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THE MICROSCOPE • Vol 58:1, pp 21-32 (2010)

The Cheat and the Microscope:Plagiarism Over the Centuries1

Brian J. Ford*

INTRODUCTION

Much is written on plagiarism in academia, par-ticularly in connection with students who utilize ma-terial available on the Internet and submit it as theirown work. Google “plagiarism” and you will get some5,000,000 references. Amend the search to include theword “student” and you still have 50% of that total.The Internet has brought so much information so eas-ily to our desks that plagiarism has become fashion-able and, in some quarters, almost acceptable.

The April 2004 issue of the Harvard Business Reviewincluded a heading “Plagiarize with Pride” and advo-cated serious businessmen “to steal any good idea theysee.” Students — and, it seems, many academics —now regard this deliberate misappropriation of intel-lectual property (IP) as acceptable.

Yet, just as the Internet offers novel mechanismsfor plagiarism, it also brings cutting-edge facilities foridentifying it. Software such as Turnitin and Viper nowmake it easier to identify copied text. Turnitin is in-tended for teachers to help them identify plagiarists(Figure 1), while Viper is aimed at students to assistthem in rewording their assignments so that plagia-rism is less easily detected by their teachers. ProfessorHarold “Skip” Garner, executive director ofbioinformatics at Virginia Polytechnic Institute, tellsme that he has used such methods to investigate theextent of the problem. He has already unearthed 162recent scientific papers of which very similar versionshave subsequently been published by disparate au-

thors. So far 83 investigations have been set up; therehave been 46 retractions of plagiarized work.

It is not such a new phenomenon, however. Sincethe dawn of microscopy in the 17th century, ideas,drawings and IP have been repeatedly misappropri-ated. We will look at some flagrant examples from theearliest years of the discipline and culminate in per-haps the most extreme example —when authors pla-giarize themselves.

THE FIRST VICTIM

Robert Hooke was the first professional microsco-pist and was destined to become one of the first to beplagiarized. On March 25, 1663, he was solicited bythe Royal Society of London to compile a series of ob-servations with the microscope that the Societyplanned to publish. One week later, he was ordered topresent a microscopical demonstration every week.

Hooke was a brilliant innovator who complainedthat others misappropriated his ideas throughout hiscareer. Isaac Newton’s theories of light and color werestolen from his own ideas, claimed Hooke, and whatwasn’t stolen was incorrect. In 1672, he advanced aninverse square law to explain the movements of theplanets, though he did not formally publish the con-cept. When Newton subsequently claimed the idea ashis own, the relationship between the two men be-came increasingly bitter. Every reference to Hooke wasremoved from Newton’s Principia Mathematica prior toits publication in 1687, and the two men remained

1Presented at Inter/Micro 2009, Chicago*Rothay House, Mayfield Road, Eastrea, Cambridge PE7 2AY, UK

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implacable foes. After that, complaints about his workbeing plagiarized became a feature of Hooke’s life.

Hooke published his microscopical observationsin his grand book Micrographia in 1665, and he attracteda wide and diverse readership. The famous diaristSamuel Pepys wrote that he stayed up late into thenight looking at the book and its extraordinary por-trayals of fleas and lice, flies and seeds. Among thekeenest readers were others who were eager to pub-lish on the new science of microscopy. Many of themalso flagrantly plagiarized Hooke’s work.

Hooke’s magnificent studies of the human flea Pulexirritans and the louse Pediculus humanus (Figure 2) werepublished as plates in Micrographia on folded sheetsmeasuring about 32 x 53 cm. Each of the images is overa foot long, and they are eye-catching and memorable.The first edition of the book is dated 1665, and a secondappeared in 1667 after the Great Fire of London. In1681, Filippo Bonanni published his own accounts ofthese parasitic insects in his book Observationes circaViventia, quae in Rebus non Viventibus. To this day the stud-ies are cited in the reference works as “studies byBonanni” (thus, Wikipedia has the image of a flea iden-tified as “drawn by Bonanni”) but both are copied di-rectly from Hooke’s magnum opus.

Authors often divert attention from their plagia-rism of other people’s work by insisting that their pub-lished drawings were their own creation. Eleazar Albincopied Hooke’s diagrams in his Natural History of En-glish Insects (1720). The book contained 100 copper plateswhich, he insisted, were “curiously engraven from the

life.” Setting the images in juxtaposition reveals theduplicity of this claim.

