At Least They Were Smart Enough to Change the Name of the State

posted by Zach Patton

State mental health care can be bad enough as it is. You don't need your state's mental health commission filing a report that, well, belongs to another state.

But that's just what's happened in Georgia:

A "new vision" outlined for mental health care in Georgia last week isn't so new after all.

Large sections of a report by Gov. Sonny Perdue's mental health commission were lifted, often verbatim, from a Michigan study published in 2004 and from two other sources, a review by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution found. The commission's report, released last week by the governor's office, credits none of the cloned material.

The report presents as its own work entire sentences, paragraphs and longer passages from other sources, with no more than superficial editing. It duplicates, with only two minor changes in wording, the "values" listed in the Michigan study. Seven of Georgia's eight "key findings" mirror Michigan's. Even Georgia's vision statement is appropriated from the Michigan report.

The report -- which is almost completely plagiarized -- gets even sloppier at one point:

The Georgia document repeats language from Michigan saying the commission had provided "a detailed overview" of the mental health system "in Appendix E of this report." But unlike Michigan's, Georgia's report contains no Appendix E.

Wow.  That's some freshman-year cheating right there.

Comments

[Lurker]

As a (long ago) former freshman, I'm insulted by your insinuation that freshmen would attempt such a plagiarism without brushing their tracks a little better. Everyone knows (or once knew) the first step of plagiarizing was to rephrase everything.

[oliviaharis]

In Georgia, medical underwriting is allowed without restriction. Medical underwriting is the process of selecting risks for insurance in respect of a plan and classifying members according to their degrees of insurability so that the appropriate premium may be charged and the terms offered may be reviewed. There is a 24 month exclusionary period limit for preexisting conditions.
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oliviaharis
Hawaii Drug Treatment