revisiting The Patrologist for a post noting the too "swept under the rug" treatment of some more recent cases of academic plagiarism

I quoted from The Patrologist blog a couple of years ago on academia as an honor/shame society.  This was the statement.

http://thepatrologist.com/2015/08/20/academia-as-an-honourshame-society/

It’s blindingly obvious that Academia runs as a microcosmic honour/shame society because the one thing that ranks just below actual scholarship in scholars’ concern is prestige or honour as accorded them by their peers.

This is what drives almost all academic endeavours (beyond the actual desire to study): conference papers, journal and monograph publishing, etc..

Every act of publishing is an attempt to gain the symbolic capital of prestige among academic peers, via an act of heroism, which is the public display of scholarly prowess.

Well, here in 2017 The Patrologist had some comments about relatively recent cases of plagiarism in academia.

https://thepatrologist.com/2017/11/14/sweeping-plagiarism-under-the-rug/


In 2016 the sad news emerged that three commentaries written by Peter O’Brien, a respected New Testament scholar, had been pulled following an investigation finding them guilty of plagiarism. See Eerdmans’ post here.

Sad, because it’s clear to all who know him that Peter is indeed a formidable scholar and gracious Christian person, and this is a major academic transgression. But it was not treated as such. It was quietly ‘dealt with’. The books were pulled, a few people made some mutterings about how it was indeed possible to ‘unintentionally’ plagiarise, especially in the realm of commentary writing, and everyone ‘moved on’.

(No one who has taken notes ought to find it difficult to believe that poor note-taking practice could lead to unintentional plagiarism, but this is merely to understand the fault, not to excuse it)

As of this year it may be that any coverage that deals with Driscoll refers to, perhaps, some plagiarism controversy about alleged plagiarism but regards the allegations as only having been allegations.  That the first edition of Real Marriage isn't the same as the second edition might be evidence that something changed between editions, maybe even a few things. 

There may be a new approach these days from the Driscoll side of things, or not so new, talk about forgiveness and how even David had his sins.  Yeah, but David accepted Nathan's rebuke and accepted as legitimate that one of his children would die and that the sword would never depart from his household,  i.e. he'd have a dynastic legacy full of bloodshed and strife within itself. 

Moving on as though nothing all that important happened or that what happened is in the past may not just be the status quo for academic publishing.