How Original . . .

Take the argument that the increased use of nuclear power leads to fewer greenhouse-gas emissions. Op-eds on that subject, for instance, ran between 1997 and 1999 with different bylines in three newspapers. Each writer dismissed the claims of "environmentalists" or "skeptics" that greenhouse-gas emissions "can be reduced" without nuclear power. "They are dreaming," said one op-ed in the Wall Street Journal on Dec. 2, 1997. Yes, concurred another in the Record of Northern New Jersey on Jan. 5, 1998: "They are dreaming." And Dallas Morning News readers awoke on April 5, 1999, to learn from Landsberger that those lazy enviros were still in the sack: "They are dreaming," he wrote.

Or take the campaign to locate low-level nuclear waste facilities in various states. Between 1990 and 1996, three academics and a physician writing op-eds in newspapers in four states -- Nebraska, Pennsylvania, North Carolina and Texas -- all assured readers that nearby sites would "be among the safest and best-engineered" waste facilities in the country.

Fascinated by all of this, I phoned the news editor at the weekly Austin Chronicle, who told me to lace up my roller skates and get going on a story -- which it published April 16.

The op-eds are ginned up by a prodigious copywriter at Potomac Communications Group named Peter Bernstein, who works out of an office in Alexandria. Bernstein did not return several messages tat I left for him over a two-week period, but I did hear from his boss, Bill Perkins, a Potomac founding partner. Perkins told me it makes no difference whose byline is on an op-ed column; it's what the piece says that matters. "Whether the words are largely theirs, or largely not theirs, the views are. Nobody would submit an article if they didn't totally agree with it," he said.

Besides, Perkins added, everyone does it. "I doubt that there is a public affairs campaign by any advocacy group in the country that doesn't have some version of this," he said. "The op-ed pages are one of the ways people express their views in these debates." But, I argued, these professors are not just expressing their views; rather they express and adopt as their own those of the nuclear lobby. Said Perkins: "This is fairly conventional. It does sound as if you've got a fairly strong opinion on this for a reporter."

Well, yes, I was upset to learn that the "by" in a scholar's byline may well be a ruse, a duplicitous means of inducing a lobby-authored, lobby-funded piece into print and onto the public agenda. And sure, I recognize that many politicians don't utter a word that a ghost didn't write and a focus group didn't approve, but academic rules require that scholars' research and writing be original. (And isn't that why PR firms recruit scholars to sign the op-eds -- precisely because of their status as independent experts?)

Perkins said that it served no purpose to debate me, and there he was right. One man's "editorial resource" is another's op-ed mill, I suppose.

I hereby propose that the nation's editorial page editors ask at least these two questions of outside contributors: 1) Did you write this piece? 2) Are you a consultant, paid or not, to an organization or interest group with a vested interest in your column? I'm not advocating that editors bar from publication those who answer affirmatively, only that their connection and/or interests be disclosed in the author's bio.

On April 13, the Austin American-Statesman printed a letter of apology from Landsberger. "Although I am in complete agreement with the contents of the article, in my exuberance to have it published I failed to state that it was not written by me," he wrote.

An "A" for exuberance, however, does not earn one a pass from compliance with academic guidelines. The University of Texas relies on the federal Office of Research Integrity's (ORI) working definition of plagiarism -- which includes the substantial unattributed textual copying of another's work , according to Sharon Brown, the university's associate vice president for research. ORI defines such copying as "the unattributed verbatim or nearly verbatim copying of sentences and paragraphs which materially mislead the ordinary reader regarding the contributions of the author."

A week before his published apology, Landsberger had told me it was he who felt victimized. He had no qualms about using a ghostwriter -- until he learned the ghost was two-timing him. "When I started doing this, I was under the impression that, rightfully or wrongfully, I was the only guy."

Is it acceptable, then, to slap your name on writing not yours, as long as no one else declares it his or hers? "I had no problems with them coming to me," he said, until he learned that other professors were staking their claims to the same material. "I felt betrayed, duped, whatever the word is."

I know the feeling, and either of those words will do.

Author's e-mail:

william_m_adler@earthlink.net

William M. Adler's most recent book is "Mollie's Job: A Story of Life and Work on the Global Assembly Line" (Scribner). He is at work on a book about the links between civilian nuclear power and nuclear arms proliferation.