[SIGCIS-Members] Apparent plagiarism in Nightingale's deleted Huffingon Post article

Mon Sep 8 20:44:56 PDT 2014

Thanks Andy,

Yes, I noticed the similarities myself in a comment posted on the now
deleted Nightingale article. The same chunks of text also appear in
Ayyadurai's 2013 book, again without mention of her name. So leaving aside
the issue of factual accuracy this would appear to be a clear cut case of
plagiarism: chunks of previous published text pasted and/or paraphrased
without attribution to the original authors. 

In fact all the articles in the now deleted Huffington Post series had
significant overlap with each other, Ayyadurai's website, and his book in
terms of the quotations used, the talking points repeated, the evidence
presented, the pictures used, and as we see in this case the actual words
used. The 5 "myths" she claimed to rebut were all found on a longer list of
12 "myths" on Ayyadurai's own website. Ayyadurai has  rather distinctive
prose style and it is echoed in phrases all over the HP articles, which some
commentators noted read as if they have a common author. For example, he
always puts "historians" in quotes when talking about us.

Nightingale's is a literally incredible article, and if you haven't yet
taken the time to marvel I urge you to go to
https://web.archive.org/web/20140905024145/http:/www.huffingtonpost.com/debo
rah-j-nightingale/the-history-of-email-five-myths-about-email_b_5756340.html
before reading on. Did you know, for example, that "Popular sites such as
Wikipedia, unfortunately, continue to promulgate the myths of email's
history. Industry insiders dominate and monopolize such forums, and
immediately remove even documented citations and facts, which expose and
counter their false claims on email's origin."

That article states that "As an MIT professor who led MIT's Sociotechnical
Systems Research Center for nearly half a decade and served on the faculty
in MIT's Engineering Systems Division for over 17 years..." You might ask,
why would an MIT faculty member allow plagiarized (or, in the kindest
interpretation, ghostwritten) and blatantly inaccurate material to appear
under her name? Surely she would have too much to lose? 

Well, she is actually referred to on her own bio page and in other sources
as a "Professor of the Practice" which at MIT is another name for "Adjunct
Professor." http://web.mit.edu/policies/2/2.3.html states that "Appointments
to the rank of "Adjunct Professor of _____" and "Professor of the Practice
of _____" are equivalent." Also that "An appointment as an adjunct professor
or professor of the practice carries no implication of academic tenure or of
membership on the Faculty." So a Professor of the Practice is not actually a
faculty member.

Nightingale still has a bio up on an MIT personal page
<https://esd.mit.edu/Faculty_Pages/nightingale/nightingale.htm>  (which also
calls her a faculty member), but is not listed, for example, on the
<http://ssrc.mit.edu/people> "People" directory of the Sociotechnical
Systems Research Center which she used to direct (!) and her Linked In page
<https://www.linkedin.com/pub/deborah-nightingale/5/313/619>  says that she
left her MIT jobs in June 2014. So she appears to be a former adjunct rather
than a current faculty member.

Having said that, she is a member of the National Academy of Engineering, so
you might expect some kind of baseline professional responsibility from her.
http://www.nae.edu/29986.aspx Also, according to Linked In, "Past-President
and Fellow of the Institute of Industrial Engineers." Not someone you would
expect to sign her name to a factually deficient, plagiarized and/or ghosted
piece of badly written propaganda. But, apparently, she did.

An odd aspect of all this is that, like Ayyadurai himself, she gains a great
deal of apparent credibility from her former association with MIT. Both have
frequently been called "MIT professors" in reports, and I am sure the
association helped to convince reporters to repeat Ayyadurai's claims. Yet
they are going to great lengths in a quixotic attempt to undermine MIT's
actual historical accomplishments in email, including CTSS mail and the work
of the many MIT graduates and faculty who founded and worked at BBN.
Ayyadurai has also been deploying a lot of populist rhetoric against the
idea that elite institutions like MIT are essential to innovation.

Best wishes,

Tom

From: members-bounces at sigcis.org [mailto:members-bounces at sigcis.org] On
Behalf Of Andrew Russell
Sent: Monday, September 08, 2014 2:05 PM
To: sigcis
Subject: [SIGCIS-Members] Fwd: Re HuffPo article on Ayyadurai

Hi everyone - 

I'm reposting below an email from Dave Farber's list - it's another
interesting turn in this bizarre tale.

