Books

Figuring out whether someone committed plagiarism is usually straightforward. You compare the two texts to see how much of one appears verbatim in the other. Even if some words have been changed, there is often a pattern of similarities that can’t be coincidental. It’s not that hard.

Determining whether someone swiped an idea, or a set of ideas, is another beast entirely. In a review in the June 7 issue of The New York Review of Books, the possibility is raised that Terence W. Deacon, chairman of the anthropology department at the University of California at Berkeley, borrowed heavily and failed to credit core ideas in his book, Incomplete Nature: How Mind Emerged From Matter, from at least two scholars. Here’s what the NYRB reviewer, Colin McGinn, a professor of philosophy at the University of Miami, writes:

One would never think from reading Incomplete Nature that the author’s main contentions have already been systematically developed by others, and that there is in fact hardly an original idea in the book. Two works, in particular, stand out in the prior literature: Dynamics in Action by Alicia Juarrero and Mind in Life by Evan Thompson. Neither book is cited by Deacon, although they cover much the same ground as his—far more lucidly and insightfully.

McGinn goes on:

I have no way of knowing whether Deacon was aware of these books when he was writing his: if he was, he should have cited them; if he was not, a simple literature search would have easily turned them up.

There’s more to this story. In fact, a mini-controversy has been burbling for months. In a review published in Nature last December, Evan Thompson (mentioned above in McGinn’s review) wrote that Deacon “doesn’t discuss other theorists who have given similar accounts of life and mind,” mentioning his own book and Juarrero’s.

In an interview, Thompson, a professor of philosophy at the University of Toronto, said he believed that there was a “substantial overlap of ideas” and that Deacon was guilty of “significant scholarly oversight.” He stopped short of accusing Deacon of actually having cribbed.

An e-mail campaign of sorts has been carried out by Michael Lissack, executive director of the Institute for the Study of Coherence and Emergence, and a self-styled whistle-blower, to persuade Deacon and officials at Berkeley to take some kind of action. Lissack says he gave a copy of Juarrero’s book to Deacon a few years ago at a conference (Deacon says that’s not true).

Juarrero, a professor of philosophy at Prince George’s Community College, in Maryland, has compiled a detailed spreadsheet of apparent similarities between the structure of the arguments in the two books and the examples used to make those arguments.

And there do seem to be plenty of similarities. Deacon acknowledged those in an interview, but he said that they were superficial and that his argument and Juarrero’s were substantially different. Part of the reason she and others are upset, Deacon said, is that he is not a philosopher—his background is in biological anthropology. He is an outsider to the field, he argued, and so philosophers are circling their wagons. “I don’t give all the philosophers their due because I didn’t intend to write a book about philosophy,” he said.

Untangling all of this is tricky. Whether one person handed another person a book at a conference years ago is tough to prove, and wouldn’t necessarily matter even if it happened (how many unread books are on your shelf?). Plus the topics in the books are, for nonphilosophers, a bit esoteric: the nature of causation, the evolution of human consciousness, dynamic systems theory. Deacon’s book is about how mind emerged from matter. Juarrero wants to discover the difference between “a wink and a blink.”

I called McGinn, who wrote the review. He doesn’t know any of the people involved, though he did receive an e-mail from Juarerro stating her case. So he read her book, Thompson’s book, and Deacon’s book. “I was a little outraged when I realized the degree of overlap,” he said. That overlap, according to McGinn, “is not superficial at all.” Discovering that other researchers had already proposed more or less the same ideas would have required, he contended, just a few minutes on Google.

Deacon conceded that his citations “don’t go deep enough” and said he takes “responsibility for that.” He insisted, though, that he hadn’t read either book when he wrote his, and that any failure to give credit was unintentional. “Should I apologize to everyone I didn’t cite?” he asked. “I don’t think so.”

Week ending May 18, 2012

Atkins, Ace. The Lost Ones. Putnam. Jun. 2012. c.352p. ISBN 9780399158766. $25.95. F
Introduced in The Ranger, former U.S. Army Ranger Quinn Colson is now the newly elected sheriff of his home county, Tibbehah, MS. As Quinn adjusts to the job, with the help of Deputy Lillie Virgil, two major cases come to his attention: one concerns a woman suspected of trafficking in children; the centers on a Mexican cartel seeking to buy guns from a local supplier. While Quinn pursues leads in the black-market baby case, the Feds move on the gunrunner and demand assistance from the local sheriff’s office, causing conflict and near bungling of both investigations. As a fledgling lawman, Quinn is a little rough around the edges, but his character is tempered by his deputy’s professionalism and experience. Flashbacks to Quinn’s childhood and glimpses into his personal life reveal both strengths and flaws, making him even more sympathetic to the reader.
Verdict Atkins seems to have hit his stride with this splendid sequel to the Edgar Award–nominated The Ranger. [See Prepub Alert, 12/5/11; Atkins was tapped by Robert B. Parker’s estate to write the Spenser novels, and his first, Robert B. Parker’s Lullaby, publishes this month (see Xpress Reviews, 5/11/12).—Ed.]—Thomas L. Kilpatrick, formerly with Southern Illinois Univ. Lib., Carbondale

