March 6, 2023, 3:38pm
The Book of Animal Secrets: Nature’s Lessons for a Long and Happy Life is not supposed to publish until tomorrow, March 7th, but is already a bestseller thanks to author Dr. David Agus’s comfort in the media habitat. He has been able to promote the book on CBS News and The Howard Stern Show, and his friend with a blog, Arianna Huffington, hosted a book party for him—all this would be good news, had it not come out from the Los Angeles Times that good swaths of the book were allegedly plagiarized.
The Los Angeles Times reports that sections were copy-pasted word for word from blogs, Wikipedia entries, and journals like National Geographic, with 85 separate infractions. In a tale so tall you have to admire it:
sections of a chapter on the cardiac health of giraffes appear to have been lifted from a 2016 blog post on the website of a South African safari company titled, “The Ten Craziest Facts You Should Know About A Giraffe.”
Publisher Simon & Schuster has recalled the book, and Agus has stated that he will “rewrite the passages in question with new language, will provide proper and full attribution, and when ready will announce a new publication date.”
Humans are strange animals.
[via Los Angeles Times]