Andy

Begin forwarded message:

From: "Dave Farber via ip" <ip at listbox.com>

Subject: [IP] Re HuffPo article on Ayyadurai

Date: September 8, 2014 at 11:25:26 AM EDT

To: "ip" <ip at listbox.com>

Reply-To: dave at farber.net

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: "Declan McCullagh" <declan at well.com>
Date: Sep 8, 2014 1:49 AM
Subject: Re: [IP] HuffPo article on Ayyadurai
To: <jpgs at ittc.ku.edu>, <jpgs at comp.lancs.ac.uk>
Cc: <dave at farber.net>, <dnight at mit.edu>, <news at the-tech.mit.edu>

[Dave, for IP if you like]

Prof. James P.G. Sterbenz wrote to MIT prof Deborah Nightingale:

Do you plan to make a statement on your
Web page to protect your reputation, or do we assume that you are
(figuratively) in bed with Ayyadurai?   If you do make such a statement
I would like a pointer and will include in with the other materials I
maintain on this case along with your original blog entry.

I just noticed something unusual about the now-deleted Huffington Post
article published under the name of MIT professor Deborah Nightingale.

What's unusual is that paragraphs of that now-deleted article defending
"email inventor" Shiva Ayyadurai are word-for-word identical to a web page
called InventorOfEmail.com. It looks like Mr. Ayyadurai created that page
himself, though I haven't checked.

You can see this unexpected bit of synchronicity for yourself. Prof
Nightingale's article is archived here:
https://web.archive.org/web/20140905024145/http://www.huffingtonpost.com/deb
orah-j-nightingale/the-history-of-email-five-myths-about-email_b_5756340.htm
l
<https://web.archive.org/web/20140905024145/http:/www.huffingtonpost.com/deb
orah-j-nightingale/the-history-of-email-five-myths-about-email_b_5756340.htm
l> 
"Those who promoted MAIL as "email," when the term "email" did not even
exist in 1965, were attempting to redefine "email" as a command-driven
program that transferred BCD-encoded text files, written in an external
editor, among timesharing system users, to be reviewed serially in a
flat-file."
"One would be hard-pressed to draw a historical straight line from MAIL to
today's email systems. MAIL was not "email", but a text messaging command
line system, at best."

The InventorOfEmail.com page, which Archive.org says predates Prof.
Nightingale's HuffPo blog, is here:
http://www.inventorofemail.com/claims_about_email.asp
"Those who promoted MAIL was "email" when the term "email" did not even
exist in 1965 are attempting to redefine "email" to be a command-driven
program that transferred BCD-encoded text files, written in an external
editor, among timesharing system users, to be reviewed serially in a
flat-file."
"One would be hard-pressed to draw a historical straight line from MAIL to
today's email systems. MAIL was not "email", but a text messaging command
line system, at best."

Also it looks like about 10 paragraphs in Prof. Nightingale's now-deleted
HuffPo blog, published September 2, appear in a Google+ comment posted under
the name "Jason Rebule" a week earlier. That comment appeared in a KQED
thread attacking critics of Ayyadurai. You can see the thread here:
https://plus.google.com/+KQEDSCIENCE/posts/emYcPo9ZjVw

Similarly, another now-deleted HuffPo blog post in the series was published
under the name of Rutgers technologist Robert Field. It uses this sentence:
https://web.archive.org/web/20140904233350/http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rob
ert-field/history-of-email-first-email-system_b_5722000.html
<https://web.archive.org/web/20140904233350/http:/www.huffingtonpost.com/rob
ert-field/history-of-email-first-email-system_b_5722000.html> 
"Standard histories of the Internet are full of claims that certain
individuals (and teams) in the ARPAnet environment in the 1970s and 1980s
"invented email." "

That sentence also, according to Archive.org, had previously appeared on the
InventorOfEmail.com site:
http://www.inventorofemail.com/claims_about_email.asp

I don't see either Prof. Nightingale or Robert Field credited on the
InventorOfEmail.com site.

I presume there's a good reason why a Huffington Post guest blog published
under the name of a well-known MIT engineering professor would be assembled
in such a manner, but I confess I haven't yet been able to think of one.

-Declan

PS: I recall a CNET article written by some enterprising journalist who
revealed the provenance of an anti-Net-neutrality op-ed published under the
name of an MIT adjunct professor. The op-ed was actually written in part or
in whole by a "secretive lobbying organization in Washington, D.C. called
the LawMedia Group" that counted Comcast as a client. I would not dare to
suggest, of course, that such a thing could be happening here.
http://www.cnet.com/news/wanted-writers-for-d-c-tech-lobby-group-secrecy-man
datory/

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