The Benford Plagiarism Dossier 19

You will see below, just for one chapter, enough plagiarism to disqualify the whole PhD thesis

In another email I have pointed out that Chapter 1 is at least 10% cut-and-paste plagiarism

And I also, randomly searching, found a sentence delivered as if Benford's words (unattributed and not in bibliography)

Begin forwarded message:

From: vade
Subject: Re: Benford PhD
Date: 17 June 2012 20:17:44 GMT+01:00
To: Alex Keegan




I examined the chapter I mentioned in my previous email, Chapter Eight - Dream Bodies in Cyberspace. I found that out of the 6000 (approx) words in that chapter, about half is a copy and paste job, and I'm certain that a significant part of the remainder will be too. It's largely stitched together from the following (in order of appearance):

Theall, D F  'Beyond The Orality/Literacy Dichotomy: James Joyce and the Pre-history of Cyberspace', Postmodern Culture, Volume 2, Number 3, May 1992

Chislenko, S.  1995.  'Legacy Systems and Functional Cyborgization of Humans'                http://www.lucifer.com/~sasha/articles/Cyborgs.html.

Sirius, R U  'The Machine-Baby Interface', Wired, August 1998 http://www.wired.com/culture/lifestyle/news/1998/08/14584

Gyrus  'Psychoplasmics'
http://www.philhine.org.uk/writings/ess_psychp.html

Romanyshyn, R 'The Dream Body in Cyberspace', Psychological Perspectives, No. 29, 1994

Bukatman, S  Terminal Identity: The Virtual Subject in Postmodern Science Fiction, Durham: Duke University Press, 1993

McKenna, T (1989) New Maps of Hyperspace (Originally published in Magical Blend, where the Romanyshyn article was also published)

Chambers, I  Popular Culture: the Metropolitan Experience, Routledge, 1986

Olalquiaga C  Megalopolis: Contemporary Cultural Sensibilities  Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1992.


It's an unsophisticated copy and paste job. She just strings whole sentences and paragraphs together from different sources, occasionally joining them with some words of her own. One device she's used in her plagiarism of the Theall essay is to substitute his mentions of Joyce with Noon, a subject of her dissertation.

Lots more can be said about its content and how it reads, but that's for another day. It reminds me of the Sokal Affair and the book he co-wrote called 'Intellectual Impostures'.











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