Jane Goodall's Mistake

This whole situation seems extremely serious. If plagiarizing can put a student in danger of suspension even expulsion at Episcopal, then in the real world where this work had a chance of being published there could be enormous consequences. As they explained in the article, Jane is not a qualified botanist as she has never studied the subject or received a degree in that area of science. She is simply interested in the topic of plants. This lack of knowledge was what caused her to go searching for extra information and explanations on websites that may not even be trustworthy or correct. Jane's mistake shows just how serious giving credit to a source is, especially since this mistake may even make Jane look as if she as trying to pass off someone else's research and knowledge as her own.

I think that Jane and her co-writers/editors should just turn over a new leaf with this book. It seems as if a majority of the book is plagiarized due to the fact that it was all factual information that Goodall did not know. She could maybe release a different work that includes knowledge of her own and her stories, but not include such deep research due to the people she may have offended with her mistake. Not paraphrasing a paper or work is a mistake that could be almost impossible to fix, and Goodall will have to work hard to do so.