\u201c90% of White\u2019s writings are plagiarism\u201d is a claim circulated in critical circles, but it does not stand up to academic scrutiny.<\/b> Where did it come from, and what do researchers actually say?<\/p>\nWhere this figure came from<\/h2>\n
Researcher Walter Rea, in the book White Out (1982), claimed that a large percentage of White\u2019s material came from other authors. But critics of Rea point out: he did not distinguish between different types of \u201cborrowing\u201d<\/b> \u2014 from direct copying to free paraphrase, from common phrases to specific paragraphs.<\/p>\nWhat broader research showed<\/h2>\n
More authoritative is the research of Fred Veltman and the General Conference SDA commission: the proportion of literally copied material in White\u2019s books is significantly lower than \u201c90%\u201d<\/b> \u2014 and falls within the range typical of nineteenth-century authors in general.<\/p>\nNineteenth-century standards vs. twenty-first-century standards.<\/h2>\n
The concept of \u201cplagiarism\u201d in the modern academic sense was formed in the twentieth century. In the nineteenth century, \u201ccompilation writing\u201d<\/b> \u2014 gathering the best thoughts of various authors and reworking them \u2014 was widely practiced. Charles Dickens, Abraham Lincoln, and even theologians of that time all borrowed extensively. To judge White by modern standards is an anachronism.<\/p>\n