Rolf Dobelli's Serial Plagiarism of N. N. Taleb's Incerto
(Note: I blocked @farnamstreet (Shane Parish) for distasteful severe
breach of ethics as he knowingly promotes Dobelli.)
Probabilities compound, don't add. The next graph illustrates a probabilistic approach to the general problem of plagiarism and how if a few examples might be OK, many are way too many (particularly in a short book). No matter how much weight one assigns to each event, the joint probability eventually rises to the same evidence (the graph is general, not adapted to the specific purpose). So while many single instances may not on their own qualify as plagiarism, the ensemble (adding to it the public lectures and the Facebook posts) proves the conclusion that Rolf Dobelli is a plagiarist.
is.
Rolf Dobelli translated and summarized the section
on via
negativa from the
unpublished manuscript of Antifragile (with which he was entrusted) in a German
newspaper Zeit, with no sourcing and attribution. And published
it before Antifragile. Then he put an English version in his book. Same
examples (Michelangelo), same wording, same ideas. (Note: the
article passes our strong test here: there was about nothing in the way of ideas in Dobelli's
chapter/article that was not in Book VI of Antifragile and the idea as a whole was not discussed anywhere. In that sense it is the strongest form of "borrowing",
worse than copying paragraphs).
IN
THE ENGLISH VERSION
Newly Found Passage (Sept 15, 2013):
Taleb
I
was thinking about calling my third cousin Antiochus this morning when the
phone rang. Miracle! It was him on the other line; this confirms my developed
sixth sense! This is a great omen except that perhaps I should wake up and take
into account the number of times when I thought about calling him without his
calling me; the times when he called me without my thinking about calling him;
and, most significantly, the numerous occurrences of my not thinking about him,
and him not trying to call me. (passage from the still unpublished MS of The Black Swan sent to Dobelli in full trust)
Dobelli
Something last
week made me think of my old school friend, Andy, whom I hadnÕt spoken to in a
long time. Suddenly the phone rang. I picked it up, and, lo and behold, it was
Andy. ÒI must be telepathic!Ó I exclaimed excitedly. But telepathy or
coincidence? LetÕs apply some thinking
here. Keep in mind the many occasions when ÒAndyÓ thinks of you but doesnÕt
call; when you think of him and he doesnÕt call; when you donÕt think of him
and he calls; when he doesnÕt think of you and you call. . . .
***
Taleb
I had dinner at the bar of a Tribeca restaurant with
Lauren Rose, a trader who was reading an early draft of this book. We flipped a
coin to see who was going to pay for the meal. I lost and paid. He was about to
thank me when he abruptly stopped and said that he paid for half of it probabilistically.
He thought for a moment and said, ÒConsidering the alternative paths, youÕve actually already paid for half of
this dinner.Ó (Fooled by Randomness)
Dobelli
Recently, I was at a dinner with an American friend who suggested
tossing a coin to decide who should pay the bill. He lost. The
situation was uncomfortable for me, since he was my guest
in Switzerland. ÒNext time IÕll pay, whether here or in New York,Ó I promised.
He thought for a moment and said, ÒConsidering
the alternative paths, youÕve actually already paid for half of this dinner.Ó
(A chapter
on Alternative Histories that is a
complete rewriting of a chapter in Fooled
by Randomness with, characteristically, a reference to "Russian
roulette" that doesn't describe the exact operation.)
***
Taleb
[We] prefer to have the wrong map (...) to no map at all.
Dobelli
We prefer to have a wrong map to no map at all.
***
Taleb
There are reasons for us to be suspicious of
these Òright brain/left brainÓ distinctions and subsequent pop-science generalizations
(The Black Swan)
Dobelli
So, forget about the Òleft and
right brainÓ that semi-intelligent self-help books describe.
***
Coincidental citations within same context
Taleb
Don't ask a barber if you need a haircut (The Black Swan) (Taleb sources inline to
Warren Buffett)
Dobelli
Don't ask a barber if you need a
haircut
***
Taleb
"What happened? The trick is as follows.
