Howard Shaffer, of Harvard, Borrows Without Acknowledgement from Stanton

In 1997, the Harvard Medical School Division on Addictions selected General Barry R. McCaffrey to receive its annual achievement award (named for Norman Zinberg) — former Senator George McGovern was the co-awardee. The first Zinberg Award winner, George E. Vaillant, was also honored at the 1997 HMS conference.

The Director of the Division on Addictions is Howard Shaffer, who was responsible for the McCaffrey pick. (The original Director of the HMS Division on Addictions was Steven Hyman, current Director of the National Institute on Mental Health.) In 1990, I brought charges against Shaffer for plagiarizing my article, "The Cultural Context of Psychological Approaches to Alcoholism." Harvard Medical School selected a "committee on faculty conduct concerning an allegation of plagiarism by Howard J. Shaffer, Ph.D." This Committee concluded in November, 1990: "On the facts before us, we find that Dr. Shaffer did take and publish words and ideas belonging to Dr. Peele without sufficient acknowledgement ['The amount of material that appears to have been copied amounts to approximately one printed page in the aggregate'], . . . . [but] that there is no persuasive evidence available to the Committee to rebut Dr. Shaffer's claim that the appropriation was due to negligence and faulty data storage and retrieval procedures."

The Harvard Committee noted that Shaffer seemed to be unfamiliar with the original sources which he cited by mimicking my words and references.  Yet, Shaffer claimed he had simply made notes from my article, then inadvertantly introduced this material as his original writing in his own article.  Apparently, Shaffer was unable to determine in writing his own article whether he was indeed familiar with the references he cited!

The Committee noted that "Dr. Shaffer argues that the Committee is not in a position to render findings or conclusions on the question of plagiarism in the absence of an explicit institutional policy defining the offense." The Committee was highly critical because Shaffer had his attorney threaten me on June 1, 1990: "Dr. Shaffer has claims against you for defamation, intentional interference with contractual relations and intentional interference with advantageous relations. Dr. Shaffer shall hold you liable for all damages resulting from your actions." According to the Committee,

Dr. Shaffer threatened to sue Dr. Peele unless he retracted the then pending complaint about Dr. Shaffer's conduct by a specified date. . . . We think that both the timing and content of Dr. Shaffer's letter were regrettable and inappropriate. An effort to intimidate or coerce a witness or complainant in a misconduct matter under review by this Committee is contrary to the letter and spirit of HMS and federal policies in this area and, we think, in an appropriate case would itself be misconduct subject to sanctions.

Nonetheless, within a few years, Shaffer was appointed Director of the HMS Division on Addictions.

As a prominent figure in the addictions field, Shaffer has some negative influence over Stanton’s career.  For example, he has vowed never to cite Stanton’s work again.  Likewise, Stanton will never be invited to speak at Harvard’s prestigious annual addictions conference, where his name is often mentioned.  (Vaillant, for example, who performs regularly at the Harvard conference, builds his lectures around attacking Stanton’s position on controlled drinking.)  In other words, the head of the addictions department at America’s premier academic institution makes sure to minimize and ignore the work of Stanton as a result of Stanton’s pointing out that he has used Stanton’s work without acknowledgment!