Maybe it should be renamed the "Matthew Award"?

shemp

a flimsy character...perfidious and despised
shemp
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Did Darwin plagiarize his theory of evolution?

Charles Darwin is accused of stealing Theory of Evolution from rival naturalist in history's biggest science fraud

Charles Darwin is credited with transforming the understanding of natural history – but a new book claims to have found evidence that he stole his Theory of Evolution.

Written by an experienced criminologist, it argues there are overwhelming similarities between Darwin’s seminal On The Origin Of Species and an earlier work by a naturalist called Patrick Matthew.
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In 1859, having observed such creatures as the giant Galapagos tortoise, he published On The Origin Of Species, spelling out the theory of a ‘Process of Natural Selection’. However, 28 years earlier Matthew had published On Naval Timber And Arboriculture, which expounded similar findings through his theory of the ‘Natural Process of Selection’.

Dr Mike Sutton, whose book Science Fraud: Darwin’s Plagiarism Of Patrick Matthew’s Theory is published by Curtis next Saturday, said: ‘This is the biggest science fraud in history.’

He highlights similarities between key phrases and explanations and cites letters apparently showing Darwin knew Matthew’s work and covered up his debt to his rival.
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While claims that Darwin borrowed from Matthew have been aired before, the book contains new evidence, including that when Matthew confronted him, Darwin claimed no one had heard of Matthew or his theory. In fact, according to Dr Sutton, Matthew’s book had been cited and reviewed by Darwin’s friends, colleagues and even his mentors in 30 leading publications. In his own journals, Darwin admits to having read at least five publications in which Matthew’s work featured.
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On the other hand, it's in The Daily Fail.
 
And Leif Erikson discovered America.

And Steve Jobs stole the Macintosh user interface from Xerox.


Darwin made it known. I'm sure he's not the only 19th century person to have thought of the idea. He's the one who successfully did something about it and turned it from an abstract idea talked about in a few academic corridors to an idea that shook the world.

Assuming the premise of the article is more or less true, Darwin should have given Matthews some credits at some point, but regardless, Darwin will always be associated with the theory.
 
Darwin shared credit with Wallace and also cited someone from a century before, name escapes me, for first advancing the idea of natural selection. Also the record is clear that a lot of people knew what Darwin was working on and that he was reluctant to publish in order to avoid the inevitable controversy. Those people were encouraging him to publish to get the credit they thought he deserved because other people were thinking along the same lines. One wonders why they would do that if someone had already beaten him to it.
 
Do you have any idea how difficult it is going to be to get quotable responses from the authors in question?
 
I love how criminologists write books on long dead people as if they could come up with anything better than historians. "Who really killed Jesus" "was Cleopatra's death really suicide?"
 
Venom said:
I love how criminologists write books on long dead people as if they could come up with anything better than historians. "Who really killed Jesus" "was Cleopatra's death really suicide?"
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I'm also wondering where this "new evidence" came from? Guessing it's actually a rehash of existing evidence.
 
BTW according to the Wikipedia article on Patrick Matthew, when Darwin found out about Matthew's work he then credited Matthew for his early work. That's hardly surprising since Darwin rightly credited everyone he knew about who had done earlier work on natural selection.
 
RecoveringYuppy said:
BTW according to the Wikipedia article on Patrick Matthew, when Darwin found out about Matthew's work he then credited Matthew for his early work. That's hardly surprising since Darwin rightly credited everyone he knew about who had done earlier work on natural selection.
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Interesting article.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patrick_Matthew#Charles_Darwin_and_natural_selection

Sounds like this theory of Matthew's was not the main topic of his book, but a footnote or an appendix to the work. Nor apparently did he go so far as to assert that this is how all life, including human beings, has come to into its present form.

It seems that Matthew didn't fully appreciate the importance of his own idea, or how much it could explain. He only talked about it in plants, and didn't consider it important enough to merit more than a brief mention in the appendix to his book on Naval Timber.

It seems that Darwin was gracious upon learning of Matthew's work, and included an acknowledgement in subsequent editions of his book.
 
Puppycow said:
Sounds like this theory of Matthew's was not the main topic of his book, but a footnote or an appendix to the work.
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Thanks, I was about to post that myself. Note that the author of the book this thread is about is mentioned in that article, he's apparently been gnawing at this a while.

Yeah. Matthew did nothing more than mention it as an afterthought in his appendix. He didn't devote 20 years of research to actually fleshing out the idea. So, if he deserves credit, then he himself is also a plagiarist since the idea had been mentioned many decades before by the guy I mentioned a few posts up.
 
I knew it! I just knew it!
Evolution is wrong because Darwin didn't discover it himself!
(Says same fool Creationist somewhere.)
 
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