"Republicans try to use Oxford don to smear Barack Obama" from Times of London reports on efforts to prove that Barack Obama's memoir "Dreams From My Father" was ghostwritten by William Ayers by comparing Obama's book with Ayers memoir "Fugitive Days". At this point it seems unlikely that the software testing will be done in any detailed fashion - and that the Oxford don doubts the connection.
Dr Peter Millican, a philosophy don at Hertford College, Oxford, has devised a computer software program that can detect when works are by the same author by comparing favourite words and phrases.
He was contacted last weekend and offered $10,000 (£6,200) to assess alleged similarities between Obama’s bestseller, Dreams from My Father, and Fugitive Days, a memoir by William Ayers.
The offer to Millican to prove that Ayers wrote Obama’s book was made by Robert Fox, a California businessman and brother-in-law of Chris Cannon, a Republican congressman from Utah. He hoped to corroborate a theory advanced by Jack Cashill, an American writer.
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