Billingham, Mark. The Demands. Mulholland: Little, Brown. Jun. 2012. c.416p. ISBN 9780316126632. $24.99. F
In Billingham’s new entry in his series of police procedurals featuring Tom Thorne, Det. Helen Weeks (who appeared in In the Dark) is taken hostage by newsagent Javed Akhtar, who wants Thorne to investigate his son’s death. Thorne originally arrested Akhtar’s son after a fatal knife fight. Although he had been defending a friend, Akhtar’s son was given an unexpectedly long sentence and subsequently committed suicide in prison. However, Akhtar thinks it was murder and has taken drastic means to prove it. In a race against time, with a fellow officer at the mercy of an unhinged father with a gun, Thorne must find out what really happened.
Verdict Billingham’s latest addition to the Thorne series is a tightly plotted and suspenseful thriller sure to please fans of the genre. [See Prepub Alert, 12/12/11.]—Lisa O’Hara, Univ. of Manitoba Libs., Winnipeg

Hall, Emylia. The Book of Summers. Mira: Harlequin. Jun. 2012. c.368p. ISBN 9780778314110. pap. $15.95. F
How do we know who we really are, especially when our family narrative breaks down? At 29, Beth Lowe lives within a carefully crafted self-definition that has no room for the 11-year-old Erzsebet she once was. As Erzsi, she traveled between two worlds—her father’s quiet English life and her mother’s Hungarian artistic flamboyance. She thrived as a child of those two worlds, embracing both until the summer she turned 16 and her worlds divided. Now her father is coming to visit, bearing an odd and fearful package. It contains a scrapbook of all her Hungarian summers and offers her a chance to return to her stories, to relive glorious seasons in Hungary, and to rediscover a heritage of love.
Verdict A beautifully written debut novel capturing the light and shadow of memory and shared lives. A good choice for book clubs.—Jan Blodgett, Davidson Coll. Lib., NC

Katsu, Alma. The Reckoning. Gallery: S. & S. (Taker Trilogy, Bk. 2). Jun. 2012. c.352p. ISBN 9781451651805. $25. F
This sequel to The Taker continues the time-traveling tale of two immortals whose destinies are bound together by love, longing, misery, and fate. Adair, having escaped his 200-year imprisonment at Lanore’s hands, plans his revenge against her, but life in the 21st-century reawakens his forgotten and unrequited passion for Lanore. Now that her true love, Jonathan, is gone, she’ll even turn for help to past foes—plus one mortal. A reckoning is coming; what it means for these two imperfect beings remains to be seen.
Verdict Katsu’s beautiful, mesmerizing narrative will not lesson the effect of her very adult and often brutal dark fairy tale. Her characters are more villainous than heroic, yet, as with every fairy tale, the novel is full of moral questions and dilemmas that beg the characters to do the right thing and leaves readers anxiously awaiting Katsu’s final volume. The author gives new readers enough backstory for them to forgo the first book, but as in all trilogies it’s best to read the series in order.—Debbie Haupt, St. Charles City–Cty. P.L., MO

Todd, Charles. An Umarked Grave: A Bess Crawford Mystery. Morrow. Jun. 2012. c.272p. ISBN 9780062015723. $24.99. M
What is one more dead body in a shed full of bodies? In Todd’s fourth Crawford mystery (after A Bitter Truth), the Spanish influenza is killing indiscriminately on the World War I battlefields. Bess is summoned by Private Wilson to the shed where the deceased are kept until burial. There is an extra body, its neck broken, slipped in among the corpses. Before she can alert the authorities, Bess succumbs to the flu. Slowly, she returns to health only to find that Wilson is dead from an apparent suicide. Suspicious, Bess discovers the killer is methodically eliminating anyone who can identify him. She must find the murderer before he finds her.
Verdict This engaging historical provides an intriguing look at the chaos the 1918 epidemic caused. Bess is the lynchpin of the story, with her sense of justice that won’t allow a murderer to go unpunished, even when her life is endangered. Highly recommended for fans of wartime mysteries, plucky women sleuths like Maisie Dobbs, and the Downton Abbey television series. [See Prepub Alert, 3/21/12.]—Susan O. Moritz, Montgomery Cty. P.L., MD

jQuery(‘.nrelate_default’).removeClass(‘nrelate_default’);