Hooke’s Micrographia remained popular, and in 1745what remained of his plates (with some newly en-graved substitutes) were published in a book entitledMicrographia Restaurata. Many of them reappeared oncemore in 1771 when they were re-engraved at reducedscale and featured in George Adams’s MicrographiaIllustrata, or the Microscope Explained. Adams’s book wasessentially a sales catalogue, as the final section was aprice list of the instruments that he could provide.Adams included a large selection of previously pub-lished images in his book and in many cases he did sowithout direct attribution.

Adams was clearly a great enthusiast for the workof Louis Joblot, and part of Micrographia Illustrata in-cludes an acknowledged “translation of Mr. Joblott’sobservations on the animalcula” and is clearly identi-fied with the original author. Joblot published a curi-ous book which appeared in 1718 under the title De-scriptions et usages de plusiers Nouveaux Microscopes. He in-cluded many plates of microorganisms, and histori-ans of science take his work very seriously.

My colleague Marc J. Ratcliffe of Geneva, in his bookThe Quest for the Invisible (2009), discusses how Joblot“scrutinized” the morphology of microorganisms andwas “the leading discover of infusoria” of his time. Butthose are the views that are typical of historians, andhistorians of the microscope rarely look through one.Joblot’s published drawings are more like caricatures,and most of them lack a sense of verisimilitude. Never-theless, a number of these illustrations reappear inAdams’s volume.

Adams also reproduced the work of another mi-croscopist, Abraham Trembley (Figure 3). Says Adams(Micrographia Illustrata, page 164): “I shall lay before thereader the following observations, which were madeby Mr. Trembley.” Adams included in his book a num-ber of re-engraved copies of Trembley’s publishedwork. Thus, the magnificent study of Hydra on Plate 47of Micrographia Illustrata is clearly copied, line for line,from Plate 6 of Trembley’s Mémoires . . . d’un genre dePolypes d’eau Douce, which had been published in 1744.

Similarly, on page 93 of his book, Adams mentionsthat “Seignior Redi hath obliged us with microscopi-cal drawings,” referring to the illustrations publishedby Francesco Redi whose best-known book was Ex-periments on the Origins of Insects (1668). We can see thatGeorge Adams was not wholly averse to citing hissources, but he was circumspect on other occasions,preferring to take the credit for observations that re-sulted from the painstaking labor of others.

Figure 1. The Turnitin website shows how plagiarized essays canbe identified. Similar software is available for students to help themreword their assignments to avoid plagiarism.

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Some of his pictures are copied from theLeeuwenhoek papers. Adams does not like to say sodirectly, and prefers to quote Leeuwenhoek’s words inhis text. Thus he writes on page 1: “As Mr. Leeuwenhoekhas shewn in his 128th epistle to the Royal Society.”On page 16 and again on page 27 he says: “Mr.Leeuwenhoek informs us.” These frequent referencesin the text show his admiration for his Dutch prede-cessor, though he avoids giving direct credit for theillustrations.

Adams also reproduced a number of Hooke’s il-lustrations from Micrographia and in many ways theyare the core of his book (Figure 4). They are certainlythe most eye-catching of all the illustrations inMicrographia Illustrata, yet Adams is less than honestwhen referring to Hooke’s contribution. Hooke is citedin the text (as “Hook”), but the reader would have theclear impression that the drawings originated fromAdams himself. He states (on page 40 of his book):“Fig 82. A, is a microscopic representation of the footof a fly.”

In writing of a gnat (page 76) he describes it as:“exactly of the shape of one of those which Mr. Hookobserved.” On page 86, he writes of “a microscopicpicture of a perfect flea” and describes it as “a surpris-ing object.” He publishes Hooke’s images of cloth, de-scribing one of them (page 324) as: “lawn [cloth] as itappears through the microscope.” Adams even printscopies of Hooke’s images of cork sections, and then adds(page 306): “Mr. Hook told several lines of the pores” —“told” in this context meaning “measured.” AlthoughHooke is mentioned in passing, his role as the origina-tor of the illustrations fades from sight.

