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German Defense Minister plagiarised doctoral thesis, gets caught.
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| woscar |
| quote: | Germany's Guttenberg 'deliberately' plagiarised
Germany's former defence minister "deliberately" plagiarised his doctoral thesis, a committee has found.
Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg resigned in March after admitting to "serious mistakes" in his 2006 legal dissertation, but denied cheating.
An investigation by Bayreuth University found the 39-year-old had "grossly violated standard research practices and in so doing deliberately deceived".
"It was obvious that plagiarism was involved," the committee concluded.
'Zu Copyberg'
Mr Guttenberg, a baron, was one of the most popular ministers in Chancellor Angela Merkel's cabinet and tipped by some as a future German leader.
But he came under pressure after a Bremen University law professor began reviewing his thesis with the aid of the internet.
Allegations arose that he had lifted a passage from a newspaper article word-for-word, and included a paragraph from the US embassy's website without attribution.
Upon further scrutiny, it was claimed more than half of the 475-page thesis featured large sections borrowed from others' work.
The scandal led to the minister being nicknamed Baron Cut-and-Paste, Zu Copyberg and Zu Googleberg by the German media.
More than 50,000 academics signed a signed a letter objecting to his continued role in the government.
Mr Guttenberg eventually stepped down in March - a decision he called "the most painful step of my life".
But opinion polls have suggested he remains popular in Germany, where reports say his Christian Social Union (CSU) party would like him to return to frontline politics. |
SOURCE
"Baron Cut-and-Paste"
:stongue: |
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| Meat187 |
From a random rant I posted somewhere:
| quote: | Originally posted by Meat187
Have you heard about that German politician who faked his PhD thesis? [...] Copied texts from many other authors without quoting. Now got caught which caused a media storm. Idiot claims it was not intentional. How's that even possible? You know what I think happened? He had someone else write it, a ghostwriter. Paid him 40.000 bucks or so for a 400 page thesis. If only I would get 100 Euros per page. Anyway, the ghostwriter maybe didn't even know for whom he was writing and just quickly put together some stuff to cash in. Has probably better things to do. And now the guy is ed: he can't admit someone else wrote it and it was not his own mistake, because that cheating would even be worse. So he must pretend that someones ty work that was just use to make some quick cash from him is his own. lol, what a bite-yourseöf-in-the-ass situation. |
Let me also point out that this guy was, by a gigantic margin, the most popular politician here and practically determined to run for chancellor one day. Maybe he'll return in some years... |
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| Jackson |
I don't understand why people do this with thesis' or dissertations. There are probably 100s of websites in the UK that offer to write your thesis for you - for ridiculous sums of money.
I was offered an extension for my dissertation, but didn't take it as I knew it would make my grade feel undeserved.
Maybe its just me, but I really don't understand the point in "cheating" on something when you're at degree level or higher. |
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