Retraction: Alleged Plagiarism

On Monday afternoon, the editor of this blog posted an excerpt of an article authored by one Dr. Gary Busch, entitled “The Misperception of the Russian-Ukrainian Gas Problem.”  We have since been notified by John Evans of European Tribune that the article may in fact be a collection of cut-and-paste instances of plagiarism without attribution.  I have reviewed the article, and found it significantly lacking in many respects, as well as factually incorrect in many instances.  I regret that this blog has presented material of such inferior quality, and I hope readers will take a moment to consider Mr. Evan’s comment outlining the original sources. If Dr. Busch would like to retort, I’d be happy to post any comments.

Dear Mr Amsterdam,

I think you should be aware that the “editorial” by Dr Gary K Busch that you quote here contains unattributed material copy-pasted from other sources.

Several passages of technical information are taken, with neitherattribution nor link, from the US DOE’s Energy InformationAdministration’s Ukraine NatGas page at http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/cabs/Ukraine/NaturalGas.html.

They are interwoven with passages lifted from an article first posted by Jérôme Guillet, editor of the European Tribune on Jan 3rd 2009, under the title Ukraine-Russia: some background and context. This article was also posted by Jérôme Guillet on The Oil Drum, of which he is also an editor, and on other sites including DailyKos. A shorter version, which I co-authored with Dr Guillet, was published as an op-ed by the Financial Times on January 6th.

Dr Busch’s article cited above draws a considerable part of itsargument from Dr Guillet’s, as well as substantial textual copiesmasked by minor word-changes. There is no attribution and it is notmade clear that these passages are quotes from another work. Indeed, DrBusch publishes under his own byline alone, leaving it to be supposedthat this is entirely his own work.

Which is sadly not the case.

John Evans
Editor, the European Tribune