Adams’s eye-catching images of the flea and thelouse were copied directly from Hooke but no men-tion is made of their source. Versions of the Hooke en-gravings have been collated by Dr. James McCormick(Figure 2), and the similarities are unmistakable.Hooke’s images were still being copied in 1825, whena popular reference work, Blair’s Prescription, includedthem as illustrations. We can see how justified wasHooke’s insistence that he was the victim of plagia-rism. Clearly, he was right.

HOOKE AS PLAGIARIST

It was the magnificent quality of Robert Hooke’smicroscopical studies that made them objects of at-tention for other writers who were to follow. Yet thereis another side to this coin: Hooke himself was a pla-giarist before his own work was misappropriated.One of the most eye-catching plates in Micrographia

was flagrantly copied by Hooke from another inves-tigator.

The prolific Danish philosopher and writer Tho-mas Bartholin published a book entitled De Nivis usumedico Observationes variae in 1661. The book contained amodest plate of snowflakes (Figure 5). They owed moreto artistic license than to painstaking observation, andalthough they clearly showed the six-rayed structureof a snowflake, they had details that we do not ob-serve in nature. Some were solid spherical rays; oth-ers had fine needles as side-branches, like a herring-bone. Because of their characteristic nature they areuniquely recognizable caricatures.

It is surprising to discover that a similar portrayalof snowflakes features in Hooke’s Scheme VIII that isdevoted to snow (Figure 5). Hooke has blatantly pla-giarized Bartholin’s figures and included them asthough they were his own, original work. Wrote Hooke:

“I have often with great pleasure, observ’d suchan infinite variety of curiously figur’ed Snow . . . Somecoorse drafts, such as the coldness of the weather wouldpermit me to make, I have here added in the SecondFigure of the Eighth Scheme.”

The reader is led to feel sympathy for poor Hooke,struggling to observe freshly fallen snowflakes in thebitter winter weather, his fingers blue with cold. Atleast, we feel for him until we set “his” drawings along-side those by Bartholin. These “coarse figures” whichHooke claimed to have made were clearly copied fromthe Danish book of 1661. Thus we must accept that thisvictim of plagiarism was, first and foremost, himself aplagiarist. Hooke’s protestations about the misuse of hisown findings, though justified in fact, seem suddenlyless substantial as a matter of morals.

Figure 2. Hooke’s 1665 drawing of the louse Pediculus (left) wascopied by Bonanni in 1681 (center) and later by George Adams(1771), among others.

Images courtesy of Dr. James McCormick

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people, and came to the attention of Daniel Defoe (au-thor of Robinson Crusoe, published in 1719). In 1728, un-der the pseudonym of Henry Stonecastle, Baker — jointlywith Defoe — established magazines entitled The Uni-versal Spectator and the Weekly Journal; and in the follow-ing year he married Defoe’s youngest daughter, Sophia.

Like many fashionable men about town, Baker be-came increasingly drawn to natural philosophy andwas intrigued by microscopy. The work ofLeeuwenhoek fascinated him. He prepared a paper forthe Royal Society in 1739 entitled An Account of Mr.Leeuwenhoek’s Microscopes, and in the following year hewas elected a fellow of the Society. So excited was Bakerby this acknowledgment of his work that he set out towrite his popular book on microscopy. On page 7 of TheMicroscope Made Easy, Baker writes about Leeuwenhoek’sinstruments:

“At the Time I am writing this, the Cabinet of Mi-croscopes left by that famous Man, at his Death, to theRoyal Society, as a Legacy, is standing upon my Table.”

THE CASE OF LEEUWENHOEK

Antony van Leeuwenhoek, whom I have shown tohave been inspired by Hooke’s book to become a mi-croscopist, gave inspiration to many later investiga-tors. The numerous pencil drawings of microscopicalspecimens that Leeuwenhoek sent to his correspon-dents are widely described by historians as being madeby his own hand. This is an error. Leeuwenhoek him-self could not draw, and openly admitted the fact in hiscorrespondence. In an early letter to the Royal Societyof London (dated August 15, 1673) he wrote: “As I can’tdraw, I have got them drawn for me.” Throughout hiscareer, he resorted to the services of a limner.

