Thursday, November 21, 2013

I did NOT write this pseudoscience mumbo-jumbo

What would you do when find that an article you had published was unlawfully copied by another website as if you were a guest writer, and then given free permission to republish by that same site?

What do you do if not only had one of your articles has been unlawfully redistributed, but that its been altered with a paragraph you never wrote?

And what would you do if this ghost-written paragraph made you seem like a pseudo-scientific nut?

Well, if you have answers, please let me know - I need them.

In the past 3 weeks, over 1000 web hits have attributed the following paragraph to me:
“Plants have scientifically been show[n] to draw alternative sources of energy from other plants. Plants influence each other in many ways and they communicate through "nanomechanical oscillations" vibrations on the tiniest atomic or molecular scale or as close as you can get to telepathic communication. However, their sense and communication are measureable in very much the ways as are humans.”
In case its not clear, I DID NOT WRITE THIS!!

There is NO SCIENTIFIC PROOF for any of this.There is no such thing as alternative sources of energy from plants (unless you are talking about biofuels, which I doubt was the intent here); there is no such thing as plant communication through nanomechanical oscilations or telepathic communication. This is pseudoscience new-age mumbo-jumbo at its worse. And I am mortified that it was attributed to me.

3 comments:

  1. I'm not 100% sure of how this should work, but I guess that, depending on the website where the article is found and was originally published and/or altered, I'd try to contact their administrator and ask them to take it offline, explaining that you're the actual owner of the original article, that you are upset it's been taken without your permission and modified for the worse and all. If the site owner replies and agrees to take it down, then the problem may be solved. Otherwise, maybe there's some kind of legal action that can be taken, but I'm not a lawyer and I wouldn't know the details of it. What's for sure is that, since the original article is yours and you probably have proof that it's yours, written by you and published originally wherever you published it, there should be a way to prove that you are the copyright owner of the original piece and that not only they are taking it without your permission, but also modifying it and ruining it. >.<

    Best of luck with this!

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  2. Plus, it's bad writing--further proof that you did not write it. Anyone who has read your book would know that, also. Just plugged the book on my best books list, where I liken you to Feynman, no less.
    Net protocol would demand that the site be corrected, the article pulled completely. Thanks for all your work, in the lab, the classroom, and the writer's den.

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