NLP professor Yoav Goldberg: the obsession with verbatim "plagiarism" is idiotic
mjdramstead · x · 2026-08-22
Prominent NLP researcher Yoav Goldberg shared a nuanced thread on the Jason Arday plagiarism debate:
- He finds it endearing that the philosopher is so detached from technology that he attributes basic lookup capability to "AI", yet agrees with the larger point: the emphasis on "never use the exact same words of someone" is idiotic — some sentences are fine to copy without attribution.
- The Claudine Gay "plagiarism" case was a bunch of non-offences blown out of proportion; there were reasons to doubt her fit (e.g., a slim publication record), but plagiarism wasn't one — yet academic institutions only act on "plagiarism", real or not.
- In Arday's case the copying was real (more than sentences), though he argues lack of proper attribution wasn't the major issue.
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