[gnicholas]

> In the real world the bar for “ending the career” of a researcher is very high

FWIW, her career has not been ended, only her presidency at Harvard. She's still a tenured faculty member there, and there's a decent chance she'll end up as an administrator at a different institution someday.

I understand the desire to break down the differences between different types of plagiarism, but when we're talking about the president of a top institution, is it really too much to ask that the individual not have engaged in any of them, dozens of times?

[dekhn]

I've concluded the person we are arguing with is either arguing in bad faith, intentionally ignoring the factual details, or has a definition of plagiarism which is not consistent with that of larger academia. As such, I don't think it really makes sense for us to continue to argue (in case he replies), as it's unlikely he will convince us of his definitions, or we will convince him to look at the text copying more closely. Most people I see denying plagiarism appear to be selecting a subset of examples that work best for their argument.

Amusingly, now it's come to light that Bill Ackman (who played a big role in getting Gay out) is married to an MIT researcher who also may have plagiarized text in her thesis. I am curious how that plays out.