When these studies were engraved for publicationthey became available for others to copy (Figure 6).Henry Baker, for example, included a number of re-drawn Leeuwenhoek studies in his book The MicroscopeMade Easy (1743) (Figures 7 and 8). In his early years,Baker pioneered a system of language for deaf mute

Figure 3. Left: Abraham Trembley, whose fine research was unmatched for over a century, made extensive studies of the freshwater polypHydra and published the results in 1744. Right: Trembley’s plates, like those of Hooke, were adapted for re-engraving at reduced scale forAdam’s book Micrographia Illustrata. Trembley received more acknowledgment than Hooke.

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Baker was a popularizer rather than a mere pla-giarist. He describes Leeuwenhoek’s work with wordsof admiration, and readily acknowledges the source ofhis own inspiration. He emphasizes the fact when hisinformation comes from “MR. LEEUWENHOEK’S letters tothe Royal Society” and, in describing Trembley’s workon Hydra, states: “MR. TREMBLEY was the first discov-erer of this Insect [and] gives a drawing of the Polype”Baker has clearly copied the illustrations drawn bythose pioneer microscopists, and he does acknowledgetheir sources.

Antony van Leeuwenhoek himself would be anunlikely individual to indulge in plagiarism: He was apioneering microscopical investigator, and is renownedas the first person to make most of his ground-break-

ing observations. Yet Leeuwenhoek began his work byinvestigating areas that were already published byRobert Hooke, and took pains not to acknowledge Hookeby name. One could argue here about the exact bound-aries of plagiarism. But however the matter is viewed,it is clear that Leeuwenhoek was drawing from Hooke’sinspiration while making no reference to the fact.

The comparisons between Hooke’s andLeeuwenhoek’s accounts emerged during research formy book The Leeuwenhoek Legacy (1991). Hooke was fas-cinated by the way that the properties of a specimenwere determined by its microscopic structure. His fa-mous work on the cellular nature of cork, for instance,arose because he wished to see how such a materialcould be so unusual in several key respects.

Figure 4. Left: Robert Hooke published studies of a gnat (top), its larva (middle) and a fly (below). Each of the original plates is a large,folio-sized engraving of unsurpassed quality and detail. Right: The lineage from Hooke’s published engravings to these reduced-sizecopies from George Adams’s book is unmistakable. Adams made only brief references to Hooke in his text.

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QUESTIONS OF DEFINITION

These examples show how widespread plagiarismhas been in the history of microscopy. Yet they revealsomething yet more fundamental: There are shades ofmisappropriation and degrees of misuse. When Hookewrote of his great discomfort in bravely capturingimages of snowflakes — images that he had actuallycopied from an earlier microscopical publication — hewas clearly a plagiarist. Hooke himself was obviouslythe victim of misappropriation when, in the followingcentury, Albin copied Hooke’s drawings and claimedthat he had “engraven them from life.” This claimingof intellectual property from a third party as one’s ownis what defines plagiarism.

How does this relate to Leeuwenhoek deliberatelypublishing his own observations on specimens alreadywritten by Hooke? What the Dutch pioneer was at-tempting to do was show how his observations couldparallel, and then extend, those of Hooke in England.He was copying Hooke’s selection of specimens, but toprove a point. It was his own observations thatLeeuwenhoek wished people to understand, and hewas not reproducing Hooke’s findings and claimingthem as his own. If plagiarism is the theft of IP, then allthat Leeuwenhoek had misappropriated was the listof specimens. In communicating his own (later andbetter) findings, he was setting out his personal re-search and was not claiming to have discovered any-thing that properly belonged to Hooke. As such, it isarguable that this was not an example of plagiarism.

The specimens of cork, elder pith and the whiteof a quill pen, which Leeuwenhoek sent to London,were packed in small paper folds using the method

“First,” he wrote, “why was it so exceeding light abody?” He went to wonder why cork was “a body sovery unapt to suck and drink in Water,” and thirdly heasked, “Why Cork has such a springiness and swell-ing nature when compres’d?” The microscopic struc-ture that he discovered answered each question. It wasthe open cellular nature of cork (Hooke coined the term“cell” for this specimen) that made it so light, so wa-terproof and so inclined to regain its former shape af-ter compression.

He went on to relate this open, spongy texture toother specimens he was examining. In Micrographia hewrote:

“Nor is this kind of Texture peculiar to Cork onely;for upon examination with my Microscope, I have foundthat the pith of an Elder, or almost any other Tree . . .have such a kind of schematisme. The pith also that fillsthat part of the stalk of a Feather that is above the Quil,has much such of a kind of Texture.”

