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 that 13 passages from the book were 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 in a video posted to social media Tuesday morning.
The star historian speaks of “involuntary errors” that crept into his book, which contains 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 so often in the world of publishing, my publisher asked me to reduce them significantly,” he explained, specifying that Gallimard had made the choice to favor references at the end of the various paragraphs of the book.
“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 reference, including three duplicates […]. At 49 the references are placed later in the text, which is corrected […], two are from personal blogs, which are uncredited sites, and one is from a sports newspaper site. Two errors remain, including the protocol, which I am sorry for,” 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 nature of the work being performed.
He also said he was “deeply hurt” by the plagiarism allegations.