How a plagiarism problem has started to shift rugby’s concussion protocols

A butterfly flapped its wings last June and nine months later sport is still dealing with the fallout. It happened when Dr Steve Haake, a professor of Sports Engineering at Sheffield Hallam University, was confronted with a case of self-plagiarism committed by a contributor in a set of conference proceedings he had edited in 2006. It got Haake thinking about a similar incident in his life from around the same time. In 2000, he wrote an article called Physics, Technology and the Olympics, for Physics World. In 2012, he was surprised to find much of that same article repeated, verbatim, in an editorial published in 2005 by the editor in chief of the British Journal of Sports Medicine, Dr Paul McCrory. After dealing with the one old case, Haake decided, at last, to do something about the other.

You may not have heard of McCrory – Haake didn’t know much about him either – but if you have played or watched a contact or collision sport in the last 20 years he has had a hand in your pastime. McCrory was a founder member, and the co-chair, of the Concussion in Sport Group. They produce a consensus statement which is supposed to sum up the existing research into concussion, and which shapes medical practice in the field across grassroots and professional sport. They are funded by World Rugby, the IOC and Fifa, among others. McCrory has been one of the most influential figures in the field for the last 20 years.

The BJSM eventually agreed with Haake that there was a “significant overlap” between the two pieces. McCrory explained that it had been an editing error, that a draft version of his article had been uploaded by mistake. And that is where the matter might have rested. But the story was picked up by an organisation called