The Claudine Gay Cancellation

[Shadowy Man]

They're at it again.

Not Just Claudine Gay. Harvard's Chief Diversity Officer Plagiarized and Claimed Credit for Husband's Work, Complaint Alleges

It's not just Claudine Gay. Harvard University's chief diversity and inclusion officer, Sherri Ann Charleston, appears to have plagiarized extensively in her academic work, lifting large portions of text without quotation marks and even taking credit for a study done by another scholar—her own...

freebeacon.com

While I have little college experience, can someone explain how it is plagiarism for her husband, a co-author on the second paper using the same words he used on the first paper?

Yes, plagiarizing your own work is considered wrong. But using the same words doesn't always make it plagiarizing--you think like you think, faced with the same thing it's not exactly shocking that someone might write the same thing again unconsciously. I would thus put a high burden on proving self-plagiarism.

The only issue I can see is if she is barely publishing new work via repeating everything she already said. Otherwise, how is using your own words unethical. It'd be unethical to quote her own words under that of a third party, and using that third party as an authority.

(Emphasis mine)

That appears to be what happened. The article linked says:

The two papers even report identical interview responses from those students. The overlap suggests that the authors did not conduct new interviews for the 2014 study but instead relied on LaVar Charleston's interviews from 2012—a severe breach of research ethics, according to experts who reviewed the allegations.

and…

But when scholars recycle large chunks of a previous study—especially its data or conclusions—without attribution, the duplicate paper is often retracted and can even violate copyright law.

That offense, known as duplicate publication, is typically a form of self-plagiarism in which authors republish old work in a bid to pad their résumés. Here, though, the duplicate paper added two new authors, Sherri Ann Charleston and Jerlando Jackson, who had no involvement in the original, letting them claim credit for the research and making them party to the con.

“Research fraud” is something more than just plagiarism.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

They're at it again.

Not Just Claudine Gay. Harvard's Chief Diversity Officer Plagiarized and Claimed Credit for Husband's Work, Complaint Alleges

It's not just Claudine Gay. Harvard University's chief diversity and inclusion officer, Sherri Ann Charleston, appears to have plagiarized extensively in her academic work, lifting large portions of text without quotation marks and even taking credit for a study done by another scholar—her own...

freebeacon.com

While I have little college experience, can someone explain how it is plagiarism for her husband, a co-author on the second paper using the same words he used on the first paper?

Yes, plagiarizing your own work is considered wrong. But using the same words doesn't always make it plagiarizing--you think like you think, faced with the same thing it's not exactly shocking that someone might write the same thing again unconsciously. I would thus put a high burden on proving self-plagiarism.

Nonsense. The definition of plagiarism is passing someone else's work off as your own.

noun

1. the practice of taking someone else's work or ideas and passing them off as one's own.
   "there were accusations of plagiarism"

The scenario I'm talking about is also called plagiarism.