Brendan Nyhan

Newspapers are often soft on plagiarists. Rather than explaining how unlikely it is that an author could have accidentally copied multiple word-for-word passages from another person’s book, the reporter will frequently just quote the plagiarist expressing dismay at how such a thing could have happened.

So it was good to see the New York Times juxtaposing Kaavya Viswanathan’s statement that she is “very surprised and upset” and that she “wasn’t aware of how much [she] may have internalized Ms. McCafferty’s words” with the actual, obvious plagiarism in her novel:

[T]he borrowings may be more extensive than have previously been reported. The Crimson cited 13 instances in which Ms. Viswanathan’s book closely paralleled Ms. McCafferty’s work. But there are at least 29 passages that are strikingly similar.

At one point in “Sloppy Firsts,” Ms. McCafferty’s heroine unexpectedly encounters her love interest. Ms. McCafferty writes:

“Though I used to see him sometimes at Hope’s house, Marcus and I had never, ever acknowledged each other’s existence before. So I froze, not knowing whether I should (a) laugh, (b) say something, or (c) ignore him and keep on walking. I chose a brilliant combo of (a) and (b).

” ‘Uh, yeah. Ha. Ha. Ha.’

“I turned around and saw that Marcus was smiling at me.”

Similarly, Ms. Viswanathan’s heroine, Opal, bumps into her love interest, and the two of them spy on one of the school’s popular girls.

Ms. Viswanathan writes: “Though I had been to school with him for the last three years, Sean Whalen and I had never acknowledged each other’s existence before. I froze, unsure of (a) what he was talking about, or (b) what I was supposed to do about it. I stared at him.

” ‘Flatirons,’ he said. ‘At least seven flatirons for that hair.’

” ‘Ha, yeah. Uh, ha. Ha.’ I looked at the floor and managed a pathetic combination of laughter and monosyllables, then remembered that the object of our mockery was his former best friend.

“I looked up and saw that Sean was grinning.”

For more examples of the plagiarism, see the Harvard Crimson, which broke the story, and the Boston Globe.

According to the Smoking Gun website, Duke lacrosse player Reade Seligmann’s lawyer has filed a motion requesting medical, criminal and mental health records of his accuser:

The lawyer for one of the Duke University lacrosse players accused of raping an exotic dancer wants prosecutors to provide him with the alleged victim’s medical records since “the complaining witness has suffered from mental and emotional problems for a portion of her life.” Additionally, J. Kirk Osborn, who represents 20-year-old Reade Seligmann, surmises that there is a “good chance” that the accuser “may have been committed, at least once, to a hospital or drug treatment program.” As such, Osborn wants material documenting the woman’s supposed “drug abuse history,” according to a discovery motion filed this afternoon in Durham’s Superior Court. The motion, a copy of which you’ll find below, also seeks the 27-year-old dancer’s criminal history, probation, and education records. The material sought, Osborn argues, provides “rich sources of information for impeaching the complaining witness.”

Given what we already know about the accuser’s past, it looks like she’s going to get put through the wringer…

The Duke lacrosse controversy is on the cover of Newsweek. While the story doesn’t break any news, it includes a couple of bits of new information.

First, as Chris Lawrence points out, it notes that “defense lawyer Bill Thomas told NEWSWEEK that in the first round some DNA showed up under the woman’s fingernails, though tests were inconclusive about identity.” This appears to contradict earlier reports, which suggested that no DNA of any kind was found.

Also, Newsweek suggests that Nifong may have blood and urine test results showing that the accuser was drugged. The article states that, “[w]hen the case first broke in the press, Nifong, a white man who is running for election in a racially mixed county, hinted to NEWSWEEK that blood and urine tests of the woman would reveal the presence of a date-rape drug.” It also notes that the accuser “was examined by a sexual-assault nurse and likely given a battery of blood and urine tests” when she arrived at the hospital.

While I’m at a conference ignoring the Duke lacrosse case, Chris Lawrence is back home and on the ball. The big news since I left is that questions have been raised about key aspects of the case for both sides.

First, the identification of the two suspects was made using a suspect technique in which the accuser only saw pictures of lacrosse players, not similar-looking “filler” pictures:

A written report of the April 4 identification was turned over to defense attorneys Friday, and sources told NBC17 that the attorneys are considering asking a judge to suppress the evidence, claiming it was improperly conducted.

