First, let me extend a very warm welcome to the many new Filipino readers that have discovered this blog in the past 24 hours. My husband is from Australia, so I do get down to that part of the world on occasion and I hope to visit your beautiful country at some point in the future.
It is great to have you here, although the circumstances of our meeting are, to say the least, unusual.
It seems one of your esteemed Senators, Tito Sotto, plagiarized a blog post I wrote on February 23, 2011 entitled How The Pill Can Harm Your Future Child’s Health, lifting entire sections of the article basically word for word that was delivered in a speech to the Senate Floor regarding the possible passage of the highly controversial Reproductive Health Bill.
What’s worse, Senator Sotto is denying the charge of plagiarism, saying in an interview with ABS-CBN:
“Why would I quote the blogger? I was quoting Natasha McBride.”
Nice touch Senator. You almost had me convinced you were a nice guy with the tears and all.
Many of your citizens have emailed me assuring me that was a put on, and I’m starting to think they are right.
A thief is a thief, Mr. Senator. Denying it doesn’t get you off the hook; it just makes you a lying thief.
On the bright side, I am thrilled that your lapse of moral judgment has brought much-needed attention to the fact that the birth control pill can have devastating consequences to a woman’s long term health and possibly those of her children and even grandchildren. Gut dysbiosis is a serious condition that has multi-generational consequences that women need to be educated about and completely aware of before making the very personal decision to use them.
It was indeed brave of you to take this controversial position. Kudos to you for that.
By the way, I am truly sorry for the loss of your son.
As the mother of two sons myself, I can only imagine the pain and devastation you have felt from such an experience.
While this has been a highly charged and hopefully enlightening experience for all involved, it’s time now to set the drama aside and get back to fighting the good fight by continuing to educate people about how their food and pharma choices affect not only themselves but also those they dearly love.
And although my attorney will likely try to persuade me otherwise, for now I’m moving on as I’ve got work to do.
Women of the Philippines: I am terribly sorry my blog was used and twisted against you. You deserve the choice to use The Pill if you want or need to based on your particular circumstances. While I want you to know that this choice has health consequences as does the decision to use any pharmaceutical drug, I in no way would ever condone taking this choice away from you! Mabuhay!
Do I need to say more? everything I supposed to say is here, but the bottom line is some comments get out of control and getting emotional than factual, let us not get out of the focus on the real issue which is plagiarism, what’s wrong with the senator is that he focus too much on emotions and pills, RH bills is not all about pills but an options, they are are also pushing for education and natural methods, and he should take accountability for his staff’s comedy of errors.
Sotto is a disgrace to Filipinos. Unfortunately, Sotto, like most politicians in the Philippines, represents and, indeed, panders to the supermajority of the population of the Philippines–the common man who is far more concerned about food in his belly than the finer points of intellectual honesty. Sotto will not apologize for his intellectual transgression because the issue is way beyond the radar screen of his constituents. He will continue, like many of his kind, to wield undeserved power with impunity. I thank you personally for being instrumental in highlighting political scums like Sotto, who is properly characterized in an article I recently read entitled “Sotto the Pimp” with the following link: grpshorts.blogspot.com/2012/08/sotto-pimp.html Enjoy!
After reading about the serious health consequences from contraceptive use, I can only think that as the result of honestly informed choice, only those who are in high risk of being raped will still use them instead of Natural Family Planning, which is free and has no bad effects on your health. I honestly have more faith in independent researchers than in big organisations like the WHO who may be manipulated by groups having particular ideological or financial interest. On use of the Pill in their fact sheet, they say: “Reduces risk of endometrial and ovarian cancer; should not be taken while breastfeeding”. Where are all the risks which Sarah reports in her blog? There’s traditionally a lot of misinformation from the Pro-RH Bill side. What they never say is that in countries with decades of globalised contraceptive use and sex education, more than 50% of abortions happen with those who were using contraceptives! Those countries also experience new problems related to decreasing population, unbalance between working people and elderly, which has to be compensated through immigration. Through the increased promiscuity there’s also a massive rise in spread of STD’s which is only partially countered by condom use, because consistent and correct condom use for everybody will only ever exist in theory. How many men are always going to withdraw right away from the body of their partner after ejaculating? How many will always use condoms for oral sex? Contraceptives, combined with a culture of pornography, superficial morals in popular music and movies, provide a deadly environment for people to grow up in.
