With all due respect to the diligent journalists who revealed it, I don’t think it’s a big deal that some bits of Rachel Reeves’ book about women in economics were copied from Wikipedia.
The book, The Women Who Made Modern Economics, was launched at an Institute for Government event in Westminster on Wednesday evening. An examination by the FT of the book found more than 20 examples of passages from other sources that appeared to be either lifted wholesale, or reworked with minor changes, without acknowledgment.
Some biographical text about women economists spotlighted by Reeves, who hopes to become Britain’s first female chancellor if Labour wins the next election, was lifted wholesale from Wikipedia. Cue ‘controversy’.
The line that divides ‘plagiarism’ from ‘research’ is a fine and essentially arbitrary one
Now, I have never written a book of my own, but in 26 years of writing for newspapers, magazines and newspapers I’ve probably produced a couple of million words of published copy. I
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