Category: plagiarism

sotto, guts, plagiarism #RH bill

this is to respond to sotto’s claim echoing, nay, plagiarizing blogger sarah pope’s, that using birth control pills causes “severe gut dysbiosis,” that is, kills good bacteria in the gastro-intestinal tract.

According, to Dr. Natasha Campbell-McBride MD, the use of the pill also causes severe gut dysbiosis. What is worse, drug induced gut imbalance is especially intractable and resistant to treatment either with probiotics or diet change. Gut imbalance brought on through use of the pill negatively impacts the ability to digest food and absorb nutrients. As a result, even if a woman eats spectacularly well during pregnancy, if she has been taking oral contraceptives for a period of time beforehand, it is highly likely that she and her baby are not reaping the full benefits of all this healthy food as the lack of beneficial flora in her gut preclude this from occurring. Pathogenic, opportunistic flora that take hold in the gut when the pill is used constantly produce toxic substances which are the by-products of their metabolism. These toxins leak into the woman’s bloodstream and they have the potential to cross the placenta. Therefore, gut dysbiosis exposes the fetus to toxins. Not well known is also the fact that use of the pill depletes zinc in the body. Zinc is called “the intelligence mineral” as it is intimately involved in mental development. 

i sent pope’s link to doc butch, an internist, and this is what he emailed back:

Strange. Googling, found an incredible dearth of studies linking oral contraceptives to gut dysbiosis, how long it takes to develop, how long it takes to resolve on discontinuance of pills. No comparative studies. Even searching studies on gut dysbiosis in infants and neonates; there’s no mention or an “also” mention of contraceptives as cause.

Food additives, steroids, psychological and physical stress, antibiotics are the main cause of intestinal dysbiosis, not Pills. Antibiotics are the most common culprit. Women, pregnant or non-pregnant, are often prescribed antibiotics. In a review article on pediatric inflammatory bowel diseases, pneumonia before the age of five and consequent frequent use of antibiotics is implicated in the dysbiosis. No studies I found implicated birth control pills as primary cause or significant contributory cause for the development of pediatric gut dysbiosis.

And as I’m getting frustrated searching for studies, here’s a little math that snuck up. About 10 million women in the U.S. and 100 million women worldwide use combination oral contraceptive pills. I bet many of them are long-term users. And many probably eventually get pregnant. But we don’t read about an epidemic of intestinal dysbiosis among women and infants.

Another piece of math. Of those more than 100 million women, 95 to 98% of them successfully use birth control. Less deaths and diseases among them, no abortions, no unwanted pregnancies. Also, for some of the 2 to 5% who get pregnant despite conscientious use of the pills, antibiotics are often implicated for decreased effectiveness of birth control pills. The same antibiotics that are one of the most common causes of gut dysbiosis.

well, no wonder sotto’s staff had to settle for the blog of a “healthy economist.”  wala kasing medical studies supporting such a claim, not on the internet anyway, which should have raised warning signals.  this is not to disparage sarah pope, who’s clearly an advocate of natasha mcbride’s alternative health ek-ek (kanya-kanyang agenda), and who was clearly plagiarized, despite sotto’s chief of staff hector villacorta’s claim to the contrary.

On the claim of Ms. Pope that the senator plagiarized her blog in his “turno en contra’’ speech last Wednesday to stress his objection to the RH bill, Villacorta said he called the office of the IPO which stated that there is no such crime as plagiarism of a blog.

‘’There is no such thing. Blogs are public domain and government can use any information if it is for the common good,’’ Villacorta told the Manila Bulletin after checking with the IPO.

our intellectual property office should clear this up, ASAP.  surely our laws are no different from US copyright laws?

As things stand, US copyright law prohibits reuse without explicit permission for creative works until they enter the public domain – 70 years after the death of the author or 120 years after publication date if the date of death of the author is unknown.

read,too, Copyright and Public Domain.

sotto self-destructs #RH bill

the senate should shut sotto up.  he has become a national embarrassment.  not only does he plagiarize bloggers and in the next breath disparage their work, his discourse vs. the RH bill also takes the low low ground, thanks to his incompetent staff, whose asinine research (include bad writing na rin) he takes for, and peddles as, gospel truth.  and this is the last straw: the punchline kumbaga, of his turno en contra part II:

Also in a report prepared for the Royal Commission on Population in Great Britain found that the incidence of induced abortion as a percentage of all pregnancies was nine times higher for women using contraceptives than for women not using birth control.

here is the original material from The Truth Of Contraceptives blog:

In Great Britain, in 1949, a report prepared for the Royal Commission on Population found that the incidence of induced abortion as a percentage of all pregnancies was nine times higher for women using contraceptives than for women not using birth control. [emphasis mine]

note that sotto’s press release does not enclose in quotes or attribute most of the sentence that is clearly lifted, copied, from the blog.  note, too, that “in 1949” was deleted, omitted, deliberately i would think, because it would have dated the “nine times higher” stats.  but using that data at all to convince pro-RH senators that contraceptives induce abortion was the most monstrous mistake of all.

the Pill was approved only in 1960.  what contraceptives were being used in 1949?  i googled “history of birth control” (which he or his staff should have done, too) and found this blog: MedicineNet.com.

