Another plagiarist outed: Raytheon chief William Swanson says its "beyond dispute" that there are similarities between his "Unwritten Rules Of Management" and the obscure 1944 book "The Unwritten Laws of Engineering." Swanson says he never claimed to be the author of these truisms. And of course he's giving the booklet away for free. Swanson says he's not sure if he ever read the original book and insists he just wrote down these mantras as he came across them over the decades. The problem? His wording is virutally identical on rule after rule (USA Today reprints 11 of the 33 side by side) AND he even presents them in the same order. The possibility that Swanson heard business slogans over the decades and happened to include the same rules in the same order in the same wording as a 1944 book is patently absurd. He's lying.
Meanwhile, our Harvard student who got a $500,000 advance for two books and sold her first one to Hollywood gladly insists she read the author she ripped off and loved her and is really, really surprised about how she "internalized" some of the dialogue. That's some internalization: the number of passages that are remarkably similar is 40 and counting. Oh and the Harvard student points out how their books are very different. Yep, very different except for the fact that they're both about girls from New Jersey who want to get into an Ivy league school, visit the campus and then enjoy a rousing finale where they deliver a smashing speech at graduation.
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