How I Caused That Story Doris Goodwin Analysis

Proper citation and attribution is the main subject in “How I Caused That Story” written by historian and writer Doris Goodwin. This way of referencing is an important theme that is shared throughout all fields that use written word as a medium. A common thought is that with the introduction of computers it has become easier to manage and organize data, which helps to reduce and eliminate mistakes that can lead to misrepresentation and failure to credit sources.
This commentary by Goodwin spoke of creating and managing hand-written notes and personal writings on hundreds of books, letters, and other written media that provided detail and information for her published book. Furthermore, Goodwin connected all this information in a period of over 10 years which included much cross referencing between her hand-written notes and the finished work. However, there were still missing quotations after the publication was found to have had verbatim phrases taken from Lynne McTaggart’s book. While immediately addressing the mistake,
Goodwin’s exemption of proper quotation had become a topic through the news outlet the Weekly Standard. Goodwin then ends with a brief description of her current day usage of computer media to better organize and manage her writing, notes, and sources in direct contrast to handwritten method she had been using earlier in her life.
The plagiarism spoken of in Goodwin’s work, while serious, is not one of the blatant acts of theft one could see in the academic world.
Ben R. Martin explains, “a succession of scandals over the last decade or so has challenged our assumptions about the efficacy of self-policing in these communities” (Martin, 2013, p. 1005). This shows the growing problem or at least awareness of plagiarism in the world and the importance of taking Goodwin’s mistake seriously. However, technology has indeed made it easier to detect these acts of theft or even prevent the mistake of releasing a writing with unquoted words. Throughout the work of Gipp, Meuschke, and Breitinger in the journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology they speak of various methods of electronic plagiarism detection (Gipp, Meuschke, & Breitinger, 2014). New methods such as citation-based plagiarism detection and new oversight tools are constantly being
developed.
Goodwin’s book could easily be said to be the product of her career as a writer and historian. However, it could have easily have been an even bigger upset if there had been more uncited phrases or ideas. Although the new technology we have at hand has made it easier to detect plagiarism in our own works and in the works of others, little was said for how technology could have also made it easier to commit plagiarism.