To obtain the identification, Durham police showed the woman photos of the 46 lacrosse team members one at a time, sources said. The woman said she was 100 percent certain that Finnerty and Seligmann were involved and 90 percent certain that a third player was involved.Durham County District Attorney Mike Nifong said Tuesday that he is still collecting evidence in the case and hopes to indict a third player soon.

No other photos were shown to the woman, sources said, and the defense attorneys maintain that police should have included photos of other young, white men in the photo array to make the identifications legitimate.

…U.S. Department of Justice guidelines on using photo identifications call for using a photo array that includes only one suspect and at least five “fillers,” or other people who generally fit the witness’ description of the perpetrator, for each array.

Defense attorneys also noted that two people at the party who aren’t on the lacrosse team weren’t included in the photos shown to the woman. Those two people also have never submitted DNA samples to authorities for testing, attorneys said.

On the other hand, the cab driver who corroborates Seligmann’s partial alibi made a statement that doesn’t line up with other accounts of the evening:

New questions have been raised surrounding when a taxicab driver said he was called to the house where an exotic dancer claims she was raped by members of the Duke University lacrosse team.

Moez Mostafa, the driver, is a key alibi witness for one of two men arrested in the alleged incident.

Mostafa said he arrived in his cab at 610 North Buchanan Blvd. at about 1 a.m.. on March 14. He said the early-morning pickup was for four young men, in front of the house where a woman hired to dance claimed she was raped a short time earlier.

In an interview with MSNBC’s Rita Cosby, Mostafa described the scene as he pulled up in his cab at 1 a.m.

“A bunch of boys outside the house,” Mostafa said. “Close to 20.”

According to Durham police records, a call was placed to 911 at 12:53 a.m., stating that men from the house were hurling racial slurs. Police logs indicate that two squad cars responded, the first arriving at 12:55 a.m. The officers left about 11 minutes later and reported that the house and the surrounding grounds appeared empty — a far cry from the close to 20 men Mostafa said he saw, NBC 17 reported.

This week, Collin Finnerty and Reade Seligmann were arrested and charged with the rape. Defense attorneys said both men have alibis. Seligmann’s relies heavily on Mostafa, who said he picked up the Duke sophomore at 12:19 a.m. and drove him around for close to 25 minutes before dropping him off at his residence hall. The time spent in the cab was around the time the alleged rape is believed to have taken place.

The timeline inconsistencies could raise questions about that account, NBC 17 reported.

This case is just a mess. When people ask me what I think about it, I have to say honestly that I have no idea. It’s just a jumble of conflicting factual claims and accounts.

At the Midwest Political Science Association meeting in Chicago yesterday, I took part in a roundtable on academic blogs with Tom Schaller, Phil Klinkner, and Dante Scala. A big issue we talked about is whether blogging hurts your prospects for tenure by making people think that you’re not a serious scholar. Unfortunately, they all have tenure, so it looks like I’m the guinea pig right now in the discipline. For more on this issue, see Daniel Drezner’s excellent post on the subject from before he got denied tenure…

Election expert Stuart Rothenberg has updated his forecast for the November election, suggesting that Democrats have a shot at taking back the House:

While Democrats have failed to recruit the top tier candidates that they would like in places such as Arizona 1, Pennsylvania 15, Missouri 6 and Iowa 2, they have broadened the playing field elsewhere and recruited enough credible lower first-tier/upper second-tier hopefuls to win the House if the Democratic wave is big enough in November.

The national mood remains bleak for Republicans. President George W. Bush’s poll numbers have not rebounded, and there is no reason to believe that they will before the fall midterm elections. The public still gives low marks to Congress and tells pollsters that the country is headed in the wrong direction.

At the district level, voters are more critical of GOP incumbents than they usually are at this point in the election cycle. Democratic voters are already polarized against Republican House members, so Democratic challengers can focus their efforts at wooing Independents and disgruntled Republicans, rather than mobilizing their Democratic base.

The only bit of good news for Republicans has been the growing mention of ethically challenged Democratic congressmen in the media. That could dilute the impact of ethics as a purely partisan issue, but the issue is still likely to hurt Republicans disproportionately in the fall, especially since GOP congressmen and staffers will continue to get attention by being linked to disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff.

We believe that the House definitely is “in play,” and the key to whether Republicans can maintain control is whether they can discredit individual Democratic challengers who otherwise would be positioned to win. We are increasing our estimate of likely Democratic gains from 5-8 seats to 7-10 seats (they need to net 15 seats for control), with a bias toward even greater Democratic gains.

