Evidence of COS Handle-ARS Project

I was wandering around my hard disk this afternoon, and I found the message that Rickie posted to ARS a few months ago, in which she found that two of the scienos here had posted the exact same message, except worded slightly differently. I'm reposting it here.

The interesting part about this is the way that some sections of the message that they posted were exactly the same word for word, while other sections were worded slightly differently, showing that they were both copying from the same source, presumably written by a third person.

Stark [the following is Rickie's message]

Subject: Re: Scientology's history of harassing writers of books

Miz Rickie, spinster teacher of English Literature 101, speaks to the class:

When I read these papers from Mr. milne@delphi.com, I had an eerie feeling of deja vu. Echo of past life experience, I wondered? Nothing quite so exotic, it turned out... at least not when I peeked back at a post Mr. Holzinger (leeh@rain.org) had made six days earlier.

Let's do a little comparitive literary criticism, shall we, class?

From: milne@delphi.com Subject: Date: Fri, 24 Feb 95 04:01:05 -0500

Russell Miller's Bare Faced Messiah was based on interviews with a handful of disaffected ex-members of the Church of Scientology. ...Miller got even the most basic facts wrong.

From: leeh@rain.org () Subject: Re: Church sues infringer Date: 19 Feb 1995 08:37:48 GMT

Pope Charles posted a mention of Russell Miller's so-called "biography" about L. Ron Hubbard. The book got even the most basic facts about Hubbard wrong and was a flop. If you blinked, you missed it.

milne@delphi.com:

He strongly implied that Snake Thompson, who first introduced L. Ron Hubbard to Freud's theories, never existed. Yet, rudimentary research by Miller would have turned up several published documents showing that Thompson was a United States Naval Officer who had studied and was known by Freud.

leeh@rain.org

Miller strongly implied that Snake Thompson, who first introduced L. Ron Hubbard to Freud's theories, never existed. Yet, rudimentary research by Miller would have turned up several published documents showing that Thompson was a United States Naval Officer who had studied and was known by Freud.

milne@delphi.com

Miller also failed to uncover a 1929 Montana newspaper story which described Mr. Hubbard's travels in China and his receipt of an Eagle Scout award at age 12 -- things Miller denied ever happened in his book.

leeh@rain.org

Miller also failed to uncover as accessible an article as a 1929 Montana newspaper story which described Mr. Hubbard's travels in China and his receipt of an Eagle Scout award at age 12 -- things Miller denied ever happened in his book.

[note, class, that the miniscule gramatical error of putting a double space after the '.' in "Mr." is duplicated in both excerpts.]

I am very disappointed in you, Messrs. Holzinger and Milne. You should both keep your eyes on your own work. Plagarism is punishable by a grade of zero on both your papers and/or suspension! However, for this time, I will merely give you both an F, and suggest strongly that you both learn to post your own thoughts.

Miz Rickie, English Literature 101 (And by the way, it wasn't very good when I graded it last semester, either.)