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September 09, 2008
Imitation, they say
Salim Mansur writing for the Edmonton Sun: "McCain throws Obama for a loop." An OODA loop, that is.
Paging Bill Whittle to the MSM phone. Readers of Eject! Eject! Eject! are encouraged to let me know if I am off base with this one. And then there is the more recent potential inspiration offered by The Astute Bloggers here, here, and here published the week before Mansur's piece appears in the Sun (via the comments at Ace).
I forwarded the Bill Whittle piece to the editor at the Edmonton Sun saying that if Mansur's piece had been handed in to me I would have forwarded it to the Dean. The following was offered in reply.
Sorry, are you suggesting plagiarism? The boyd article is extremely long and my time is extremely short. Could you direct me to the offending/similar paragraphs or add some context to your letter,
Thanks,
Jeremy
The dextrosphere: Doing the job MSM editors do not have the time to do. I never said a word about plagiarism. What I would like to see is citation, a practice I would hope is familiar to Canadian political science professors. In blog discourse we call references to sources "links". These are a common courtesy and an important practice if you or your writing wish to be taken seriously. But then if an editor at the Edmonton Sun either does not know or does not care where the material he is selling comes from, I expect it is too much to imagine the readers of his dead tree edition will know any better.
Posted by Ghost of a flea at September 9, 2008 08:11 AM
Comments
Oh. My. God. I was just working on a post about this too.
There's another OODA here
http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/08/mccain_and_the_ooda_loop.html
Plus Hewitt read whittle's Ooda piece (or somebody's) on the radio last week
Posted by: Kathy Shaidle ![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.ghostofaflea.com/nav-commenters.gif)
at September 9, 2008 10:24 AM
Maybe, but Salim Mansur did cite the excellent Robert Coram biography of John Boyd which covered the OODA concept very well. After all, to quote Whittle himself: "Everything I learned about John Boyd I discovered through BOYD: THE FIGHTER PILOT WHO CHANGED THE ART OF WAR by Robert Coram."
So having read Coram, Mansur could certainly have made the connection McCain — fighter pilot — OODA loop even without reading Bill Whittle's essay on Boyd and the OODA concept.
Just my 2¢ but isn't citing more primary / less derivative sources generally thought to be preferable in academic writing? It certainly ought to be in the press and blogosphere as well.
I can't see where Mansur did anything wrong.
Posted by: ontheleftcoast at September 9, 2008 02:38 PM
Point taken, and you are entirely correct as to primary sources. The difficulty, of course, is -- speaking hypothetically here -- I can lift someone's primary sources as easily as I can lift from the essay in which they are cited.
It is the connection between Boyd's teaching and McCain's practice that is ostensibly original in the Mansur piece. Perhaps this is a case of independent invention. Even if this is the case, the blogosphere got there well before the Sun's dead tree edition. Classical Values posted a piece describing McCain as being inside Obama's OODA loop back on August 4.
Posted by: Ghost of a flea at September 9, 2008 02:46 PM
I'm not saying Mansur did anything wrong. I was just struck, as someone who spends hours a day reading blogs, by the intense OODA Loop meme, and thought it weird that Mansur of all people would get caught up in it. It just seemed so far afield from his usual reference oints.
And what's weirder is that Flea and I noticed this meme/burst at the same hour of the same day!
Posted by: Kathy Shaidle at September 9, 2008 05:33 PM
