Who invented the telephone? If you said Alexander Graham Bell, you probably do not live in Italy. In Italy, Antionio Meucci is commonly credited as being the original inventor. Why the discrepancy? Bell patented the telephone in 1876. Antonio Meucci, a poor Florentine immigrant to the United States began the paperwork to patent his telephonic device in 1871, based on work he conducted in his laboratory in Staten Island, New York. Due to health and monetary concerns he was not able to continue the patent process (Carroll, 2002). Interestingly, on June 11, 2002 the US Congress recognized Meucci 's contribution to inventing the telephone (Everyday Mysteries, 2010).Who invented anesthesia (Hardy, 2001)? If you answered Crawford Long, you are probably from the southern part of the United States. If you answered William Morton, you no doubt come from the north, and perhaps you have even visited the Ether Dome at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, where the first surgery with anesthesia is thought to have been performed (Massachusetts General Hospital, n.d.).Who invented calculus? If you said either Leibniz or Newton you would be correct, as calculus was a multiple discovery with both Newton and Leibniz independently developing the foundation around the same time (Merton, 1961). Multiple discovery is common because we as scientists continually advance science based on the work of all those that came before us. Knowledge development is cumulative, which helps to explain the invention of anesthesia or the telephone by different people in different geographic areas around the same period of time. When a breakthrough occurs that promotes new inventions or new scientific thought, or when there are societal forces that favor new knowledge development, new ideas often are seen developing by more than one individual or team in more than one geographic area.The cumulative nature of knowledge development means that new ideas are often not owned by a particular scientist or a particular scientific team, but rather developed simultaneously. However, translating these ideas into words does confirm ownership. Once patents, copyrights, articles, or grants are written we as scientists must agree upon and uphold ethical behavior around the ownership of these words.In the past year alone, I have been asked my opinion, as an editor, about the ethics of one scientist using PowerPoint slides from another scientist without attribution and the use of sections of grant proposals by a team member without the knowledge or permission of the principal investigator of the team. It is plagiarism to use someone else's words without citing the author; and copying someone else's words exactly requires the use of quotations. It is unethical to use the words of another without proper attribution or proper quotation.This year I have also written about the ethical problems that currently exist with self-plagiarism (Gennaro, 201 1), but I continue to receive questions from authors about how much of their own work they can repeat. …
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