The con operator pulls 10,000 names out of a phone book. He mails a bullish
letter to one half of the sample, and a bearish one to the other half. The
following month he selects the names of the persons to whom he mailed the
letter whose prediction turned out to be right, that is, 5,000 names. The next
month he does the same with the remaining 2,500 names, until the list narrows
down to 500 people. Of these there will be 200 victims. An investment in a few
thousand dollarsÕ worth of postage stamp's will turn into several
million." (p. 158, FBR)
Dobelli
In fact,
you can make a fortune with it by sending a few e-mails. HereÕs how: Put
together two stock market forecastsÑ one predicting that prices will rise
next month and one warning of a drop. Send the first mail to fifty thousand
people and the second mail to a different set of fifty thousand. Suppose that
after one month, the indices have fallen. Now you can send another e-mail, but
this time only to the fifty thousand people who received a correct prediction.
These fifty thousand you divide into two groups: The first half learns that
prices will increase next month, and the second half discovers they will fall.
Continue doing this. After ten months, around a hundred people will remain, all
of whom you have advised impeccably. From their perspective, you are a genius.
You have proven that you are truly in possession of prophetic powers. Some of
these people will trust you with their money. Take it and start a new life in
Brazil.
***
Taleb
The quality of a
decision cannot be solely judged based on its outcome (Fooled by Randomness)
Dobelli
Never
Judge a Decision by Its Outcome (title of article in Psychology Today, unreferenced)
***
Taleb
How data can be bad for you
Period 1: 1 million Monkeys
Period 2: 500,000 winning monkeys
Period 3: 250,000
Period 4: 125,000
Period 5: 62,500
Period 6: 31,250 ...
Period 11 about 1000 straight winning
monkeys, geniuses
...just by luck
The press will study what is special in the
winning monkey. (Presentation and paper "Why It is No Longer a Good Idea
To Be In The Investment Industry?")
Dobelli
A quick hypothesis: Say one million monkeys speculate on the stock
market. They buy and sell stocks like crazy and, of course, completely at
random. What happens? After one week, about half of the monkeys will have made
a profit and the other half a loss. The ones that made a profit can stay; the
ones that made a loss you send home. In the second week, one half of the
monkeys will still be riding high, while the other half will have made a loss
and are sent home. And so on. After ten weeks, about one thousand monkeys will
be leftÑ those who have always invested their money well. After twenty
weeks, just one monkey will remainÑ this one always, without fail, chose
the right stocks and is now a billionaire. LetÕs call him the success monkey.
How does the media react? It will pounce on this animal to understand its
Òsuccess principles.Ó And they will find some: Perhaps the monkey eats more
bananas than the others. Perhaps he sits in another corner of the cage. Or
maybe he swings headlong through the branches, or he takes long, reflective
pauses while grooming. He must have some recipe for success, right? How else
could he perform so brilliantly? Spot-on for two yearsÑ and that from a
simple monkey? Impossible!
[ALSO PUBLISHED WITH NO ATTRIBUTION in Frankfurter
Algemeine Zeitung,
on Facebook and in Psychology Today]
***
Taleb
To be completely cured of newspapers,
spend a year reading the previous weekÕs newspapers. (Bed of Procrustes)
Dobelli
If you canÕt live without news, read newspapers from five, ten, or
twenty years ago.
***
To see how he paraphrases:
Taleb: (about the news and why I avoid the press) My problem is that I am not rational and I am extremely prone to drown in randomness. and "not intelligent enough"
Dobelli: We are not rational enough to be exposed to the press.
Taleb:Daily news and sugar confuse our system in the same manner.
DobelliNews is to the mind what sugar is to the body.
***
Taleb
Michelangelo was asked by the pope about
the secret of his genius, particularly how he carved the statue of David,
largely considered the masterpiece of all masterpieces. His answer was: ÒItÕs
simple. I just remove everything that is not David.Ó (Antifragile, as an illustration of via negativa)
Dobelli
The pope asked Michelangelo: ÒTell me the secret of your genius. How have you created the statue of David, the masterpiece of all masterpieces?Ó MichelangeloÕs answer: ÒItÕs simple. I removed everything that is not David.Ó
(as an illustration of via negativa. It would be a monstrous
probabilistic coincidence that Dobelli discovered both this example and via
negativa on his own as via negativa is a concept in theology grounded in the works Pseudo-Dionysius
the Areopagite, which I am certain Dobelli did not coincidentally read at the
same time I gave him my manuscript, then apply the theological concept to
decision making under uncertainty.)
