NEWS: Harvard Teen Accused of Plagiarism

CULTURE: Harvard Teen Accused of Plagiarism

Some chick from Harvard University used her brains to swindle half a million bucks from a publisher and was well on her way to swindling a movie house. Kaavya Viswanathan authored How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild, and Got a Life while attending high school. The college sophomore signed a $500,000 contract with publisher Little, Brown to publish two books, and later sold the movie rights to DreamWorks.

Then the shit hit the fan. Writer Megan McCafferty received word that passages from her own novel, Sloppy Firsts had been lifted and published in Viswanathan’s book. Apparently McCafferty’s original work not only inspired the plagiarizing writer, but also provided Viswanathan significant elements of the book. It seems Viswanathan stole ideas, storylines, end even dozens of passages to create her bestseller.

After reviewing each book, Werner Sollors, a literature professor, accused Viswanathan of making minor changes in the lifted passages “in the hope of making the result less easily googleable.”

The parallels between Viswanathan’s novel and McCafferty’s second work are equally striking. For instance, page 67 of Second Helpings reads: “...but in a truly sadomasochistic dieting gesture, they chose to buy their Diet Cokes at Cinnabon.”

And Viswanathan writes on page 46 of Opal Mehta: “In a truly masochistic gesture, they had decided to buy Diet Cokes from Mrs. Fields...”

When asked about the similarities, the alleged thief responded in true Hollywood fashion:

“No comment. I have no idea what you are talking about.”

Didn’t she learn anything at Harvard?

would she have been busted if she would have limited herself to two books instead of three? If only she would have cited McCafferty in the APA manner, it wouldn't be plagarism...

looks like M. Night Shamalamadingdong's daughter.

both creating crap.

I like that 'googleable' is a word. Seriously.

Because ... they're both of Indian descent...?

Your mom is googleable.

wow. At least I learned not to plagerize in public school.

wow. At least I learned not to plagerize in public school.

stupid firefox.

[Edited on Apr 27, 2006 2:06AM]

Wow. She actually is.

I know - I googled her last night...

your mom's naked on teh interweb. her boobies are googleable.

Let's not go that far.

A little bit more of my soul dies everytime a noun becomes a verb.

"Ever get the feeling you've been cheated?"

for the record, although that may have been her initial response, it was most likely before it became national, when the Harvard Crimson first accused her. Since Sunday, she has admitted that there are striking similarities and that she believes she internalized those books obviously a little too much.

She has also said that future editions will be edited significantly.

If you are interested in this, check out this article:

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/27/books/27pack.html?pagewanted=2&ei=5088&en=5ecea1e95ac1041d&ex=1303790400&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss

It brings up some important factors in the book publishing process to take into consideration.

"Internalized". We just called it copying in my day.



Now get off my lawn!

This doesnt excuse her from actually copying passages from another writer's work. I mean c'mon, forty instances of copying? So much for the Veritas.

Hmm.. Is she, perhaps, a law student? "Internalized.. a little too much" sounds like weasel words to me.

Makes me think of the time this girl who went to harvard wrote a book and got a large publishing contract and they found out that she 'sampled' some text and storylines from another author.

I'm not trying to excuse her. The initial posting, however, didn't paint the picture accurately.

Personally, I think she was conscious of her liftings, as everyone else here seems to think.

oh, and also, I was paraphrasing when I wrote "internatlized a little too much." She said something slong those lines, but those probably weren't her exact words.

If she had been sharp she would have called it intertextuality.

They're now saying that not only was it plagiarized, but it was ghostwritten AND plagiarized.