Harvard Site Lifted Text Without Attribution

A Harvard-run website featuring videos of lectures by Dean of the College Benedict H. Gross ’71 includes large chunks of text that appear to have been copied word-for-word from widely-accessible law review and encyclopedia articles. But neither Gross nor the other lecturer featured on the site, Higgins Professor of Mathematics Joseph D. Harris, played any role in creating the webpage, which was designed in 2001 to make the two professors’ popular Core course, Quantitative Reasoning 28: “The Magic of Numbers,” available to alumni.

The site, part of the “Harvard At Home” initiative to help far-flung graduates keep in touch with campus events, contains several lengthy passages that are lifted verbatim from other sources without any attribution. The site includes a 69-word section on Swiss mathematician Leonhard Euler that is identical to an article in the computerized encyclopedia Microsoft Encarta, as well as a 46-word passage on Euler that appears to have been copied straight from Encyclopedia Britannica. The site also published a 65-word passage that previously appeared verbatim in a 1997 law review article on cryptography.

After receiving an e-mail from The Crimson detailing the site’s failure to attribute quotations, Franklin M. Steen, the director of computer services for the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS), said Friday evening that “we’ve taken the site down and we will fix it, put the attributions on there, and get the proper permissions.” One day later, the site was still up and running, although it was taken down early Sunday.

The Crimson received an anonymous, typewritten letter Thursday alleging that Gross and Harris were responsible for the lack of attributions on the website.

“You may wish to review the enclosed that was taken from the website of Prof. Harris and Dean Gross on their book, The Magic of Numbers,” the letter said. “What may be interesting is the identical wording from other publications,” it continued.

But the letter’s allegations against Gross and Harris proved to be spurious. The copied passages do not appear in the two professors’ 2003 textbook, nor do they appear on the textbook’s official companion website, maintained by publisher Prentice Hall.

Gross, reached via e-mail in Israel, where he is traveling, wrote Saturday morning that he did not know who composed—or copied—the text on the Harvard At Home site.

“I never saw it, although Joe Harris and I consented to have them film our Magic lectures,” Gross wrote.

Harris wrote in an e-mail Friday that “I’d like to help, but I’m afraid I don’t know who set up the website, or when.”

Steen said that FAS staff members initially created the At Home websites in response to a request from the Harvard Alumni Association. “It’s not Dean Gross’ or Professor Harris’ responsibility, nor did they have anything to do with the text as far as we know,” Steen said.

In an interview Saturday evening, Steen declined to name the FAS staff member who placed the copied text on the website. “I don’t like to drag people into things before we know anything about it,” Steen said.

But Steen also said Saturday evening that he does not believe the staff member responsible for the copied text is still on Harvard’s payroll. “I think the person who did it is a person who is no longer here,” Steen said.

Steen wrote in an e-mail late Saturday night that after FAS identifies the employee responsible for the passages, “we will review all of the offending staff member’s work and all of the other units on Harvard At Home as well.”

“We have a very strict policy on copyright and attribution, and the person who wrote this text violated it,” Steen wrote in the e-mail.

Steen said that he would work with the Office of the General Counsel to determine if FAS is obligated to report the violation to the staff member’s current employer. He also said that he would have to consult with the general counsel before labeling the incident “plagiarism.”

“I’m no expert on the issue, but I don’t think it’s plagiarism per se,” Steen said in a phone conversation Saturday evening. “Plagiarism means you take credit for it. There’s no credit here taken by anybody.”

The site is copyrighted by the President and Fellows of Harvard College, but nowhere does it credit by name any of the FAS staffers who designed the webpages.

Meanwhile, Atlanta attorney Patrick J. Flinn, who co-authored a 1997 law journal article about a controversial cryptography patent, said Friday he was “flattered” to learn that Harvard had copied sentences straight from his article.

“I was a psych major in college,” said Flinn, a Stanford graduate, “and learning about the math underlying that piece of litigation was one of the most challenging tasks in my legal career.”

—Staff writer Daniel J. Hemel can be reached at hemel@fas.harvard.edu.