GaryP11111 wrote:
The accusation didn't meet the smell test --
I beg to differ. The suggested "explanations" were hypothetical back-flipping. "If Writer B once read Writer A's work and unconsciously remembered it..." "If there's a PR release somewhere with exactly the same phrases and Writer A and Writer B both had it..." "If it was just coincidence..."  What you had was a half-dozen sentences from separate works, one written several years after the first, which were factually and stylistically almost identical.  That smells, ergo the Smell Test is positive.  Doesn't mean Writer B's stuff is bad, or all unoriginal. It's not.  But this stuff... sniff-sniff...
-- and it was way, way, way, way beyond the expiration date. 
And that is quite true, as well.  Twenty years ago?  Thirty?  Who gives a rat's patoote?