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Conference Board Plagiarism Story Front Page News For Second Day

By Michael Geist

The Conference Board of Canada's Digital Economy report makes the front page once again as the Ottawa Citizen runs a second major story on the questions raised by its report.  Following on yesterday's front page story on plagiarism concerns, the paper today reports on the Conference Board's decision to ignore an independent report it commissioned that contradicted many of its conclusions.  As Cory Doctorow has noted, this suggests that "they went into this project knowing what conclusions they wanted to draw, and ignored everyone - even their own researchers - who had anything different to say."

In addition to the Ottawa Citizen story, there is coverage from the CBC along with a stinging article from the Vancouver Sun's Gillian Shaw titled "Will the Real Blackbeard Please Stand Up", which asks "could it be a report accusing Canada of being the pirating capital of the world used pirated material?"  Moreover, there is mounting international coverage with postings in Germany and Italy.

Despite the outrage over the issue, the Conference Board of Canada seems determined to stand its ground, ignoring the factual inaccuracies, the violation of plagiarism principles for appropriate citation, and its own commissioned research.

Full post as published by Michael Geist on May 27, 2009 (boomark / email).