***
Taleb
Happiness; we donÕt know what it means, how
to measure it, or how to reach it, but we know extremely well how to avoid
unhappiness. (Antifragile)
Dobelli
We canÕt pinpoint exactly what makes us
happy. But we know with certainty what destroys success or happiness.
***
Taleb
The method began as an avoidance of direct
description, leading to a focus on negative description, what is called in
Latin via negativa, the negative way(...) Via negativa does not
try to express what God is. It just lists what God is not and proceeds
by the process of elimination. (Antifragile)
Dobelli
The Greeks, Romans, and medieval thinkers had a term for this
approach: via negativa. Literally, the negative path, the path of
renunciation, of exclusion, of reduction. Theologians were the first to tread
the via negativa: We cannot say what God is; we can only say what God is not.
***
Taleb
Knowledge is
subtractive, not additiveÑwhat we subtract (reduction by what does not
work, what not to do), not what we add (what to do). (Antifragile)
We know what
doesn't work much better than what works. (Antifragile)
Dobelli
Applied to the present day: We cannot say what brings us success. We
can pin down only what blocks or obliterates success.
***
Taleb
it is explained in a Yiddish proverb that says
ÒProvide for the worst; the best can take care of itself.Ó This may sound like
a platitude, but it is not: just observe how people tend to provide for the
best and hope that the worst will take care of itself. (Antifragile)
Elsewhere: "Eliminate the downside"
Dobelli
Eliminate the downside, the thinking errors, and the upside will
take care of itself. This is all we need to know.
***
Taleb
we know a lot more what is wrong than what
is right,(...) negative knowledge (what is wrong, what does not work) is more
robust to error than positive knowledge (what is right, what works). (Antifragile)
Dobelli
This realization, as simple as it is, is
fundamental: Negative knowledge (what not to do) is much more potent than
positive knowledge (what to do).
***
Taleb
To bankrupt a
fool, give him information. (Bed of
Procrustes)
Dobelli
If you have an enemy, give him information.
(in chapter title)
***
Taleb
Consider the following statement: ÒThe king
died and the queen died.Ó Compare it to ÒThe king died, and then the queen died
of grief.Ó This exercise, presented by the novelist E. M. Forster, shows the
distinction between mere succession of information and a plot. But notice the
hitch here: although we added information to the second statement, we
effectively reduced the dimension of the total. The second sentence is, in a
way, much lighter to carry and easier to remember; we now have one single piece
of information in place of two. As we can remember it with less effort, we can
also sell it to others, that is, market it better as a packaged idea. (The Black Swan)
Dobelli
Here are two stories from the
English novelist E. M. Forster. Which one would you remember better? (a) ÒThe
king died, and the queen died.Ó (b) ÒThe king died, and the queen died of
grief.Ó Most people will retain the second story more easily. Here, the two
deaths donÕt just take place successively; they are emotionally linked. Story A
is a factual report, but story B has Òmeaning.Ó According to information
theory, we should be able to hold on to A better: It is shorter. But our brains
donÕt work that way.
***
Taleb
On domain dependence: This inability to automatically transfer
knowledge and sophistication from one situation to another, or from theory to
practice, is a quite disturbing attribute of human nature. (Antifragile)
Dobelli
A blatant case of domain dependence: He failed to transfer knowledge
from the academic world to the private sphere. [but referenced]
***
Taleb
Consider that of the close to a million
professionals employed in economic activities, whether in government (from
Cameroon to Washington, D.C.), academia, media, banking, corporations, or doing
their own private homework for economic and investment decisions (Antifragile)
Dobelli
Or consider the
hundreds of thousands of economistsÑ in service of banks, think tanks,
hedge funds, and governmentsÑ and all the white papers they have
published from 2005 to 2007:
***
Taleb
(...)
ÒrigorousÓ papers in economics using fancy statistics are just hot air (Antifragile)
Dobelli
(...) It was all hot air.
