I'm a Music Therapist

In July 2021, I publicly shared on my blog that my theoretical Music Therapy and Harm Model (MTHM) had been plagiarized in an article published in the Journal of Music Therapy (JMT) entitled, “It’s…Complicated: A Theoretical Model of Music-Induced Harm” written by Dr. Michael Silverman, Dr. Lori Gooding, and Dr. Olivia Yinger. In that blog post, I outlined the undeniable similarities between my theoretical model and the Music-Induced Harm (MIH) model presented in Silverman et al.’s paper. My post included a screenshot of an email in which Dr. Silverman acknowledged consuming my ideas before the creation of the MIH model and promised to cite my ideas when he wrote to me requesting a copy of a working manuscript of my MTHM. That blog post then described the systemic failures I experienced while trying to pursue accountability by participating in the ethics grievance process of the American Music Therapy Association (AMTA). You can read the first full blog post here. 

Since I published my blog post, I have continued to work toward justice in light of the events that followed my decision to go public with my experiences. Throughout this process, my goal has continued to focus on clarifying the actual timeline and lineage of ideas by which the topic of harm unfolded in the field of music therapy. This follow-up blog post is being shared now because the Journal of Music Therapy (JMT) that published Silverman et al.’s article is issuing a corrigendum, which can be read here. I will outline the events that make this corrigendum an inconsequential and superficial gesture by the journal and its publisher, Oxford University Press, to lay to rest a blatant case of plagiarism. In short, I’ve learned in a strenuous and roundabout lesson that systematic accountability is not something that music therapists can put their faith in indiscriminately. 

After I posted my blog post on July 26th, 2021, I remember feeling unburdened as many people voiced their support for my experiences. I’d like to thank everyone who has reached out to me directly or otherwise voiced their support. The overwhelmingly positive encouragement I received made me hopeful that my blog post compellingly outlined the need for accountability in our professional music therapy system and might lead to reforms. I became more hopeful when the editor of the Journal of Music Therapy (JMT), Dr. Blythe LaGasse, reached out to me on August 2nd in response to my online post. She shared that the JMT was initiating an investigation into my claims of plagiarism per the guidelines set by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), which the JMT and many other academic journals abide by. 

I appreciated that Dr. LaGasse communicated with clarity and approximate time estimates on when she would be able to provide updates, which had been sorely lacking in my communications with the co-chair of the AMTA ethics board whom I had worked with previously regarding my grievance. Dr. LaGasse let me know that an ad hoc publication ethics review committee composed of JMT editorial board members with no affiliations to myself or the other authors would review my plagiarism claim. She shared what documentation she would submit to the review committee and provided me with an opportunity to submit any other evidence I thought was relevant.

On September 13th, 2021 I met with Dr. LaGasse and Ms. Adonia Calhoun Coates, the CEO of AMTA, in which they shared that the review committee recommended that an acknowledgement of my work be added to the Silverman et al. article. I decided to decline the suggested acknowledgement.  I didn’t want my experience to set a precedent by which following instances of plagiarism in AMTA journals are “dealt with.” Plagiarism happens in the field of music therapy and is an issue in the larger scientific community. My documentation is a “best case” scenario in demonstrating that plagiarism occurred. The topic of harm was obscure before my podcast was published in 2019, I have written proof that Dr. Silverman consumed my ideas and acknowledged they were extremely valuable, and the authors have been unable to provide evidence that any version of their model existed before mine. 

It wasn’t until after I rejected the proposed acknowledgement from the ad hoc JMT ethics review committee that the conversations turned to a direct citation of my work. Between September and November 2021, I worked with Dr. LaGasse who served as a go-between for myself and the three authors of the paper as we worked out an acceptable correction to the original article. Ultimately, the three authors agreed to add two citations of my AMTA Pro podcast episode entitled, “Potential Harm in Music Therapy?” into the main document of their article. I felt that the authors and I were able to find a joint resolution. 

