Are editors responsible for the plagiarism of academics?

Of the Ayres plagiarism matter, the Chronicle of Higher Education has a new scapegoat: editors.

But now comes a compelling new culprit: trade-press editors. According to an anonymous academic who contacted Dorf after his initial post, the most common criticism a trade-press editor makes to academic authors is that they use too many quotations. But according to the editor, the way this works in the line-editing of a manuscript is that "the editor removes quotation marks from a quotation, and changes a little bit of the wording--perhaps only one word!--leaving the sentence structure intact and the citation in place."

IPBiz still goes with Velvel's implication of student-assistant ghostwriters, especially in the Tribe matter.

Of course, neither the ghostwriter nor editor excuse will save Poshard.