***
Taleb
ÒDoctor ProfessorFragilista Markowitz does not use his method for his own portfolio (Antifragile)
Dobelli
When it came to MarkowitzÕs own portfolio (...) The Nobel Prize winner was incapable of applying his ingenious process to his own affairs (Dobelli cites Zweig but from context it was clear where example came from)
***
Taleb
...producing gigabytes of information just by talking and corresponding and
writing articles. (Antifragile)
Dobelli
The terabytes
of information on Bloomberg and Reuters news services.
***
84 percent of Frenchmen feel that their
lovemaking abilities put them in the top half of French lovers. (The Black Swan)
Dobelli
84 percent of Frenchmen
estimate that they are above-average lovers. (& in Psychology Today, unreferenced)
***
Taleb
I am not testing how much people know, but
assessing the difference between what people actually know and how much
they think they know. (The Black Swan)
Dobelli
measures the difference
between what people really know and what they think they know. (also in Psychology Today, unreferenced)
***
Taleb
Estimate a range of
possible values for that number set in such a way that they believe that they
have a 98 percent chance of being right, and less than 2 percent chance of
being wrong. In other words, whatever they are guessing has about a 2
percent chance to fall outside their range. For example:... (The
Black Swan)
Dobelli
Choose a range, for
example, between one hundred and five hundred, so that your estimate is at
least 98 percent correct and only 2 percent off. Write it on a piece of paper
before you read on. (in Psychology Today,
unreferenced)
***
Taleb
Our minds are not quite designed to understand how the world works, but (...) have progeny.
Dobelli
Our brain is not built to recognize the truth; instead, its goal is to leave behind as many offspring as possible.
***
Example of hanging quotation, or someone he
cites is cited as if discovered by Dobelli not transcribed from Taleb's.
Dobelli
In Antifragile, Taleb describes how all areas of researchÑ from philosophy to
medicine to economicsÑ brag about their results: ÒLike politicians,
academia is well equipped to tell us what it did for us, not what it did
notÑ hence it shows how indispensable her methods are.Ó Pure cherry
picking. But our respect for academics is far too great for us to notice this. Or consider the medical profession: To tell
people that they should not smoke is the greatest medical contribution of the
past sixty yearsÑ superior to all the research and medical advances since
the end of the Second World War. Physician Druin
Burch confirms this in his book Taking the Medicine.
[THEN DOBELLI CITES BURCH's book in Back, as if he read Burch not read my
account of Burch. See
the discussion here about the ethical aspect.]
***
The list is much longer. There are dozen of additional passages lifted from the INCERTO that are not referenced in the UK edition.
Even titles are taken from my titles. The first chapter "cemetery" is suspect: description (without references) of the survivorship bias that "resembles" my own treatment. "Mosques in the Clouds" (Taleb) became "Why You See Shapes in the Clouds" (Dobelli), etc. Exceedingly coincidental...
COMMENT
Note that the words in Dobelli may not correspond exactly because they were (re)translated from the German.
Dobelli references Taleb 23
times in the US end notes section (not in the UK version), and a dozen times in text, but not for these, and, what is key, the reader is left
under the impression that these thoughts are Dobelli's
using Taleb as mere backup, not directly Taleb's.
The technical rules are in the note but the
ethical rule I try to abide by is as follows: you can write whatever you want
so long as the reader knows at any point in time what came from you and what
came from someone else's, whether directly or indirectly. At every point.
Also
note that citations, pending on context, are part of the plagiarism. If someone spend years writing a book of
citations, such as Peter Bevelin's book A Few
Lessons from Sherlock Holmes
with nothing by quotes by other authors, is it ethical for someone to remove
Peter Bevelin's name and replace it with his own on
grounds that "these citations are by other authors"?
***
Note that correspondence of content doesn't imply plagiarism. There is a book EXTREMELY similar to Fooled by Randomness called The Drunkard's Walk. Yet not a shade of plagiarism. Why? the examples and terminology were very different. Some ideas can be rediscovered by two people. And when asked, the author said: Had I known about FBR I wouldn't have written that book. An honorable man.
I am now claiming plagiarism; I let the reader view the evidence(in the light of the context). But here is the framework. "Plagiarism isn't in what you reference but in what you don't (via negativa)" (source: Nassim Nicholas Taleb). The standard approach to plagiarism is summarized by Irving Wexham:
3.3 Simple plagiarism using a footnote:
A reference is provided but quotation marks are still not used when
academic rules for citation demand their use and some words are slightly
changed to make the passage appear to be different from the original.
