and he’s not even my type!
Favourite quip about the whole sorry affair: “It’s only plagiarism if it’s from the Le Plagé region of France. Otherwise it’s just sparkling homage.”
Based on my introduction to Ackman the last few weeks, he would defend HIS WIFE even if he hated her. As our host pointed out, he is combative, which may be an understatement.
Roz,
+1
A friend who was a talk radio show host in Texas, when asked how Trump could have been stopped from mowing down everyone in the Republican line up at the open debate, opined: ‘The first time Trump insulted Cruz’s wife, Cruz should have walked over to Trump, slapped him in the face and said, “Don’t you ever talk about my wife again, you coward,’ and calmly walked back to his podium. (Much like the Will Smith/Chris Rock incident, but more spontaneously, and without the theatrics.)
Don’t know if that would have worked either, but if might have prevented where we are now.
When a passage is followed by a citation, we assume that the author is summarizing what is covered by the cited work, not copying out of the cited work. This Oh, I forgot quotation marks excuse is as preposterous for Oxman as it is for Gay.
Oh, now she’s married to this guy! Strangely enough, I had heard of her previously only as a spouse of the classical/crossover composer Osvaldo Golijov. ‘St Mark Passion’ is his signature work.
She is a true ‘PhD rags’ to riches tale, and an exemplar of life success for high IQ women! She gets into a top 10 global university, then marries a highly creative person [ classical composer who gets onto CDs from a major classical record company – DGG ], gets a PhD. She is intelligent enough to realise marrying to cultural creativity as well as the life as an engineering academic pales into insignificance compared to getting hitched to a hedge fund billionaire. So much more life choices, so much more influence!
And now, this plagiarism in a teacup has given her massive publicity boost, like 42 raptor engines, propelling her into global academic and twitter fame entirely due to her efforts in writing scientific papers [ or not ]! All publicity is good publicity for her soft launching design engineering company, named after herself!
An amazing career trajectory.
“She is intelligent enough to realise marrying to cultural creativity as well as the life as an engineering academic pales into insignificance compared to getting hitched to a hedge fund billionaire.”
Are you speaking from experience with Ms. Oxman, or are you suggesting that every woman who marries a rich man is a gold digger?
Hey Doug,
Not acquainted with her personally, alas. I am very relieved that she didn’t hitch up with composer Max Richter, as her intellect would have doubtless been operated on in the same manner as the title of his most famous composition.
I am in awe of Dr O’s career-boosting skills. The Story of O.
“Bill Ackman’s wife Neri Oxman accused of plagiarism, admits guilt”
And Neri Oxman is not a President of anything (AFAIK).
The cult of the Dialectic / Leftism — in this case, discernment neither in degree, nor in kind — proves it is nothing but hostile.
Bravo, komrades, in the alchemical magic spell.
Missed edit :
The Hermetic demiurge here is plagiarism.
Business Insider has also found 15 examples of her plagiarizing from Wikipedia:
https://twitter.com/BillAckman/status/1743407502312505795
“My wife, @NeriOxman
, was just contacted by Business Insider claiming that they have identified other plagiarism in her work including 15 examples in her dissertation where she did not cite Wikipedia as a source.
Business Insider told us that they are publishing their story this evening. As a result, we don’t have time to research their claims prior to publication.
It is unfortunate that my actions to address problems in higher education have led to these attacks on my family.
This experience has inspired me to save all news organizations from the trouble of doing plagiarism reviews.
We will begin with a review of the work of all current @MIT
faculty members, President Kornbluth, other officers of the Corporation, and its board members for plagiarism.”
Perhaps I missed the link in Dr. Coyne’s writing on this…….
Chris Rufo published in his substack an interview with a data scientist who has found big problems with Claudine Gay’s datasets. Thoughts?
https://christopherrufo.com/p/claudine-gays-data-problem
Here is the actual twitter thread where he analyzes the problems:
https://twitter.com/jonatanpallesen/status/1740812627163463842
Yikes. Thank you for the link.
This kind of stuff really chaps my hide. Nothing is more opposite to the whole idea of science than data manipulation.
And then these people are publishing crap with basic correlation/causation issues?
What’s going on? Is there really no science left in the social sciences?
Wow, the Danish data scientist points out a prima facie case of flawed reasoning. So why wasn’t this noted by at least one of the peer reviewers?
Well, calling Julian Huxley an ecologist displays a certain degree of ignorance.
Ackman drew a target on his back with his public comments against President Gay, so it’s not surprising that something was discovered. Crudely, the attack was leveled against his wife and not Ackman.
Oxman should indeed have put quotations from prior work in quotes. Citing the author(s) in parentheses is incomplete. Quoting your own unpublished dissertation isn’t a big deal, although she probably should have cited such passages as Oxman (2010, unpublished dissertation, pp. xx-yy) to be totally transparent.
*If* the Business Insider articles were hit pieces they might come to regret what they started. There might be lots of people firing up text comparison software as we speak, for all sorts of reasons.
If ‘duplicative language’ turned out to be common what does that say about academia or the industry that has spun off?
To the ethics of plagiarism, I advance an alternative: beg, borrow, and steal whatever you can.
The President of the United States gives a rousing speech. Were those his words? Almost certainly not, but history will record them forevermore as his speech. A senator writes an op-ed for the New York Times. Were those her words? Maybe, but how much was handed to her by someone on staff? A four-star general publishes a piece in a leading journal. Were those his words? It will be cited as such, no matter whether a colonel wrote the piece. A leading businessman or government official testifies to Congress and reads an opening statement. Were those his or her words . . .
Oh well, just remember, it’s amazing what you can accomplish when you don’t care who gets the credit (multiple sources, numerous contexts, various venues, wording might differ elsewhere).
And as for President Gay, it’s not plagiarism if the involuntary ghostwriters do not protest their conscription. Right?
Just like it’s not plagiarism if you purchase a paper online, as long as the original author is down with that. /s
Teacup warning: Storm Gay is approching.
Ackman is a hypocritical prick and his tweets have been insufferable. He absurdly sees anti-Semitism in anyone that criticizes Israel. I also have a problem with his blacklist idea, which is to basically put every student who goes to pro-Palestinian or anti-Gaza war protests on a list and never allow them to be hired. It’s just a really stupid stance to take. But unfortunately he being a billionaire gets to call the shots and make everyone react to them. As for ‘defending’ his wife all I can say is any man would defend his wife so that is hardly something worth applauding.