Conservative hero Ben Carson hit with plagiarism scandal - Salon.com

Why is this important?

While no man is above reproach or without fault, we expect our candidates for political office to be above plagiarizing, Dr. Ben Carson is no exception. He of all people should know better,

In his 2012 book America the Beautiful, conservative activist and retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson related the story of when he was caught plagiarizing as an undergraduate psychology major. ”During my research for one of the papers in an advanced psychology course, I found some passages that seemed particularly appropriate, and I included them in my writing,” Carson explained. “I did not, however, indicate that this was the work of someone else; frankly, I had never even heard of the term plagiarism.” A professor identified the plagiarized passages, Carson wrote, and their meeting over the paper prompted an epiphany: “Even though I did not know the implications of plagiarism, I certainly should have known inherently that what I was doing was wrong. I had done it before without consequences and probably would have continued doing it if I had not been caught.”

Apparently, that experience wasn’t searing enough. On Tuesday, BuzzFeed revealed that Carson plagiarized portions of the very same book in which he wrote of his college plagiarism. Although Carson often cited the works he copied in his endnotes, he did not indicate in the text of the book when he had borrowed the words of other authors.

Conservative hero Ben Carson hit with plagiarism scandal - Salon.com