[INDOLOGY] Malhotra's motives

[Richard Mahoney]

On 19/07/15 19:53, Al Collins wrote:

> I still question whether Rajiv Malhotra intentionally plagiarized, 
> even in view of the citations presented on this list and RISA. ...

[snip]

> ... Part of what happened could be what psychoanalysts have called 
> "cryptomnesia," or forgetting that one has read something elsewhere, 
> then remembering the content without the detail that it was found in 
> another’s work.  That is a phenomenon so common that probably 
> everyone will remember doing it (though the eventual recognition is 
> inevitably less frequent than instances never recalled).  The 
> apparently flagrant 77 word unattributed quotation could be what 
> Malhotra “remembered” (wrongly) to have been his paraphrase of a 
> section of Nicholson’s book. He could simply have forgotten that he 
> wrote down verbatim what he found in the other man’s book, and later 
> thought the note he had typed was his own restatement of the idea. He
> might even have “remembered” thinking it himself! Either case would
> be akin to the “false memory syndrome” studied by Elizabeth Loftus
> and others which shows memory to be constantly reconstructed under
> the influence of personal motives. This is well established to be a
> universal phenomenon to which we are all prey, although careful 
> research procedures can minimize it.

And who knows, RM may simply have read his sources so closely and
intently that he came to make them his own. If only such could be the
lot of all good Anglicans:

``... to be written for our learning. Grant that we may in such wise
hear them, read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest them, that by patience
...''

So perhaps N. &c. could to some degree feel flattered?  :)


Best, R


-- 
Richard Mahoney

Littledene  Bay Road  Oxford  NZ
M: +64-21-064-0216  T: +64-3-312-1699
r.mahoney at indica-et-buddhica.org

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