It was extremely disheartening to learn on November 15th, 2021 from Dr. LaGasse that the academic publisher, Oxford University Press (OUP), that houses the Journal of Music Therapy would not be allowing these citations to be added to the online version of “It’s…Complicated: A Theoretical Model of Music-Induced Harm. An ethics body within OUP claimed that embedding changes within the original article would create undue confusion for readers because a discrepancy would exist between the original print and corrected online versions of the article. An OUP representative proposed that a correction notice (i.e., the corrigendum I previously referred to) that was linked to the top of the online version of the article was sufficient. I explained that such a correction notice was grossly inadequate and was not a meaningful step to directly correct the literature. Without direct citation of my MTHM in Silverman et al.’s article, the practical outcome is that most readers will not notice or will ignore the hyperlinked correction, thus remaining unaware that my MTHM was the seminal framework for organizing music-related harm. The article as it continues to stand today is based on plagiarized ideas because an ethics body within OUP deemed that the agreed-upon corrective action was administratively bothersome.

Once again, I felt like I was left with no meaningful choices. Around this time, I learned that the results of the investigation that Dr. LaGasse had initiated in August had found no instance of plagiarism. When I asked for clarification in light of the acknowledgement recommendation that the JMT review committee had made, Dr. LaGasse directed me to a COPE flowchart with guidelines for dealing with plagiarism in a published article. The JMT review committee had not actually been the deciding authority about whether plagiarism had occurred. This authority rested with the offending author’s (i.e., Dr. Silverman’s) academic institution, the University of Minnesota — an obvious conflict of interest. Dr. LaGasse reported that the University of Minnesota had not found plagiarism or misconduct to have occurred, but she was not able to share any report explaining the rationale for this conclusion. When I reached out to the University of Minnesota’s Office of the Vice President for Research, the office shared only that the university’s review into misconduct allegations against Dr. Silverman had concluded, citing that the Minnesota Data Practices Act restricted them from elaborating further.

The fact that the COPE guidelines allow institutions to judge their own faculty members’ plagiarism is an obvious conflict of interest. It is difficult to imagine the University of Minnesota having objective judgement regarding a tenured faculty member who has helped bring in at least $800,000 in funding and whose 3100+ citations boost the university’s reputation.  If academic institutions are allowed to judge their own faculty members’ culpability, then this is a glaring problem for how plagiarism is dealt with in music therapy (and science at large) because ethical judgement requires objectivity. This, along with the fact that an ethics body within Oxford University Press had the authority to obstruct a joint resolution between myself and the authors, makes me question the integrity of academic publishers that serve as gatekeepers of scientific knowledge. 

In response, I wrote to Dr. LaGasse requesting that the article, “It’s..Complicated: A Theoretical for Music-Induced Harm” be retracted on the basis that the Music-Induced Harm model was meaningfully influenced by and thus plagiarized my Music Therapy and Harm model without direct citation. Per COPE retraction guidelines, retractions are appropriate when plagiarism threatens the integrity of the literature, even when an honest error has occurred (as the authors in this situation contend). Precedent exists for retractions to be made based on concerns about references and attributions alone. Records from the Retraction Watch database indicate that this rationale by itself has led to the retraction of at least one article published in an Oxford University Press journal. 

I made this request as a last attempt at justice because per COPE guidelines, the journal editor is the sole judge of whether an article should be retracted. In my rationale for the retraction, I summarized the points from my July 2021 blog post and explained that the hyperlinked corrigendum was a grossly inadequate way to amend the throughline in the published literature. I pointed out that the University of Minnesota has an obvious interest in protecting Dr. Silverman who is a highly cited author, and likely brings in significant financial funding. Dr. LaGasse denied my retraction request, reporting that it would be unethical of her to act against the findings of the investigation that followed COPE guidelines.

