Plagiarism haunts Europe

By DEBORA WEBER-WULFF
A SPECTRE is haunting Europe, and this time it is the spectre of plagiarism and scientific misconduct.
Some high-profile politicians have had to resign in the last 18 months – but the revelations are also shaking respected European universities.
Many European countries, especially Germany, have long considered it unnecessary to give plagiarism more than a cursory look. One trusts in the self-cleansing powers of science, end of story.
Last February, a reviewer of German Defence Minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg’s doctoral dissertation discovered and documented some plagiarised passages.
When the papers pounced on this, zu Guttenberg denied any wrongdoing, calling the accusations “absurd”. If he had messed up the odd footnote, he said he would fix it for the second edition.
Within days, a group of people formed around a wiki they called GuttenPlag Wiki and proved him to be quite wrong. He had to resign two weeks later.
That was not the end of it.
Soon it was suspected that a major ex-politician’s daughter was guilty of plagiarism in her dissertation, and a new wiki was set up, VroniPlag Wiki, to document this case. Quite soon, plagiarism was discovered in yet another dissertation, and it has not stopped.
Currently, there are 27 documented cases on the site.
Elsewhere in Europe, similar problems have emerged.
A Romanian education minister lasted just a week in office before having to step down, accused of plagiarising academic papers.
Meanwhile, the leading scientific journal Nature has accused the Romanian prime minister of plagiarising part of his PhD.
He denies wrongdoing and has been backed by a Research Ethics Council, but the accusations have now been upheld by two academic panels in Romania, including one at the University of Bucharest, which awarded the PhD in 2003.
The Hungarian president has already lost his doctorate and resigned on account of plagiarism, and the Russian minister of culture is facing accusations that 16 passages of his doctoral dissertation were copied from other sources. He denies the allegations.
This is no laughing matter.
Doctorates are highly esteemed, particularly in countries such as Germany or Austria, where it is customary to address people by their titles – and a Herr or Frau Doktor is somehow a cut above the rest.
Some politicians seem to want to cash in on the automatic respect and the assumption of competency that goes with the title, but without investing the time or effort that is necessary.
Just looking at the CVs of some of the authors who have been exposed as plagiarists, one wonders how it would be possible for them to do research, hang out at libraries, wait forever for inter-library loans, and get everything written up, as a mere sideline to their already very demanding lives as active politicians.
Some have argued: “Who cares, they won’t be teaching at university, so let them have their fun.” – BBC