‘Iskul Bukol’ in the Senate
(Editorial, Philippine Daily Inquirer, 2:06 am | Monday, August 20th, 2012)
The circumstances surrounding the acts of plagiarism committed by Sen. Vicente Sotto III, in the first two installments of his controversial “turno en contra” speech at the Senate last week, are so comical, so ridiculous, they invite disbelief. Did Sotto, the majority leader, really tell ANC’s Karen Davila that he was not obliged to attribute the passage he and his staff lifted almost word for word, comma for misplaced comma, from American blogger Sarah Pope because “blogger lang ’yon [she’s only a blogger]”?
Did his chief of staff, lawyer Hector Villacorta, really leave an extended comment in Pope’s blog that became an instant classic of offensive stupidity phrased in legal gobbledygook? “We are both indebted to the book’s author [Natasha Campbell-McBride] but if you wish that you also be credited with the contents of the book, let this be your affirmation. I can do it and by this message, I am doing it.”
Did Villacorta really tell GMA News, after news broke that the second part of Sotto’s speech also had at least three instances of outright plagiarism, as pointed out by the likes of prizewinning novelist Miguel Syjuco, that one can appropriate anything from the Internet? “Yes, the Internet is a free range of ideas for the world to see. It’s in the free atmosphere.”
And did Sotto really say to the Star (as quoted in the helpful timeline prepared by Filipino Freethinkers, whose blogger Alfredo Melgar was the first to find the passages lifted from Pope) that “Plagiarism, whether you give attribution or not, applies only if you contend that the contents are yours”?
It is tempting to respond to this series of intellectually dishonest rationalizations, this dumbfounding serial comedy, by simply laughing at the ridiculousness of it all. At a fraught moment in a once-in-a-generation legislative debate, one of the key players in the Senate turns out to follow the academic standards of the infamous Wanbol University–you know, that fictional school in “Iskul Bukol” where one of the most popular characters Sotto created, back when he was still doing full-time comedy, held court as king of school hijinks.
This makes us realize that there may be no better way to put Sotto’s acts of plagiarism and his and his staff’s tortured defense in perspective than to quote that satirical blogger, The Professional Heckler. Out of many laugh-out-loud passages, we choose this: “Yet latest online reports reveal Tito Sotto plagiarized the work of not just one BUT four bloggers to be exact… prompting actress Cherie Gil to quip, ‘You’re nothing but a second-rate trying hard copy-paste!’”
To be sure, Sotto is not the only high-profile personality wrestling with issues of intellectual fraud, which is the bottom line of any act of plagiarism. The influential Time writer and CNN host Fareed Zakaria was recently suspended for a month by both news organizations for lifting one passage from the work of Harvard professor and New Yorker writer Jill Lepore. Unlike Sotto, however, Zakaria readily admitted to the mistake. And according to both Time and CNN, they found no other instance of plagiarism in Zakaria’s work.
Sotto, however, remains a piece of work. He is reported to be preparing a privilege speech this week to defend himself against the charges of plagiarism by claiming that what political operatives call a demolition job has been ordered against him. If only he didn’t provide his detractors with the sticks of dynamite himself. As The Professional Heckler’s own tagline reminds us: “The problem with political jokes is they get elected.”
But, important as the issue of plagiarism is, the deeper issue in the Philippines is the fate of the long-awaited Reproductive Health bill. It is here where the real import of Sotto’s cut-and-paste approach to his speeches can be seen. He is ready to use everything–the work of bloggers he does not deign to acknowledge, dubious or at least ambiguous research, the sloppy legal justifications of his staff, even emotional blackmail–to stop the bill from becoming law. That is the real joke, but nobody’s laughing.
Related to Sotto’s plagiarism. MVP, Sotto, and plagiarism: http://www.rappler.com/nation/10738-mvp,-sotto,-and-plagiarism
This issue brings me to here sarah’s blog and the rest of filipino blogger or not. Im am filipino from cebu, and a blogger. Everythings has been said here and I just wanna say they love your work because they copy it! 🙂
David, yes this is not scientific work, beacuse scientific works, requires PATENT.. the reaction are extreme? yes it is.. because this guy represents, FILIPINO people and i’m being one of that.. and stupid thing that his staff said, “is using bible if you quote them”, I went on an outrage when his stupid staff said this one..
scientific works requires PATENT?