Let us now compare this with the notes thatLeeuwenhoek prepared in 1674, where we find thisdescription:

“ . . . which kind of growing I apprehend may insome manner be seen in the pith of Wood, in Cork, inthe pith of the Elder, as also in the White of a Quill, ofwhich I have sent you . . . some small particles, cut offwith a sharp razor.”

Hooke had written of “cork, the pith of an elder andalso the white of a quill”; nine years later we haveLeeuwenhoek writing of “cork, the pith of the elder, andalso the white of a quill” — exactly the same specimensand, furthermore, written up in exactly the same order.There can be no doubt (a) of Leeuwenhoek’s familiaritywith Micrographia, and (b) of the direct line of influence.

Figure 5. Left: Thomas Bartholin had published these snowflake caricatures four years before Hooke’s Micrographia appeared. They areunrealistic, and Hooke’s indebtedness is unmistakable. Right: Snowflakes as illustrated by Hooke in Micrographia. He describes how hiscold hands and insufficient clothing made the job of capturing the details difficult. Hooke, however, had plagiarized Bartholin’s illustrations.

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of folding still practiced by today’s gem dealers. Afourth packet contained slices of dried bovine opticnerve. These were the packets that I found hiddenamong his papers at the Royal Society in London inFebruary 1981. Sir Andrew Huxley, then the Society’spresident, had suggested to me one day that I mightcare to look though the Leeuwenhoek correspondenceand I had accepted the opportunity with enthusi-asm [See “Critical Focus: The Royal Society Turns350” on page 35].

My remarks to Sir Andrew were that one mightfind contemporaneous spores on the paper or hairsfrom Leeuwenhoek’s wig. Any thought that theremight be specimens lurking within the pages of theletters was not even considered, and the sight of thespecimen packets attached to the letter dated July 1,1674 was a remarkable revelation. The sections werefrom the earliest years of science, and were to providea unique insight into the dawn of modern microscopy.

Figure 6. Antony van Leeuwenhoek sent these drawings ofaquatic organisms, made in red crayon by his limner, to the RoyalSociety on December 25, 1702. They include rotifers (left) andHydra (center).

Figure 8. Cyclops, the water flea, and Hydra appeared in HenryBaker’s The Microscope Made Easy. The budding Hydra (rightcenter) is from the Leeuwenhoek drawing (Figure 6, center).

Figure 7. Henry Baker, Daniel Defoe’s son-in-law, publishedversions of Leeuwenhoek’s rotifers in his book The MicroscopeMade Easy (1743). Note the vorticellids (top left), which are alsoseen in the Leeuwenhoek drawing in Figure 6.

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torted world of misappropriated intellectual property,even this is possible.

The British Museum holds a unique treasury of bib-liographical material: books and letters, pamphlets,papers and pictures. Browsing their collections has longbeen a favorite occupation of mine, and to write in theRound Reading Room where Karl Marx and Lenin,Bram Stoker and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle had all com-posed their books was an experience that fueled thecreative impulse. As it happens, the British Libraryruns a commercially successful publishing house spe-cializing in the highest quality of books, and 20 yearsago I was deep in discussions with them about a bookon one of my passionate personal interests, the historyof scientific illustration. The result proved to be Imagesof Science: a History of Scientific Illustration, which was pub-

lished in 1992. An American edi-tion was produced in New Yorkby Oxford University Press.

The idea behind my book waspure pragmatism. Since the Brit-ish Library held the greatest col-lection of early scientific publica-tions anywhere in the world,backed with all the administra-

tive and technical facilities anyone could need, theycould easily source all the pictures that I required.These would illustrate the text, in which I would showhow the imagery of the sciences had changed over thecenturies. I was able to access the early herbals, forexample, to substantiate my view that the unrecog-nizable woodcuts with which they were decorated hadbeen deliberately distorted in order to prevent the herb-alists’ specialist knowledge from being spread amongstthe wider population. It was a challenging and excit-ing project that was to give rise to a book extending tomore than 200 pages and which was widely reviewedaround the English-speaking world. There was, ofcourse, a chapter devoted to microscopy.

