500 Days of Kristin, Day 163: Kristin Is a Plagiarist
Kristin Cavallari, proprietor of the Official Kristin Cavallari App for iPhone and Android, has published several posts on the app under her byline over the last year—posts with words and almost-words like “anyways,” “techy,” “science lab,” and “bakini.”
This week, she posted some more words “By Kristin Cavallari” in a (free to access) post about iodine titled, “Iodine, By Kristin Cavallari.” Here’s one line from that post:
Metabolic rate affects the efficiency and efficacy of many of the body’s organ system and regular processes, including absorption of food, sleep cycles, and the transformation of food into usable energy.
What a sentence—by Kristin Cavallari! All the words are in order, and one of the words is “efficacy.” Kristin, have you been reading the dictionary?
A cursory Google search for the first part of the sentence produces several exact matches, which suggests that perhaps Kristin has been Googling “iodine” and then copy-and-pasting the results into her app.
The earliest use of the sentence we could find is in a 2005 post titled, “Iodine” on a site called “MoonDragon’s Realm.” That post also contains another phrase that appears word-for-word in Kristin’s post:
Iodine is present in large quantities in both marine plants and animals, including shellfish, deep-water whitefish, and brown seaweed kelp, ...
Kristin’s post, which you can find below, does not contain any attribution except to Kristin Cavallari.
While the action of Googling “iodine” is certainly one that could have been performed by Kristin Cavallari—and while the sentences under the headline “Iodine” certainly do appear nearby the phrase “Kristin Cavallari,” within the app—the words themselves are almost certainly not by Kristin Cavallari in the traditional sense of having been written by her.
Kristin.
Kristin.
Your app is not a homework assignment. It is not “due.” You do not need to plagiarize in order to get it done—you don’t need to do it all! You’re not Maureen Dowd.
This has been 500 Days of Kristin.
[Photo via Getty]