>Petty accusations were leveled at me, critiques of why I hadn’t used certain scholars, and even the very foundation of my entire dissertation was brought into question.
If she thinks those things are "petty," she is not a rigorous scholar at all. The omission of references to certain scholars, especially if those scholars have relevance to her own subfield, should absolutely be questioned. These sort of questions test the depths to which she has gone in her own research. As a contrived example, if an art history student doesn't reference David Hume in a dissertation about aesthetics, I would absolutely question why. If said student did not cite Hume because they did not know of Hume, it is then obvious that the research was not rigorous at all.
If she wants to be considered an expert in her field then she should be able to answer these questions precisely and with good reasons. I also thought it was funny that she complained about the committee not raising those questions when she submitted her proposal years ago. That's the whole point dummy... a proposal is just a proposal, if it sounds halfway decent it gets an approval. The expectation is that you will delve into all the background and research necessary to address any critiques that may come up at your defense. An approved proposal does not in any way imply a seal of approval for every detail of the dissertation... come on now.
Also, this quote from the third part of the story:
>The similarities between the two papers were instead attributed to a paper written a few years prior by a colleague of Dr. Mao. It was then suggested that I had plagiarized that essay in my paper, as evidenced by my paper’s ‘similarity’ to this essay, as well as to the fact that I had not cited the essay. I had never heard of this essay of which I was now accused of plagiarizing, much less read it.
I wonder if the author even read this earlier paper after she received this letter? She notably does not go into it. I also can't believe how she says "I had never heard of this essay ... much less read it." As if that is a valid response to this sort of response? Consider the following (oversimplified) back-and-forth:
>A. Hey, this person plagiarized me because he said the same things I did, but he said it after I did.
>B. Actually, we think both of your papers are similar to a paper that came before either of you.
>A. But I didn't read that paper so I didn't plagiarize that paper. Therefore, since Dr. Mao read my paper and I didn't read the earlier paper, he must have plagiarized me, and not the other paper.
Do you see the gap in logic??
Obviously if she never read the earlier paper she is innocent of plagiarism, but if the earlier paper is legitimately similar to hers, then she has no claim to say that her work was plagiarized. She doesn't seem to understand the fact that simultaneous, independent development of similar ideas is in fact, very common in academia. Newton and Leibniz independently created calculus at the same time, which is well known.
A more recent example is that in 1964, three different papers were published, independently, in the same year predicting the existence of the Higgs boson, which we have all heard about:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1964_PRL_symmetry_breaking_pap...
While I fully believe that she did indeed face an extremely hostile academic environment, I don't think the facts, as they are presented by the author, are enough to convince me beyond a reasonable doubt that there was indeed plagiarism with ill intent. She seems unwilling to face the prospect that someone else might have thought of her ideas before she did. If she is serious about her claims, she will provide references to each of the three papers in question: her own, Dr. Mao's, and the earlier unnamed paper which is cited as pre-empting both of them. Then we can see if there is real merit in her claim. As it is now, this is just whining.