Rambling Thoughts for a Sunday

Seth Mnookin has written The Panic Virus, a study of broad public acceptance of a vaccine-autism link.

Here is the Amazon page for the book.
I've written on this and related subjects before in this blog, the first time almost four years ago now, when I was as I said at the time only vaguely aware that there was a controversy underway.

When I first heard about this, though, my thoughts focused on the name "Seth Mnookin." Who the heck is he? It took some wracking of the brain but I eventually realized where I had first encountered that name. He wrote a (fascinating) account of the Jayson Blair scandal back in 2004. Here's a review of that book, by Michael Getler.

Getler called Mnookin's book "a must-read for anyone interested in this episode and what it says about the larger issues of journalism today."

Going back a bit further, Mnookin is a former heroin addict. Not long after the Jayson Blair book had made Mnookin famous he recounted his experiences along that line in SLATE.

He tells in that article for example about the time he was thrown out of the "hard-core treatment center in Boca Raton" for having sex with one of the other patients there (that's a no-no? even though she was 18?) and tells of being "given two black Hefty bags filled with my clothes and told I had 10 minutes to get off that property." Fortunately, things headed up for him from there.

So, what does Slate have to say about Mnookin's latest? You can find out here.

Even before all of that, Mnookin was a writer for Addicted to Noise, an online music magazine. You can read about A to N here.

I was planning to bring all this back to the issue of an alleged vaccine/autism link. Really I was. But now I'm thinkiing ... to heck with that. Enjoy your Sunday, everyone.

Plagiarism and Politics in Germany

Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg, the defense minister of the Federal Republic of Germany, is caught up in a plagiarism scandal involving his doctoral thesis.

So serious an affair has it become that he has abandoned the use of the term "Dr" in front of his name. As Spiegal Online puts it (see the link above) he has dropped "doctor" in an effort to save "minister."

It appears to have been a law professor at the University of Bremen who kicked off this fuss , on Saturday, February 12, although the dissertation in question had been published back in 2009, and it had been submitted to the University of Bayreuth three years before that. The law professor, Andreas Fischer-Lescano, set out to write a review of it on Feb. 12, a Saturday, and he started plugging passages into google. Apparently, this is for him a routine practice.

Personally, this whole situation makes me wonder: what do they call the sports teams at the University of Bayreuth? Do they play up the Wagner connection? Are the teams the "Bayreuth Composers" or the "U of B Twilighters" or ... what?

Anyway: the thesis in question is titled "Constitution and Constitutional Treaty: Constitutional Developments in the USA and EU."

So Guttenberg has an interest in the comparative study of political developments. I wonder if there is some intra-EU comparative significance in this: Italian politics has come to turn on issues of statutory rape; the UK and Sweden are enmeshed in a dispute over the extradition of the Wikileaker on charges of a sexual offense that seems unique to Swedish law; and German politics erupts over something as staid as a plagiarism charge.

I do think plagiarism is important, as my repeated discussions of related points on this blog no doubt makes clear. But as a cabinet-determining issue? it seems both bizaare and very German.

Hardball Negotiating

Prank phone-calling aside: the unions engaged in this high-profile confrontation with Governor Walker have agreed to the financial concessions involved. According to their offer now on the table, if I understand it, the union members will begin contributing 5.8% of their salaries toward their pensions (versus what the WSJ imprecisely calls "little or nothing" until now).

Also, members will begin paying a minimum of 12.6% of the health care premiums, up from the current average of 6%. Note that wording carefully, for the increase is greater than the numbers alone make it seem -- that is a current "average" on the one hand matched against a minimum on the other.

If Governor Walker's hardball politics, his existential threat to the unions themselves, has been necessary to get that concession, then it has served its purpose. If so, maybe he should withdraw the existential threat and lock in the concession. Then he may go down in the history as the Governor who ensured the solvency of that pension and health-care system.

As this intelligent commentary explains, the bill of which this is a part would "restructure the state's pension model to a more sustainable system."

Fromn that POV, this isn't all that new a development. Its old-fashioned hardball negotiating. Demand ten of something if you want 5. The demand for ten makes sense not on its face but because if you had only demanded 5, the other side would have thought you only really wanted 2.5.

If Walker backs off from his ten and accepts his 5 graciously in the next few days: good for him.

Here's a link to an intriguing book on labor negotiations as dramatic performances.

Thirty Years Ago This Week

My American Express sponsored appointment book reminds me that on this week in 1980 the top pop song was "9 to 5" by Dolly Parton.

I'm reminded thereby of an appearance on the Today Show that Dolly Parton made not too long after that sing hit its peak.

Jane Pauley (remember her?) did the interview. Pauley and her guest discussed, mostly, Dollywood, the singer's Tennessee theme park. Pauley asked, among other scintillating questions: "Do people know who you are in that park or do you try to mingle incognito?"

It is not important, best beloved, how Miss Dolly answered that question. What is important -- or at any rate amusing -- is that later in the show, Bryant Gumbel picked up on that.

Gumbel: Jane, you know that you're my partner and I would never second-guess your interviewing, but....

Pauley: But what?

Gumbel: But how, even if she wanted to, would Dolly Parton walk about incognito?

In those innocent days (okay, not so innocent, but silicone or saline insertions weren't at all as common then as they have become) Miss Dolly's profile was very rare.

What struck me was that Pauley acted as if she had never thought of that point. A light dawned in her eyes, and she and Gumbel shared a laugh.

Ah ... memories. And that word has a near-homophone that comes to mind.

