Authorities in California have launched a plagiarism investigation against author Jean McCorquodale after it was found that nearly one-fifth of the manuscript of a “high-priced government history book” was allegedly copied from Wikipedia and other online sources.
Ms McCorquodale, the wife of former senator Dan McCorquodale, was granted a $2.45m (£1.96m) contract over a 10-year period to write grant applications and a government history book on Santa Clara County.
She was reportedly awarded no-bid contracts after the executive’s office claimed she possessed “unique” credentials that made her a “distinctly valuable resource”.
The 580-page manuscript was submitted in January after falling two years behind schedule. In the draft, Ms McCorquodale allegedly lifted verbatim paragraphs from Wikipedia, the History Channel, the Washington Post and other county webpages with nearly half of them without footnotes, The Mercury News reported.
Jeff Smith, the Santa Clara County executive, expressed shock and said he was “very concerned”.
Mr Smith said he is putting the project, which is being overseen by the county executive’s office, “on hold”, and would hire a third-party investigator to review the manuscript. “It is troublesome,” he added.
Ms McCorquodale responded to the allegations by saying that the manuscript was a draft and she didn’t intend for the paragraphs in question to translate into her final work.
“The paragraphs you cited were highlighted in my working copy, and all have long been removed or substantially rewritten, drawing from numerous sources and incorporated in the final bibliography. The paragraphs you refer to and others were utilised as placeholders and were never intended to be included in the final copy,” Ms McCorquodale told the California daily.
However, Mr Smith said he hasn’t received any revisions to the manuscript.
“The copy that you have is the only copy I have,” he said.