But as soon as the contract was signed the conceptcollapsed. It is true that the British Library’s adminis-tration was second to none — at least in terms of com-plexity and inertia. The editors sent over the first ofmy lists of required images and soon found that theywould be impossible to obtain all the pictures in time.I was informed that the time taken to look up the refer-ences, identify the shelf mark, retrieve the book andlocate the image; and then to transport the book to thephotographic studio, fill in the forms for requisition-ing the photographer, stipulate the format, have thebook carefully photographed (bearing in mind thatsome of these old volumes will not open properly and

ON BEING PLAGIARIZED

The discovery of the Leeuwenhoek specimens be-came a major news item and was the subject of aninterview with Sir Robin Day, the doyen of Britishbroadcasters, in the BBC news on July 29, 1981, the daythe network was also reporting on the wedding ofPrince Charles and Lady Diana Spencer. The matterwas formally published in Nature and New Scientist onJuly 31, 1981, and a full account appeared on the samedate in Notes and Records of the Royal Society. It was heart-ening to see the work of our illustrious forebear beingcelebrated with such media coverage. Too few peoplehave heard of Leeuwenhoek’s achievements, and theextent of the news reports helped to educate the public.

The Boerhaave Museum in Leiden holds two ofLeeuwenhoek’s microscopes intheir collections. Although theyregard themselves as authoritieson Leeuwenhoek’s life and work,they had in the past crudely useda tube of glue to hold one of hispriceless microscopes together.Their response to the announce-ment that these original speci-mens had been found was immediate. They organizedan exhibition that would include these new findingsbut chose not to acknowledge the source.

The presentation was organized with the ScienceMuseum of London and was launched in Leiden inNovember 1982. A museum catalogue was commis-sioned with a British writer on microscopy namedBrian Bracegirdle to act as editor. When the catalogueappeared, there were photographs of the specimenpackets that I had unearthed but no reference to anyof the relevant publications. Bracegirdle directedreaders instead to a publication of his own, entitled AHistory of Microtechnique, from 1978. This was a curi-ous choice, as it contained the following words:

“The first microscopists . . . paid less attention totheir specimens. No preparations from the seventeenthcentury have survived . . . they [were] prepared withlittle finesse.”

It was intriguing that a Dutch exhibition cataloguewould plagiarize this major discovery, and then pub-lish — as their bibliographical source — a book assert-ing that the specimens did not even exist.

SELF-PLAGIARISM

If plagiarists steal the work of others, then howcan it be possible to plagiarize oneself? In this con-

In this contorted world ofmisappropriated intellectualproperty, even self-plagiarismis possible.

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going to re-use intellectual property from my earlierbook. I was plagiarizing myself. In February 1993, Ispoke on the new book at a special public lecture orga-nized by the publishers at the Natural History Mu-seum in South Kensington. My illustrated presenta-tion covered the main themes of my book, and I keptone further aspect for my closing remarks. With theblushing executives of the company seated in the frontrow, I related how the publisher of this new book hadlifted an image from my earlier volume. It was a high-light of the evening, and a suitable commemoration ofhow an author can be led to plagiarize himself.

PLAGIARISM IN CONTEXT

Microscopy has been dogged by plagiarists for cen-turies, and still is. I have heard people complain bit-

can easily be damaged), and then — once the photog-raphy was done — to have all the images color cor-rected, mounted and collated, prior to being conveyedto the editorial department where the pages would bedesigned and laid out. It would all be too complex (andtake far too long) for the book to be produced withinthe scheduled time. Just one picture had been obtained,and that served to prove how complex the entire taskwould be. We, therefore, agreed a secondary arrange-ment whereby I would provide the bulk of the illus-trations from private sources.

When the proofs began to arrive, we were informedthat the single picture which the publishers had inhand was due to appear on page 184 (Figure 9). I wassurprised to see it; the plate was from a 1686 book byCarlo Di Napoli entitled Nuove inventioni di tubi ottici, arare tome. It is hardly ever cited (for instance, the titleis only referenced six times worldwide in Google). Imanaged eventually to find a copy when writing mybook The Revealing Lens, Mankind and the Microscope (1973)and had not encountered it since.

