NYT plagiarism consultant admits Kamala Harris scandal ‘more serious’ than he thought

New York Times plagiarism consultant Jonathan Bailey released his “comprehensive analysis” of the allegations against Vice President Kamala Harris, finding them “more serious” than first thought.

“At the time, I was not aware of a full dossier with additional allegations, leading some to accuse the New York Times of withholding this information from me. However, the article clearly stated that it was my ‘reaction initial” to these allegations, not a full analysis,” Bailey wrote in Plagiarism Today Wednesday. “Today I reviewed the complete dossier prepared by Dr. Stefan Weber, whom I have treated before. I also peer-reviewed one of his papers in 2018.”

“With this new information, while I believe the case is more serious than I discussed in the New York Times, the general points remain. While there are problems with this work, the pattern points to sloppy writing habits , not to a malicious intent to defraud,” he added.

“Is it problematic? yes But it’s also not the wholesale fraud that many have claimed it to be. It’s somewhere between what both sides want it to be,” he said.

While Bailey continued to argue that the examples were more akin to sloppy work or carelessness than Harris’ malice, he admitted that some, specifically two paragraphs copied directly from Wikipedia, were clear examples of plagiarism.

“To be clear, this is plagiarism. This is compounded by the fact that Wikipedia is not normally considered a reliable source, and according to Weber, there was an error in the information,” Bailey wrote.

He concluded: “Ultimately, I recognize that this view will make absolutely no one happy. I do not believe that the book is a product of wholesale malicious plagiarism, nor do I believe that it is free of problems. No matter your side, this will be an unsatisfactory answer.”

In a New York Times article analyzing the claims, Bailey stated that the examples were “a mistake and not an intent to deceive”. He accused conservative activist Chris Rufo, who reported the story, of taking minor offenses and trying to “make a big deal out of it.”

However, he later revealed to X that he had only reviewed the five examples provided to him by the New York Times and had not looked at the full analysis.

“For those coming here from the NY Times article. I want to be clear that I have NOT done a full analysis of the book. My quotes were based on information provided to me by reporters and were only talking about those passages “, he wrote.

Rufo first reported on Monday that a so-called “plagiarism hunter,” Austrian professor Stefan Weber, found 27 times that Harris and his co-author allegedly committed some form of plagiarism, writing, “24 excerpts are plagiarized from other authors (i) 3 fragments are self-plagiarism from a work written with a co-author”.

“In all, there is certainly a breach of standards here. Harris and his co-author duplicated long passages almost verbatim without proper citation and without quotation marks, which is the textbook definition of plagiarism,” Rufo wrote.