3.4. Complex plagiarism using a footnote:
This happens when various changes and paraphrases, from more than one page,
are used with a footnote but without appropriate quotation marks. Thus a
reference is given, although it may not be to exactly the correct page, and
many words and phrases are taken from the original text. Paraphrasing is used
to condense lengthy arguments. But, little or no indication is given that the
passage is paraphrased, nor are quotation marks used when needed. Another
technique, found in this type of plagiarism is a deliberate attempt to change
the appearance, but not contents, of the sentences, thus making the plagiarism
less noticeable.
3.5 Plagiarism with hanging quotations:
Here the plagiarist begins by using a quotation but continues to quote
after closing the quotation marks.
3.6. Paraphrasing as plagiarism: Paraphrasing without reference to the original source and extensive or continuous paraphrasing, even when the source is mentioned, without the addition of material, that seriously interacts with the paraphrased passages or add significant new information, is plagiarism. This type of plagiarism is more difficult to prove. Nevertheless, it is plagiarism. Legitimate paraphrasing takes place only where the source is acknowledged and where the paraphrasing is limited to material that is then discussed, explained, and argued about.
Background
ulfilling my civic duties
UPDATE: The UK edition (which sold the bulk of the English language copies since the book flopped in the U.S.) does not have a citation section, making the defense that he cited me "30+ times" a complete misrepresentation. Some of my readers also showed evidence that he also plagiarizes my lectures! (See his YouTube lectures)
Withdrawal of endorsements/testimonials and apologies to my readers: I owe my readers an apology for endorsing a man based on limited information. I have known Dobelli for a while and never read him as his work was in German. I thought he was a novelist. From conversations with him, I was under the impression that he was writing a book on cognitive biases from a novelist's point of view... I trusted what he said I gave him an endorsement thinking he would do a good job as a novelist (I was careful to endorse the person, not the book). I also introduced him to my agent and pushed for his book to be published.
But I was completely shocked when, after I got a copy of the book at his New York book party, I opened the English version of the book. I was never told that he was going to include my own ideas (i.e. "summarize"). I saw passages from my work transcribed, examples rapidly copied, with small modifications, chapters that are entirely from my books without added material... where is the novelist? Worse: I also saw the use of citations to obfuscate rather than show origin (and of course the bulk of the English language books sold had NO citations). Sadly, it took a decade to discover the nature of a man whose works I had never read.
But it is not the plagiarism that upset me: the breach of trust. For I googled "via
negativa" and saw he rewrote sections of my manuscript in Zeit without
attribution (and added it as a chapter in the end). The manuscript I
entrusted him with, that fuck!
And Dobelli keeps posting sections on his Facebook Page that were
lifted from my book (as if they were his own). Even the idea of 99
chapters corresponded to my project to publish "99 (convex)
heuristics". So I withdraw
all comments made about him, his work, and, of course, his ethics. And I resign
from Zurich Minds, Berlin Minds, and all other think tanks Dobelli asked me to
join.
It took several months before reaching the conclusion that it was imperiative to out him, as the Dobelli fellow did not exist as an author in the U.S., where outing him could bring publicity, only in German and in the self-help sections in the U.K. I was reminded by my friends: "If you see fraud and do not shout fraud, you are a fraud".
Other authors. It appears that there are 5 unreferenced passages from Chabris and Simons's The Invisible Gorilla and some passages from Kathryn Schulz.
NOTE THAT THIS DISCUSSION IS NOT ABOUT WHETHER IT IS A VIOLATION OF (SWISS, MONGOLIAN OR SERBIAN) COPYRIGHT LAWS BUT RATHER IF IT IS PLAGIARIZING SOMEONE ELSE'S WORK WHILE MAKING SOME OF IT PASS FOR ONE'S OWN, A SERIOUS ETHICAL/INTELLECTUAL VIOLATION IN INTELLECTUAL LIFE (JOURNALISM AND ACADEMIA) AS PERCEIVED IN THE STATE OF NEW YORK .