Before the Industrial Revolution, birth control devices in America relied largely on condoms for men — fashioned from linen or from animal intestines — and on douches made for and by women from common household ingredients. Abortion-inducing herbs such as savin and pennyroyal also were used, as were pessaries — substances or devices inserted into the vagina to block or kill sperm.

The invention of rubber vulcanization in 1839 soon led to the beginnings of a U.S. contraceptive industry producing condoms (now often called “rubbers”), intrauterine devices or IUDs, douching syringes, vaginal sponges, diaphragms and cervical caps (then called “womb veils”), and “male caps” that covered only the tip of the penis. British playwright and essayist George Bernard Shaw called the rubber condom the “greatest invention of the 19th century.”

When these devices were declared illegal, the flourishing trade simply began selling them as “hygiene” products. For example, vaginal sponges were sold to protect women from “germs” instead of sperm. This led to misleading if not downright fraudulent advertising. From 1930 until 1960, the most popular female contraceptive was Lysol disinfectant — advertised as a feminine hygiene product in ads featuring testimonials from prominent European “doctors.” Later investigation by the American Medical Association showed that these experts did not exist.

so there.  hindi lang outdated ang stats, ni hindi birth control pills ang salarin.  what a howler of a screw-up, mr. sotto.  on the senate floor yet.  enough is enough, mr. senators, your time is up.  pass the RH bill, now na!

*

read, too, manuel buencamino’s Sen. Sotto busted for serial plagiarism 
and sarah pope’s On Plagiarism, the Pill, and Presumptuousness 

protecting a plagiarist

when mainstream media can and do ignore the scandalous plagiarism of a krip yuson, when he continues to write a column for the arts and culture section of philippine star, if he continues to write for rogue magazine, when he continues to shepherd aspiring writers in the dumaguete writing workshop, if he continues to teach creative writing in the ateneo, if he continues to be a presence in the palanca awards night, what does it say of our mainstream media, our academic institutions, and our literary culture?

at least in social media he has been exposed and excoriated, as he deserves to be, and gmanews online has fired him as editor-at-large.   i am sure it helped that no less than the center for media freedom and responsibility — executive director, melinda quintos de jesus; deputy director, luis teodoro; directors jose abueva, fr. joaquin bernas, fulgencio factoran, maribel ongpin, paulynn paredes-sicam, and vergel santos — jeered at yuson from its website for attempting to legitimize plagiarism.

so again i ask, what does it say of our mainstream media, our academic institutions, and our literary culture when a krip yuson is allowed to go on as if nothing happened?   as if plagiarism by a much-admired writer is forgivable.   microcosm of the macrocosm?   if danding cojuangco can get away with the coconut levy funds, if the marcoses can get away with plunder and human rights violations, if jocjoc bolante can get away with a fertilizer scam, if gma can get away with hello-garci and extrajudicial killings, if the aquinos can get away with hacienda luisita, if the supreme court can get away with partisanship and plagiarism, if the bishops can get away with lying about sex and reproduction, if angelo reyes can get away with suicide, why not krip yuson with plagiarism?

mainstream media and academics and the righteous showbiz burgis were so quick to jump on willie revillame for the janjan episode.   this renders their silence on krip yuson’s plagiarism and arrogance both deafening and shocking.   more so when one asks why kaya the silence, and the only answer seems to be that they are protecting their own kind, condoning their own sins, tell me if i’m wrong.   wonder no more what’s happening to our country.   they are all complicit in this damaged culture.

in the spirit of disclosure: krip and i were friends until we had a falling out over a personal matter many years ago.   i’ve since kept out of his way as he has kept out of mine.   so, if we were still friends, would i be saying all these in public?   given the way he has handled it, YES, and i would not have hesitated to scream at him to his face, or over the phone, for being so stupid as to think he was big enough to get away with it.   not in my book.   friend or no friend.

no, krip, this isn’t fun

it is hardly of any consequence that the usual lynch mob that marauds through social media is having such a fun time indulging in vituperation.

no one’s “having such a fun time“.   rather, it’s a sad sad sad state of affairs.

here’s a piece i solicited from a suki in my comment section, whose perspective on plagiarism i share.