*facepalm* Now I’ve heard it all
I think your reaction is extreme. This is not your scientific work, but it’s referring to someone else’s work. It’s not because someone copies your way of saying it,that it’s theft and that it should be attributed to you. You are simply angry because it was used to make a stand against RH Bill. While it would have been polite to mention that it was taken from your blog, your reaction overall is extreme in comparison. If I would be making a blog about a scientific work and would rephrase what i would have read from an author, why would I be so important about this? I would just be like a messenger, a journalist, referring to something I find interesting. It’s the original source which matters.
For increased internet traffic to her blog. Look at how many comments her other articles have compared to this one. There’s a reason why she hasn’t closed this one for comments yet, Let’s give her some slack. This is the only time her blog is ever going to get this much attention. In the next few weeks, when there’s another big thing going on in the Philippines, this site will go back to how it was before. She’s just enjoying every minute while it lasts. Now, if she starts talking about the traffic enforcer who got slapped, then we really know she’s hungry for attention.
David, it seems you have little understanding of what plagiarism is.
No, Sarah’s reaction (and the reaction of others) are, in no way, extreme.
Yes, it was theft because someone copied her way of understanding it and the way she presented the information, which is integrated with her own beliefs and perspectives. Sotto and his writers, on the other hand, did not bother to think for themselves what the original source was saying.
It is not merely polite to mention where you got your source from. It is a requirement. In schools, you can get your diploma and degree taken away from you if you plagiarize. You can be removed from office. No less than Manny V. Pangilinan resigned from the Ateneo’s Board of Directors after it was found out that parts of his speech had been plagiarized.
No, you are not just a messenger when you study about information from a particular source. You study it, express your opinions and perspectives on it and add also your findings. No one has the right to parrot it and pass it off as their own.
Or, you can try this. Try plagiarizing someone else’s work and make sure to do it where and when it matters – let’s say in a school presentation, a research paper or a company report or fact-finding project. Then, when they go after you for it, give them this lame excuse and see if you don’t become an instant laughingstock, derided and chided by co-workers or students alike. No one will trust you with their ideas anymore because, should you do this, everyone will know you are either a brazen thief or just too thick-headed to understand what you did wrong.
He did say that the ‘things I’ve been telling you are the product of our research from other sources. It’s only plagiarism when you call things your own when they are not. He didn’t do that. What did Sarah add to the work of Dr. Natasha Campbell as valuable data? If Sen. Sotto would have phrased in other words the exact same meaning, would it have been just fine? While I think it’s better that Sen. Sotto would have used his own words to refer to the work of Dr. Campbell, I get the impression this case is now being used as a stick to beat on him, simply because he’s anti-RH Bill.
No, David.
Yes, Sotto did call Sarah’s work her own by not telling the Senate where it was from. That is lying by omission. Honestly, do you really read? Do you know what you are talking about? Did your school drill into you the ethics of researching? Di ba in school we are taught not to copy? And sometimes those are only formulaic knowledge or memory work. How much more complex ideas.
I already gave you the case of Manny V. Pangilinan and it seems you have not even read it. At least he had delicadeza. I promise you, not one University here or workplace who holds high standards for excellence and ethics will accept this poor excuse for a reasoning you’ve got. Just ask those who’ve had their Phd’s removed.
You want something more international? I hope you read Times Magazine because recently they suspended one of their journalists, Fareed Zakaria, for the same thing. He copied statistics and also the way they were presented from a writer of another publication. You could say, well, it was mostly just numbers, blah blah blah. But no, these people understood what honesty and integrity was. Mr. Zakaria was even a Yale and a Harvard graduate. But you know, he had the balls to say that he was sorry for his mistake and it made him realize certain things. Let that be a demonstration to you of how even educated and rich people can graciously accept their mistakes, unlike Sotto who isn’t man enough to admit that he was wrong.
What do you mean add anything of value? When you do research you study ideas, see if they are viable enough to support whatever thesis you have, examine them, see their strong and weak points and then present your own ideas based on them. That’s YOU thinking, adding to people’s knowledge. Or baka naman the reason you don’t understand what Sotto did is you’ve never done research in your whole life, which is impossible because this is a staple when it comes to schooling.