Airgas/Air Products

Back when I was writing another blog, "Proxy Partisans," I chronicled among other continuing stories of corporate skullduggery the relationship between two Pennsylvania-based suppliers of industrial gas: Air Products (APD), of Allentown, and Airgas (ARG) of Radnor.

I suspended work on "Proxy Partisans" in October, but now it is necessary to continue that particular storyline here, because this rivalry has produced what may be a very important decision by the Delaware Chancery Court. Indeed, Deal Journal is calling it "one of the most significant legal decisions in a generation."

From the introductory portion of the decision: "This now very public saga began quietly in mid-October 2009 when John McGlad, President and CEO of Air Products, privately approached Peter McCausalnd, founder and CEO of Airgas, about a potential acquisition or combination. After McGlade's private advances were rebuffed, Air Products went hostile in February 2010, launching a public tender offer for all outstanding Airgas shares."

The offer was extended, and the price bumped up, throughout the subsequent year, so that at the time of the Chancery Court's decision the offer stood at $70 a share. It was fully financed and all cash.

The decision lays some stress on the all cash nature of the offer. Why? Presumably because an all-cash offer is less suspect in some sense than a share-swap, so that if the poison pill is not subject to judicial review even when its an all-cash offer, readers can infer that it will be likewise immune from such review when a stock swap is involved.

Another noteworthy fact: the court seems to sympathize with Air Products on policy grounds, but it says it is "constrained by Delaware Supreme Court precedents." So even in the absence of questions about financing or valuation, a board's judgment that the price offered is simply too low, and its concern that its shareholders will foolishly disagree with that, is reason enough to allow the poison pill effectively blocking the acquisition.

The inventor of the poison-pill-based takeover defense, Martin Lipton, ispredictably happy.

I am not. And I think that in his elation, Lipton rather mis-states the gist of the decision, which contained its own notes of regret about what the Chancellor felt he had to do.

Aaron Burr arrested

It was on this day, February 19, in 1807, that a former vice president was arrested for treason.

He was arrested, to be specific, at Wakefield, now part of Alabama. This came about because a one-time associate of Burr, General James Wilkinson, Governor of the Louisiana Territory, betrayed him.

It remains unclear just what Burr had been up to in the period between the end of his term as VP and his arrest almost two years later. Did Wilkinson betray him with the truth, or with lies?

From what historians tell us of Wilkinson's character, it could have been either.

At any rate, the arrest led to a spectacular trial presided over by the Chief Justice, John Marshall. Burr was acquitted, though he was never a figure of political importance again -- so in that sense much of Jefferson's purpose in pressing for his arrest and trial had been accomplished.

My point? the whole incident served the young nation well. For Marshall insisted on the significance of the phrase "overt acts" in the constitutional discussion of treason. No one becomes a traitor by virtue of what he says -- there must be some conduct beyond speech -- somnbody has to pick up or load a gun, for example. Treason charges have never subsequently served, in the US, as a way of punishing or limiting dissent. That fact has less to do with the first amendment than we might imagine, and more to do with the "overt act" language in the original constitution, and with Marshall's application of it in this matter.

Just something to remember with some gratitude on this day.

Plagiarism

Without ever actually using the word "plagiarism," Michael Moynihan in last weekend's Wall Street Journal makes the case that Dominic Sandbrook engaged in a good deal of it in Sandbrook's new book, MAD AS HELL: THE CRISIS OF THE 1970s AND THE RISE OF THE POPULIST RIGHT.

Moynihan, the senior editor of libertarianism's flagship magazine, REASON, says that Sandbrook "shamelessly and repeatedly cannibalizes the work of others...." such as Mark Bowden's book about the Iran hostage crisis of 1979-1981, GUEST OF THE AYATOLLAH (2007).

Such a charge requires putting passages side by side. Sandbrook writes thus:

"At Washington's National Cathedral, bells tolled every day at noon, once for each day of their captivity, while in Lawrence, Massachusetts, churches rang their bells fifty times a day in sympathy."

Bowden had put it thus: "At the National Cathedral in Washington, bells tolled every day at noon, once for each day of the lengthening captivity. In Lawrence, Massachusetts, all of the churches around its city hall sounded their bells fifty times each day at noon to remember the American captives."

To be fair: Sandbrook did a little re-writing of Bowden. He shortened Bowden's sentences in that passage, as a copy-editor might, deleting the arguably unnecessary word "lengthening" in the first of those sentences for example. Still, the similarity is rather too great for comfort. It would have been better to use quotation marks and credit Bowden in the text even if it did mean using that adjective.

Another example? Any book about the politics of the 1970s will have to describe the bicentennial celebrations of 1976. In that context, Sandbrook writes specifically of the Boston fireworks:

"On television, pictures showed girls applauding on their boyfriends' shoulders, fathers lifting their children in the air, a South Boston priest waving an enormous American flag."

J. Anthony Lukacs had described those fireworks in his 1986 book, COMMON GROUND. Thus: "Long-haired girls perched on their boyfriends' shoulders, fathers held children aloft, a priest from South Boston waved a huge American flag."

One gets the feeling, from such examples (Moynihan provides others) that Sandbrook did just enough copy editing to avoid the p word. In that Bostonian scene, this chiefly involved changing the tense from past to present. Also, Sandbrook might say in his own defense that Bowden, Lukacs, and the other sources to which Moynihan refers were all explicitly cited in his footnotes.

The problem remains, though. The borrowing isn't of the usual scholarly sort, but goes to the choice of anecdotes, the physical details thereof, and the adjectives. In order to write a book about the 1970s, it is necessary but not sufficient to read a lot of the stuff that has been written about the seventies. One must think about the subject sufficiently to make it one's own.