Out of curiosity, I retrieved my earlier book andset it alongside the page proofs of the new volume. Thepictures were the same (Figures 10 and 11). Even theslight imperfections in the paper, and the occasionalspots and dots that can occur when an image is photo-graphed, were identical. The two printed images thenwent under the microscope, and the printed half-tonesunequivocally confirmed the point. One could see howa minute dot had been rendered by the half-tone screenin the original book. In the new proofs, the half-toneversion of the original had been meticulously capturedby the new printing process.

It is not that the photograph had been taken fromthe same plate of 1686, with identical imperfections.Were that the case, then each mark would be freshlyhalf-tone screened and uniquely reproduced. The pho-tomicrographs show clearly that the new image hadbeen obtained from the original printed page in my1973 book. It was clear what had happened. The requi-sition had been passed through the British Library’sconventional channels and someone had rememberedthat they knew a source for one of the pictures. Theyhad secured the image and had it photographed, andpassed it on for inclusion in the new book.

By a curious coincidence, the source of the platewas my earlier book, The Revealing Lens. The contentsare copyright, and the pictures cannot lawfully be cop-ied for re-use by others. In this case, the British Li-brary — the definitive deposit library that virtuallydefines copyright — had the image copied and offeredfor use in their new publication. My new volume was

Figure 9. Two books with the same image: page184 of Images ofScience, a History of Scientific Illustration (top), and page 57 ofThe Revealing Lens, Mankind and the Microscope (bottom).

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ume one of his book Lacon, or Many Things in Few Words(1820). The sentiment certainly applies to publishedscientific research and reminds us that plagiarism isin many ways a backhanded compliment.

Anyone who has made a substantial contributionis liable to be plagiarized, and when the fact is obviousand known, the victim gains nothing but kudos. Peoplemention the unprincipled misuse of a scientist’s IP and

terly about the infringement of their IP, and I point outthat plagiarism is an occupational hazard of any pro-ductive person. We can see resonances of this in thepopular saying: “Imitation is the sincerest form of flat-tery.” The original coinage used subtly different word-ing: “Imitation is the sincerest of flattery,” and it wascoined by a celebrated Victorian writer in Britain,Charles Caleb Colton. He published the words in vol-

Figure 10. Left: Low-power microscopy shows the screened half-tone image of the circular stage from the plate in Images of Science. Smallblemishes and some uneven printing can be identified. Right: Microscopic examination of the identical region previously published in TheRevealing Lens shows that sharply printed blemishes had been half-tone screened for reprinting.

Figure 11. Under higher power, the screened appearance of blemishes is evident in Images of Science (left), which corresponds to theimage published in The Revealing Lens (right).

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offer commiserations. It is the perpetrator who suf-fers, not the victim, because being plagiarized is thetouchstone of any major new idea. I have dined out foryears as a direct consequence of the Leiden exhibitioncatalogue and their unattributed use of my findings.To those who are plagiarized for the first time, I wouldsay, it shows that you’ve arrived.

The unacknowledged use of Hooke’s list of speci-mens by Leeuwenhoek in 1674 seems irregular to us,bordering on duplicity, but it may owe more to themores of the time. In past centuries it was common forpeople to avoid the use of personal names. Books werepublished by “A Lady” or “A Reverend Gentleman”and pseudonyms were common. Rather than cite theauthor of a scientific publication, as is now conven-tional, it was perfectly normal to allude to someonewithout attribution. A scientist might challenge theview of “another person” or refer to the observationsof “a gentleman from another country.”

Resonances of this historical convention are stillfound. Members of the universities of Oxford andCambridge do not ordinarily refer to them by name.Similarly, the British House of Commons and the

House of Lords do not refer to each other directly. Aphrase like “at another university” or “in anotherplace” is substituted, and this usage in the 21st cen-tury is a legacy of those earlier traditions.Leeuwenhoek’s oblique references to Hooke can beseen more sympathetically in the light of this still-remembered social convention.

Sometimes IP is wantonly misused in a situationwhere there can be no redress. In 2007, Thames andHudson (one of my publishers) were commissionedby the Natural History Museum to produce a bookentitled The Great Naturalists. I was commissioned towrite chapters on the two pioneers of microscopy,Antony van Leeuwenhoek and Robert Hooke. The pub-lishers requested that we provide illustrations; thesewere researched and given to them (Figure 12). Thepictures appeared in exhibits that the publishers pre-pared to promote the book prior to publication, andalso in the page proofs.

