If you steal from one author, it is plagiarism; if you steal from many, it is research.
the quip was attributed to Wilson Mizner (1876–1933), American writer and entrepreneur
An alternative phrase: To steal ideas from one person is plagiarism; to steal from many is research. In recent times these words have been credited to the brilliantly out-of-kilter comedian Steven Wright
Are you familiar with the term eidetic memory or photographic memory? I think I do under certain circumstances.
Back when I was trying to publish a research paper to the IEEE conference, had a dozen references. The paper was initially turned down due to suspicious plagiarism, one paragraph included some duplicated sentences from one of the reference papers, almost like copy & paste which I didn't. But I had read it for sure. Must have taken a photograph in mind when I was reading. I was busy at that time, did not have time to fix it, my superviser knew my work, he was also the second author, so he fixed it & got accepted.
