Accused of plagiarism, historian Laurent Turcot apologized again on social media for the “unintentional errors” that crept into his book Sport and leisure: a history from the beginning to the present day, published by Gallimard in 2016.
Recall that Le Journal de Montréal revealed that in the fall of 2021 an investigation had found 13 passages from the book to be plagiarized. Last December we learned that a new investigation by the University of Quebec at Trois-Rivières was launched into nearly 120 additional suspected cases.
“Now that the dust has settled, I want to clarify a few things about what has been said about me lately,” he said at the beginning of a video posted to social media on Tuesday morning.
The star historian speaks of “involuntary errors” that crept into his book with 569 references.
Mr Turcot said he was working with his publisher to correct his errors for a new edition of his book.
“The 610-page book contained 569 references. In the beginning there were 1427 and, as is often the case in the publishing world, my publisher asked me to significantly reduce them,” he explained, adding that Gallimard had chosen to favor the references at the end of the various paragraphs of the work.
“Of the 123 quotes I am accused of, 10 are well referenced in the book […]six are double-placed duplicates […] 54 have the exact reference right before or after the sentence […] 52 have the correct author’s citation, including three duplicates […]. At 49 the references are placed later in the text, which is corrected […] two are from personal blogs that are not reference sites and one is from a sports newspaper site. There are still two errors, including the protocol, for which I apologize,” he explained.
“At no time did I want to appropriate the work of others,” assured Mr. Turcot.
According to him, anti-plagiarism software is created using artificial intelligence and “does not always take into account the necessary nuances” to understand the type of work being performed.
He also said he was “deeply hurt” by the plagiarism allegations.