FAILED INSTITUTIONS

It appears hubris has made another man mad.  Stuart Santiago is absolutely correct lumping the pang-masa Willie and the ur-conyo Krip Yuson in one post.  I am a writer myself and I pity the man for losing his grasp of reality.  Since I don’t really have one, I seldom use my name even as I flood the Interwebs with my thoughts, some of them pretty jarring if you’re one of those pedigreed types that compete yearly for best at Madison Square Garden.  Yuson, who has a name, is on the verge of losing it.  The first stage of grief is universal and we sympathize, but not to the point of selling out our future.

Perhaps it is only fitting that it was a real man who outed him. Yuson has this smell of alpha dog about him.  His first apologetic letter had the manly signature of admitting one’s mistake without really admitting it.

But let me give you my simple thoughts on the issue, based on fact and common sense.

Yuson edited the Joble piece for GMA News Online.  FACT.

Yuson wrote the Rogue magazine piece under his byline.  FACT.

Fact:  Jaemark called him out on April 6, calling his action plagiarism.

Fact:  Yuson replied, admitting he had “joined the list of perpetrators of plagiarism,” apologizing to “readers, as well as the entities involved” and predicting he “will beat my breast for a good long time, make that a long awful time.”

Now on his 2nd writeup on the matter, we have a man less contrite than he was a week prior… FUCK! Instead of being raked over coals, he says he “might just break wind” over the entire thing. Fuck!

It also appears he has taken back his former admission of committing plagiarism, calling it “alleged plagiarism,” as it seems that an “editor can lay claim to part ownership of written work, as has been argued about in the past.” FUCK!  And another FUCK:

“… in all truth, the quotation marks and initial attribution to Rey Joble and GMANews Online were dropped, intentionally by me as the marks made the chunk look so clunky. I thought I’d work the credits back in somehow, once I was about to finalize the submission for Rogue. That didn’t happen, and that’s my grievous fault.”

Now for some common sense questions:

DO you dear readers accept this excuse for leaving out proper attribution: quotation marks look so clunky?

DO you my fellow gullible indios believe for one second that a writer who had the good intention of properly attributing said passages would forget to inform his editor on his sprightly omission of quotation marks?

Please take your time. Then here are more questions:

DEAR members of the academe, do you for one second believe that an editor has a write to recycle a “chunk” of another man’s writing into his own piece without quotation marks or other but equally obvious marks that indicate the “chunk” isn’t from the byline?

DEAR Atenistas, do you for a single minute believe that Yuson, being editor, is automatically part-writer?  OK, never mind that.  Let’s say you believe he is part-writer of the Joble piece, placing a comma in the original Joble:

“He was regarded as the man responsible for the revival of the popularity of the Philippine Basketball Association.  It was under his watch when the pro league agreed to send the first-ever all-pro national men’s basketball team to the Asian Games and when the Asia’s pioneering pro league institutionalized the annual PBA All-Star Game.”

DO you all honestly think it is all right for him to recycle said piece?  Have you ever heard of the word “self-plagiarism”?  How about double-dipping?  Dove-tailing?

DEAR Rogue Editor.  Do you allow double-dipping?  Ok, let’s say you do since this is R.P.  Do you allow cross publication of a piece without crediting the first publisher?

DEAR Krip Yuson.  If indeed you intended to credit Joble for the passages, then why did you have to EDIT the piece – “The further ‘rewrites’ you cited were no attempt to paper or layer over the piece that appeared in GMAnews online, but simply efforts by me to make it read even better, or so I thought at the time.” Didn’t you already edit it on its first publication on GMA Online?  Did it sound too much like Joble?

Statement

I believe Yuson’s first crime is punishable by suspension from the institutions he is associated with.  His second and third crimes, the grave crimes of palusot, is punishable by expulsion.  Why are these latter crimes more serious?  Let me ask the faculty of Ateneo that.  Why is Yuson’s palusot a serious crime in academe?  To Philippine Star … what am I saying?   To GMA News Online … Are you seriously supporting Mr. Yuson?  Do you seriously think silence is a virtue, under any circumstances, in journalism?  To Krip’s friends…  I know you are no better than this guy, but do you honestly think he can get away with it?

To Stuart Santiago.  I hope your suggestion I write a post about it for your blog pays off.  We get satisfaction from explaining the obvious.  Such is life in this country.

BRIAN