I don’t know if my experiences matter in the music therapy field or scientific publication standards as a whole. The past year and a half has taught me that systematic injustices persist despite undeniable evidence, patience, and good faith. Many of the people I’ve interacted with, who embody the publication and scientific systems, have been complicit in the breakdown of their systems’ purpose. Individuals who hold responsibility in a system are supposed to be in those positions to enact the system’s underlying values and priorities. People make the decisions about how, when, and to what degree the systems should be enforced. Systematic harm is difficult to see within individual judgment calls, and it’s likely that the people I’ve interacted with have internally had reasonable-enough explanations for their decisions. But when it’s put all together, I’ve received a converging message from all the people I encountered: your concern is not important enough for me to rectify the situation, even though it is my responsibility to be that pillar. 

I have been confused by the mixed actions from people whom I’ve interacted with as a result of my whistleblowing post. For example, I have had several conversations with Dr. LaGasse and CEO Calhoun Coates in which they acknowledged the challenges of my experiences and apologized on behalf of the association, which I greatly appreciated. In those conversations, I was given space to voice my opinions as I saw fit and was listened to thoughtfully. However CEO Calhoun Coates also requested multiple times before the 2021 AMTA conference that I edit a pre-recorded talk I gave entitled, “Considerations for Ethical Leadership in Music Therapy” to take out any mention of plagiarism. I denied these suggestions and the version that was presented at the conference was the version I originally recorded.

Later during the AMTA conference, I got a public apology from now-President Gooding during the association’s general business meeting. She reported that she had no knowledge of Dr. Silverman’s initial email to me nor had listened to my podcast. Her gesture was appreciated, but her actions would have been appreciated much earlier in the mediation process. Dr. Gooding didn’t respond to an email I sent her in individually inviting her to clarify her role in the situation in June 2021 before I wrote my first blog post.

Additionally, Dr. Silverman’s understanding of his role in this situation is unclear to me. I’m including a screenshot of an apology email Dr. Silverman sent me in its entirety for transparency. While the tone of the email is conciliatory, he doesn’t take responsibility for using my ideas. Instead, he apologizes for an “error in communication,” promises to “acknowledge [my] goodwill in sharing [my] work,” and says that he and the other authors were “exploring ways to remedy this.” Dr. Silverman failed to acknowledge the essential role of citations by which scholars keep track of an idea’s evolution. His email obscured the theft of my ideas and framed my experiences as though this was all a big misunderstanding, and that my kindness earned me a footnote.

These mixed messages don’t feel motivated by authentic values that the profession is supposed to be built upon. Is liability a central principle that should guide music therapy? It appears that people covering themselves legally has taken precedence over any of the five ethical principles outlined in the AMTA Code of Ethics. I have been in situations in which I was very frustrated that I could not elaborate with details for liability reasons imposed by supervisors. But, to counterbalance my inability to speak about a specific situation, I relied on my actions to speak for me moving forward — making reforms within my spheres of responsibility, communicating more transparently, and seeking out second opinions about my actions that had a disproportionate impact on others.

Witnessing loops of failure to do the right thing leaves me to question my trust in the authorities that I once looked to for inspiration. Rather than upholding the truth, those in comfortable positions have been insulated from accountability and consequences, seemingly every time. If any of the professors involved were presented with similar evidence regarding one of their own students’ academic conduct, would they be okay with it? Either we have different values altogether, or my judgment of these events is as clouded as their judgment is. Regardless, I will never submit my work to an AMTA journal again. I feel so disconnected from my professional field, that I don’t know if my experiences will lead to meaningful change. The discord in our professional culture leads me to think that they won’t. 

It’s difficult for me to contextualize this into a forward-looking message. It’s clear that our professional culture needs to center accountability, in a way that sustains the important clinical work we do. On an individual level, we need to take a serious, self-reflective look at our actions and motivations when we hold responsibility. We need to be willing to go against convention and industry standards when we see that momentum is headed towards injustice. We need to be prepared to step back when we miss the mark. But from my experiences, we cannot rely on individuals’ actions alone. We need to give our systems ethical boundaries and to give those boundaries teeth, with enforceable standards and clear lines of responsibility if we are to be considered an ethical association. If this is what we want as a professional community, then it will take work from all of us.