ok.
So then what I'm asking is… Is Dan's material such that they both could have drawn from it separately and gotten the same shit out of it.
As in, does it seem like it could well be that instead of Alwyn/Mike copying Lyle, that everyone just copied poor Dan, with the non-crunchy bits.
(Since I don't know Dan's piece, I have no idea if it's presented as stale dry crap, or if there's more to it, the way both UD2 and WSFL seem to be from the examples presented.)
If there's nothing in Dan's work that allows for people to paraphrase it in similar ways, then your case is stronger.
If there is stuff in there (non-crunchy more-talky bits) then I could see a case for both Lyle and A/M copying the same thing, not one the other, and therefore it's just unfortunate that Alywn/Mike didn't think to make sure they didn't get too close to UD2. kwim?
Then it would be a matter of whether Alwyn/Mike did it on purpose, assuming they had read UD2 (which one can likely assume).
OR if they did it accidentally/unconsciously pulled from what they remember reading in it.
This still wouldn't free them of responsibility/fault, it would just make them a little less dicky.
They likely could have avoided all this shit if they just mentioned that they consulted Lyle's work, because then similarities would be more expected. Accidental or otherwise.
Quote:
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But again, it's not the research nor the scientific premises that are in question: it's the word for word copying, linked in Lyle's blog, that is the issue.
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This is partly where I have trouble. It's not word for word. It's paraphrasing. The words that are identical are words you can't say a different way (the sciency bits).
Yes, paraphrasing is still plagiarism, but not quite as cut and dried here, because of the possibility of a different source.
Hence why I wondered about the rest of the text, or other texts, which would help decide a case in better context.