I love when politicians disavow partisanship before being partisan — here’s a great example from Howard Dean:

In one of those odd political moments that combine a poignant message with somewhat opportunistic maneuvering, Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean took part in a cleanup effort in flood-ravaged New Orleans and used the moment to take a shot at the Republicans.

…”I don’t want to be partisan at a time like this, but this is why the Republicans are going to be out of business,” Dean said, pointing to the destruction around him. “Nine months after the hurricane, to have this? This is ridiculous. This is not the America we grew up in.”

The cab driver who has bolstered Reade Seligmann’s alibi in the Duke lacrosse case is now suggesting that a second passenger he picked up from the party later was acting in a more disturbing manner:

A cab driver called to take a Duke University lacrosse player home from a team party says his passenger, now charged with raping an exotic dancer, seemed calm and even jovial that night. But a second passenger he picked up later was talking about a stripper, he said.

Moez Mostafa said the second passenger spoke about a stripper in a tone that made it “look to me like somebody get hurt.”

…Mostafa declined to speak to The Associated Press on Wednesday but confirmed to other media outlets that he picked up Seligmann and another passenger at 12:19 a.m., took them to a bank and a drive-through hamburger stand, then dropped them off at a Duke dormitory.

“They were just joking and laughing inside my car and everything just fine,” Mostafa said in accented English in an interview broadcast Thursday on ABC’s “Good Morning America.

“In an interview on MSNBC, Mostafa said he returned to the house later to pick up another customer. He said he remembered that person “said in a loud voice, ‘She just a stripper.’”

Asked whether the second fare was complaining about the stripper or whether it appeared something bad had happened to her, Mostafa initially said he didn’t “have any information about what was going on in the house.”

“When I look back, he look like he mad at the stripper. Or the stripper, she going to call the police and she just a stripper. … It look to me like somebody get hurt. But what kind of harm, … I have no idea.”

This makes me wonder: Maybe something did happen but Nifong arrested the wrong person and blew the case. What a mess.

Jon Chait, one of my favorite writers, flags Weekly Standard columnist Fred Barnes reaching new heights of obsequiousness:

What gives today’s piece its special
status, perhaps marking it as the best Barnes piece ever, is the twist at the end.
Barnes congratulates Bush for ignoring the advice that he, Fred Barnes, had given
him. A few weeks ago, Barnes urged in print that Bush carry out a dramatic staff
shakeup. Today Barnes acknowledges that Bush has not done so and, in the style of a
Maoist self-criticism session, praises him for doing it:

The changes are not likely to constitute a facelift that gives the Bush administration
an entirely new look. Such a makeover would risk making the president appear
desperate. A far-reaching transformation had been proposed–by me, anyway–as a
way to rejuvenate the Bush presidency, shock the media and the political community,
and dominate the news for weeks. Instead, Bolten is taking a more prudent, gradual
and, in the cases of Rove and McClellan, sensible approach.

Got that? If he followed Barnes’s advice, Bush would look “desperate.” So instead
he’s taking a more “prudent” and “sensible” course than the one urged by Barnes
himself. All hail the maximum leader!

Yesterday I wrote about a report on FoxNews.com that was remarkably unfair to the accuser in the Duke lacrosse rape case, claiming that “[d]efense attorneys have refuted most points made by the accuser” while providing almost no evidence to substantiate the claim.

Today a reader points me to a transcript from last night’s “Special Report with Brit Hume” on Fox in which correspondent Megyn Kendall promotes an outlandish theory that the accuser researched the players online and identified the ones with the wealthiest parents:

KENDALL: We know originally the police said that the alleged victim gave three names as her attackers, Matt, Adam and Brett.

HUME: None of these are named that?

KENDALL: No. Now we have —

HUME: At least two of them —

KENDALL: The two charged are Collin and Reade, so what happened to Matt, Adam and Brett, well we don’ know. But, one of the theories that is being spun at this point suggests that the two guys who have now been arrested are the two most affluent players on the team and their families — names and addresses and phone numbers were listed on a Web site called justice for her, a blogspot.com Web site that supports the alleged victim in this case.

HUME: So the theory being that somebody could have looked up on the Web site, found out where they lived, had somebody check it out, find out who had money, it seems a little bit of a stretch but interesting.

KENDALL: It is.

A bit of a stretch? It’s absurd. For one thing, Kendall is promoting sheer speculation — she has no idea whether the accuser even knows the blog exists. And this is a criminal investigation, not a civil lawsuit; the accuser has no monetary incentive to pursue the case, though she could file a civil lawsuit later (as in the OJ case).