And YES, if Sotto had phrased it in his own words, that would have been fine – not just paraphrase because for your information, paraphrasing is also plagiarizing if you don’t quote the source. So YES, it would’ve been fine but only if he had phrased it in his own words according to how he understood Campbell’s or Sarah’s words. That he parroted Sarah’s work simply means that he did not understand what he was talking about at all.
No, stop making this about the RH Bill. It’s you antis who keep making this about the RH. The rest of us can see clearly enough that he stole. If he doesn’t understand his own advocacy and needs to steal ideas from other people, then he needs to step down. He’s just unfortunate he got caught using someone else’s ideas to fight for a cause which that person had nothing to do with. Sarah’s blog is geared towards health and, never towards our RH Bill.
And FYI, he copied from four more bloggers. Ang sipag talaga nya no?
The main problem here is that Sotto has not shown integrity whatsoever. If he goes on like this, he’ll just be embarassing himself more.
I repeat that Sen. Sotto “made it clear in his speeches that the contents, including the references to ideas, thoughts or medical and scientific findings were not his own.” So you shouldn’t make comparisons with Fareed Zakaria or Manny V. Pangilinan. I can agree that it would have been better to use his own words and interpretation and make reference to the basic sources (not blogs who themselves refer to other sources). It’s not plagiarism in the sense that he didn’t pretend that this was his own original writing.
No David.
He copied it word for word. Just like what Manny did. Just like what Fareed did. Fareed nga even made some micro adjustments.
What Sotto did was “palusot”. It’s not “better” to have used his own words. It’s what he should have done. It’s plagiarism. And it’s established, FYI. And he also did the same to four other bloggers.
If I copied word-for-word a news article in the newspapers, say the Manila Bulletin or the Inquirer – or even just part of this article – and used it in a speech, the author and the newspaper can go after me, regardless of whether I say that the thoughts and information I am using in the speech are not my own IF I do not quote my source. Sabi ko nga sayo di ba (Didn’t I tell you), go do the same thing and see if your excuses for Sotto will be accepted or – most likely – be ridiculed?
But I guess you refuse to understand that because you CAN’T even seem to understand how Sotto’s case is the same with Manny or Fareed. Don’t even tell me that I shouldn’t compare Sotto’s case to them as if you understood what plagiarism and integrity meant because clearly – you don’t.
Either you and Sotto are of the same character and the same type of reasoning or you’re just plain too thick to get it, in which case you’re making a good demonstration of it. You probably don’t even know about the 4 other bloggers, don’t you – and one of them even an SVD priest. Go do your research. Better yet, educate yourself on plagiarism. It may just save you a career or an academic credential – or even your reputation.
Oh, by the way, last I checked, the claims of plagiarism against Sotto was already well-established; he’s being called on it internationally; the daughter of Helen’s former doctor has already spoken up on the misuse of her mother’s memory; plus, his misuse of Barbara Seaman’s ideas in her book and her political position is also now coming under scrutiny. How’s that for one big mess created by a man who didn’t even care enough to research on his advocacy and present his stance with integrity? Pfft.
Sorry, no excuse of Sotto will ever erase his reputation as a lying thief and he’s just destroyed his own credibility, especially with his colleagues – and his COS, Villacorta, is doing an even better job of burning it to the ground.
I agree with you. Sadly, here in the Philippines, senators rely on their staff to do their speeches (apparently they could not create something on their own). Even if he says that his staff is the one responsible for the plagiarism issue, the senator is equally accountable. He should’ve checked and double checked the speech he’s about to make.
Plagiarism, again, is not a big issue here in the Philippines. Hell, the senator’s lawyer made some crackpot response about making the issue a big deal and blowing things out of proportion. As a student, it makes me mad because in my university (University of the Philippines), we are taught to ALWAYS CITE OUR SOURCES. And plagiarism merits expulsion from the university (sometimes, Ph.D.’s are removed). Paraphrasing is not hard, and the citation of sources is not difficult either. BUT APPARENTLY, instead of taking the high road and APOLOGIZING PROPERLY to you, he chose to think of the plagiarism issue as a direct attack to his anti-RH Bill sentiments.
I am here to offer my support to you. I am a Filipino like Sen. Tito Sotto, but I do not agree with his flippant attitude towards his plagiarism (intentional or not) of your work. I hope that you have a good day.