DiscussMormonism.com

beastie wrote:I also hope we get some answers in the next installment.

He could feel his blood pressure rising. He took a drink of his root beer and clicked on the link. Sure enough, it was the usual taunts, but this time there was something more: whoever "Cracker Jack" was had tracked down a pair of quotations comparing and contrasting the tidbits from his dissertation with the sources he'd lifted them from. He sat there scanning through the quotes for a moment more, his mouth half open, muttering incoherently to no one in particular. The responses so far were relatively mild. Merlyn and others were remarking that the quotes were insubstantial at best, and didn't even meet the formal definition of plagiarism. Others, like "The Needle," who Frank detested, insisted that more information would be forthcoming. Frank navigated back to the main forum page: the thread had already been viewed over 10,000 times. Had he been exposed? Sweat had begun to roll down his ribs and he leaned back in the chair and once again felt like weeping. What was he supposed to do? Nothing? He wondered if he should phone Howell to ask for advice.

Who would do this to me? he wondered. He immediately thought of the anti-Mormon who'd been harassing him: the one who called him "Carbuncle." Could I have prevented this? he asked himself. Maybe I should have gone to Lagoon. He marveled disgustedly at the amount of time that must have gone into this sort of data-mining. The internet had made it easier to access his dissertation, but whoever was behind the thread had seemingly gone through all of the sources in order to build the case that he'd plagiarized. "This is just the tip of the iceberg," Cracker Jack has said. And what if this got back to his degree-granting institution? They'd take away his doctorate for sure. He didn't know what he should do next, but knew he needed to do something. He entered his screen name and logged in and started hammering out a reply: