More on citation/plagiarism

Further to an IPBiz post on the Schultz matter, there was some feedback on the Krieger text about lab directors:


Here's the punch-line in the Krieger article:

Increasingly, politicians rarely write their own speeches. Business executives depend on the literary skills of corporate committees. Judicial opinions are written by lowly law clerks, not judges. Big-name comedians rarely write all their own material. In scientific research, lab directors add their names to published papers -- even though they may not have written a word or collected a single sample.

One reader wrote:

I've never liked the idea of the "research director" putting his name on my paper, when he contributed NOTHING to the technical solution of the problem (and probably acted like an impediment). Did a boss "contribute technically", when he tells me to tell him what I'm thinking, and he then says "no no no, that is the wrong thing to do. Do X." X fails miserably, and what I was doing was correct. Should the boss say he contributed to the technical work?? I've mellowed a bit, when the boss has secured the $$ and defined the problem. (See XXXXXXX, and many of my recent bosses.)

**Separately, of --"In every university in America, of every lecture that is heard, 80 percent is drawn from something else, without attribution," Hill said.--

How far "back" must one cite?

One cannot "patent" a law of nature, but must one cite it's discoverer or it is plagiarism? There are lots of profs who will say in a lecture "Research shows...." without citation, and without explicit "quotation" of the research.
I'd like to think science is more immune to plagiarism than political science, by the nature of the beasts. But maybe I'm incorrect there...see Ohio University.




[IPBiz sent a link to Krieger on Saturday, but no response from Krieger so far.]