In the final layout, however, they substituted vir-tually identical photographs, which their contractphotographer had been instructed to take (Figure 12).They showed the same subject matter as our original

BRIAN J. FORD

Figure 12. Left: The publisher’s page proof of The Great Naturalists shows the original Leeuwenhoek drawing of December 25, 1702 thatwas supplied by the author. Right: The final version of The Great Naturalists shows a new copy of the Leeuwenhoek image that the authorresearched, but which was reproduced by the publisher’s photographer.

32 THE MICROSCOPE 58 (2010)

photographs but, because they had not been takenhere, no reproduction fee was paid. The extensive andcostly research that we had done went unrewarded.Snapping the photograph takes no more than aminute; finding the subject in the first place can takea month.

Plagiarism remains a multifaceted problem, andintellectual property rights are often highly valuable.There are occasions when the microscopist will needto tread carefully in providing valuable material forpublication. The ubiquitous Internet adds further dif-ficulties, because a published image can be copied andillicitly used on a remote Web site of an untraceablesource. Personal experience has not shown this to be aproblem. Regular requests are received seeking per-mission for the reproduction of my images on otherWeb sites (sometimes we receive several inquiries perday), and we have innumerable legitimate requestsfor the use of these pictures in textbooks and referencepublications. On the infrequent occasion that imageshave turned up where they shouldn’t, we have re-ceived full settlement of reproduction rights and agenerous apology from the publisher. Plagiarism, di-verting though it may be, has proved to be an infre-quent event.

What of the case referred to above, where a pub-lisher uses a photograph to produce an identical il-lustration? This is a well-recognized problem thathas bedeviled picture libraries for decades. They willtell of publishers who ask for a selection of picturesto be sent over, after painstaking research, and printnone of them. Instead, copies of the images arepainted or drawn by an in-house artist. The originalphotograph becomes a “reference” for the artist, justas my photographs became “references” for theThames and Hudson photographer. This is a well-known practice.

All the work in obtaining a stunning and uniqueimage by a brilliant wildlife photographer comes tonaught in a case like this. The rights to the picture asprinted rest with the publisher who commissionedthe illustration, however, the IP rights should remainwith the photographer who captured the original im-age. This is a contentious issue, and one still unresolvedby lawyers. Those who provide images would be ad-vised to warn that the picture is not to be used as amere “reference,” but whether a case could succeed inlaw remains a mystery to me.

CONCLUSION

For all its apparent novelty, and the ease withwhich the Internet offers opportunities for plagiarists,this increasing problem actually dates back to the verybirth of the discipline. In the modern world, plagia-rism in published scientific papers is a topic for con-cern and the perpetrators deserve sanction.

Exact definitions remain vague, however, and inthe era of the Internet, the nature and extent of IP rightsis overdue for a clearer definition. Meanwhile, full ac-knowledgment of IP should always be given by anymeticulous microscopist. It is reassuring to note that,in practice, we have found that serious plagiarism byprofessionals is still an infrequent problem and is of-ten due to inadvertence.

Among students, however, plagiarism is rife. Wereceive regular requests from postgraduate studentsfor the use of images or published findings but alsohear frequently of reports and essays which use mate-rial without the normal permissions being sought. Aswe have seen, there is a growing sense that this is ac-ceptable behavior. A recent study by the Center for Aca-demic Integrity has found that nearly 80% of collegestudents admit to cheating at least once, and other sur-veys confirm that the number is steadily increasing.

To those who will suffer it in the future, let meadvise you to view plagiarism as a form of hommage. Ifyour work was plagiarized, then it was regarded asgreat work. Fear not — fellow microscopists will sym-pathize with your predicament, gleefully ask you torecount the episode and invite you to dinner. And re-member, it’s is not a wound but a badge of honor.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Grateful acknowledgment is made of the help andassistance of the librarians at the Royal Society, theLinnean Society of London, the University of Cambridge,the Whipple Museum for the History of Science, andCardiff University. Thanks are also due to Dr. John Sladeof Cambridgeshire and Dr. Curtis Bonk, a professor atIndiana University, for kindly perusing earlier draftsof this article. This article is based on “An Evening withBrian” presentation delivered at Inter/Micro 2009 onJuly 6, 2009 in Chicago, and as the president’s lecture tothe Society for the Application of Research at the Uni-versity of Cambridge on October 19, 2009.