Googling Baron just tip of plagiarism iceburg - The Australian

Dr Goetz Richter "Googling Baron just tip of plagiarism iceburg", The Australian newspaper, October 3rd 2011

WHILE the planets aligned in the southern sky, plagiarism was altering political fates across the globe. The celebrated German politician Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg (also known as “The Googling Baron”) fell on his political sword in March this year after volunteers documented gobsmacking and extensive fudging in his doctoral dissertation. Initially, the “causa Guttenberg” had not troubled politicians. The German Chancellor had argued that a minister for defence was “no research assistant”.

Then just a couple of months later further performers and politicians pretending higher qualification were in trouble. Silvana Koch-Mehrin, a rising star of the German Liberal Party resigned from prominent positions in her party at the European Parliament after the website VroniPlag started documenting the outstanding achievements of her dissertation.

On the same day the University of Constance announced that it was stripping Veronica Sass, daughter of the colourful Bavarian politician Edmund Stoiber of her doctorate after the website named in her honour exposed her doctoral production as a “cut-and-paste” effort. In mid-July this year the University of Bonn revoked the doctorate title of yet another high-profile politician, Jorgo Chatzimarkakis.

It must be concerning for anyone to witness the abuse of universities as failing clearance houses for political impressionism. For we must realise that one important conclusion from the sad matters in Germany is the increasing inability of universities to comply with their own standards of intellectual accountability only to be shown by volunteer websites how doctoral dissertations should have been supervised or examined.

Read more...