But that's just what's happened in Georgia:
A "new vision" outlined for mental health care in Georgia last week isn't so new after all.
Large sections of a report by Gov. Sonny Perdue's mental health commission were lifted, often verbatim, from a Michigan study published in 2004 and from two other sources, a review by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution found. The commission's report, released last week by the governor's office, credits none of the cloned material.
The report presents as its own work entire sentences, paragraphs and longer passages from other sources, with no more than superficial editing. It duplicates, with only two minor changes in wording, the "values" listed in the Michigan study. Seven of Georgia's eight "key findings" mirror Michigan's. Even Georgia's vision statement is appropriated from the Michigan report.
The report -- which is almost completely plagiarized -- gets even sloppier at one point:
The Georgia document repeats language from Michigan saying the commission had provided "a detailed overview" of the mental health system "in Appendix E of this report." But unlike Michigan's, Georgia's report contains no Appendix E.
Wow. That's some freshman-year cheating right there.
