Kevin Hoover wrote:
>A couple of years ago, I received an e-mail from 
>someone in Germany who reported to me that a 
>paper of Italian student plagiarized my book, 
>The New Classical Macroeconomics, and, even more 
>heavily, a book by another historian of 
>macroeconomics.  A humorous aspect of this was 
>that I had in fact refereed the paper for a 
>journal.  My report noted the utter lack of 
>originality and was negative, but I did not 
>catch the fact that the words were exactly 
>mine.  In mitigation, my book was written nearly 20 years before.

Not too long ago, I got into a discussion with a 
Prominent Economist (who shall remain nameless), 
over the interpretation of a certain point from 
Minsky. In the course of the discussion, I 
"lifted" a long passage without revealing the 
source. The PE proceeded to belittle the passage. 
I then explained that it was the PE's own words, 
a direct quote from an article he had published only one month before.

He got quite angry. I thought his head was going 
to explode. Sometimes I think people (including 
myself) are more interested in the argument than in the truth.


John C. Médaille