NYT plagiarism consultant admits Kamala Harris scandal ‘more serious’ than she thought

New York Times plagiarism consultant Jonathan Bailey released his “thorough analysis” of the allegations against Vice President Kamala Harris and found them “more serious” than he first believed.

“At the time, I was unaware of a full dossier of additional allegations, which led some to accuse the New York Times of withholding that information from me. However, the article clearly stated that it was my ‘initial reaction’ to these allegations, not a full analysis,” Bailey wrote on Plagiarism Today on Wednesday. “Today I reviewed the full dossier prepared by Dr. Stefan Weber, which I have addressed before. I also did a peer review of one of his papers in 2018.”

“With this new information, while I believe the matter is more serious than I commented to the New York Times, the main points remain. While there are problems with this work, the pattern points to slow writing habits, not a malicious intent to deceive,” he added.

“Is it problematic? yes. But it’s also not the wholesale scam many have made it out to be. It sits somewhere between what both sides want it to be,” he said.

While Bailey went on to argue that the examples were more akin to sloppy work or negligence than Harris’ malice, he acknowledged that some, notably two paragraphs copied directly from Wikipedia, were clear examples of plagiarism.

“To be clear, this is plagiarism. It is compounded by the fact that Wikipedia is not usually seen as a reliable source and, according to Weber, there was an error in the information,” Bailey wrote.

He concluded, “At the end of the day, I understand that this view will make absolutely no one happy. I do not think the book is the product of malicious wholesale plagiarism, nor do I think it is without problems. Regardless of your side, this will be an unsatisfactory response.”

In a New York Times article analyzing the claims, Bailey claimed the examples constituted “an error and not an intent to deceive.” He accused conservative activist Chris Rufo, who reported the story, of taking minor offense and trying to “make a big deal.”

However, he later revealed to X that he had only reviewed the five examples given to him by the New York Times and had not seen the full analysis.

“For those coming here from the NY Times article. I want to be clear that I have NOT done a full analysis of the book. My quotes were based on information provided by journalists and spoke only of those passages,” he wrote.

Rufo first reported on Monday about a so-called “plagiarism hunter,” Austrian professor Stefan Weber, finding 27 times that Harris and her co-author allegedly committed some form of plagiarism, writing, “24 passages were plagiarized by other authors , [and] 3 fragments are self-plagiarized from a work written with a co-author.”

“Taken as a whole, there is certainly a breach of standards here. Harris and her co-author copied long passages almost verbatim, without proper citations and quotation marks, which is the textbook definition of plagiarism,” Rufo writes.