Annette Schavan German education minister stripped of doctorate after her university found she 'plagiarised large parts of her thesis' | Daily Mail Online comments Embarrassing: Germany's education minister Annette Schavan has been stripped of her philosophy doctorate after her university found her guilty of plagiarism The German minister for education is under pressure to resign after being stripped of her philosophy doctorate for alleged plagiarism. Annette Schavan, a close ally of Chancellor Angela Merkel, has been rocked by the decision of the University of Duesseldorf after they said parts of her 1980 doctoral thesis had been copied. Incredibly, she is the second minister to be accused of plagiarism in the German government after defence minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg was also found to have copied work for his thesis and quit in 2011. The University of Duesseldorf launched an investigation after an accusation against Mrs Schavan was posted online by an anonymous blogger. A faculty committee concluded that her work, which dealt with the formation of conscience, included a 'substantial number of unaccredited direct quotes from other texts'.

In a statement declaring the doctorate invalid and withdrawing it from Ms Schavan, the faculty head Bruno Bleckmann said they had 'decided by secret ballot, by 12 votes to two, with one abstention'. Mrs Schavan has said she will take legal action against the decision, but it is an untimely distraction for Angela Merkel ahead of September's national election. 'I will not accept the decision of the University of Duesseldorf and I will file a lawsuit against it,' Mrs Schavan, 57, told reporters during a visit to Johannesburg, South Africa. She declined to make any further comment for legal reasons. Pressure: The scandal surrounding Mrs Schavan (left) is an unwelcome distraction for Chancellor Angela Merkel (right) ahead of German national elections in September The accusations of plagiarism are especially embarrassing for Mrs Schavan because she oversees Germany's universities and had previously been scathing in her criticism of Mr Guttenberg, who resigned a month after losing his doctorate. RELATED ARTICLES Share this article Share 'An education minister who is proven to have grossly violated academic rules cannot continue in the post,' said Renate Kuenast, a leading member of the opposition Greens.

'I assume that Frau Schavan will spare herself and education a prolongation of this affair by resigning.' Mrs Merkel has not publicly commented on the Schavan case. But members of her centre-right coalition said the minister had fallen victim to a politically motivated campaign to damage the government ahead of the autumn federal election. Recurring problem: Mrs Schavan is the second government minister to be found guilty of plagiarism after former defence minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg who resigned in 2011 Plagiarised: The University of Duesseldorf said Annette Schavan's work had a 'substantial number of unaccredited direct quotes from other texts' The German media has been mostly critical of Mrs Schavan. 'If the education minister has cheated in her doctoral thesis, it is like the finance minister secretly hiding away his money in Switzerland or the traffic minister driving a car while drunk,' said the Bild newspaper. 'There is no alternative (to resignation) for her.' In Tuesday's ruling, the Duesseldorf University commission said Schavan had 'systematically and intentionally presented intellectual performance that in reality she did not generate herself'.

The decision left Schavan without an academic title, an important symbol of status in German politics and business, as her degree programme in philosophy finished solely with a PhD. Since the allegations first arose in May last year, Schavan has repeatedly denied wrongdoing and said she wrote her dissertation with a clear conscience. Her lawyers have said the proceedings of the commission had been riddled with mistakes and were unlawful, not least because information was leaked to the public in the process. German Minister Quits Over Plagiarism Scandal - Yahoo Finance UK Tip : Use comma (,) to separate multiple quotes. Learn more... Fri, Jan 6, 2017, 02:53 GMT - UK Markets open in 5 hrs 7 mins German Minister Quits Over Plagiarism Scandal Sky News – Sat, Feb 9, 2013 14:35 GMT View Photo German Minister Quits Over Plagiarism Scandal Germany's education minister has resigned after being accused of plagiarism over three decades ago and having her doctorate withdrawn.

Annette Schavan, a close ally and confidante of Chancellor Angela Merkel, was stripped of her doctorate by her former university earlier this week after it was claimed she had plagiarised parts of her thesis over 30 years ago. The minister denies the allegations. Duesseldorf's Heinrich Heine University decided to revoke her PhD following a review of her 1980 thesis after an anonymous blogger last year raised plagiarism allegations. The university said she had "systematically and intentionally" copied parts of her thesis, titled "Person and Conscience". On announcing her decision to quit, 57-year-old Mrs Schavan reiterated her vow to fight the allegations but said she did not want the claims to damage the office, party or Government. She said: "I will not accept the decision (by the university) and will take legal action against it. "When a (education) minister sues a university, then that comes with strains, for my office, for the ministry, the government and for the Christian Democrats (Mrs Merkel’s party). I want to avoid just that." Chancellor Merkel said she accepted her resignation "with a heavy heart".

The resignation is a political blow for Germany's leader less than eight months before elections in which the she is hoping to win a third term in office. Mrs Schavan becomes the second close ally of the Chancellor to step down over plagiarism. Only two years ago then-defence minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg lost his doctorate and quit when it emerged that he copied large parts of his doctoral thesis. The extent of Mrs Schavan's alleged plagiarism is thought to be less than that of Mr zu Guttenberg's, whose actions earned the aristocrat the nicknames "Baron cut-and-paste" and "zu Googleberg". Nevertheless, Mrs Schavan's mistakes were seen as indefensible given her position as education minister in a country where academic titles are taken extremely seriously. At the time of Mr zu Guttenberg's downfall Mrs Schavan she said she was "ashamed" of her former cabinet colleague. "As someone who was herself awarded a doctorate 31 years ago and who has supervised several doctoral candidates, I am ashamed and not just behind closed doors," she told the Sueddeutsche Zeitung in 2011.

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The discount sports retailer announced on Thursday that 80.9% had voted for Dr Keith Hellawell's re-election at a … More » A plague of plagiarism at the heart of politics | Times Higher Education (THE) Times Higher Education (THE) Last Name * Email * A valid e-mail address. All e-mails from the system will be sent to this address. The e-mail address is not made public and will only be used if you wish to receive a new password or wish to receive certain news or notifications by e-mail. Password Higher education updates from the THE editorial team World University Rankings news New offers, products and services from THE/TES Global Choose your profile * GO A plague of plagiarism at the heart of politics Germany and Eastern Europe rocked by string of high-profile cases within their governments. Paul Jump reports May 16, 2013 Source: Femke De Jong We’ve fostered an environment in which major ethical problems have emerged with very few people willing to say or do something about them When Annette Schavan, Germany’s minister for education and research, resigned earlier this year amid allegations of plagiarism, weary sighs could be heard along the length of the Danube.

Schavan was merely the latest in a seemingly endless string of politicians from Central and Eastern Europe to have been accused in recent years of obtaining their doctorates on the strength of plagiarised theses. Schavan resigned in February, four days after Heinrich Heine University of Düsseldorf revoked her 1980 doctorate, awarded for a dissertation titled “Person and Conscience: Studies on the Conditions, Need and Requirements of Today’s Consciences”. Bruno Bleckmann, dean of Düsseldorf’s Faculty of Arts and chair of the investigating committee, said that Schavan had “systematically and deliberately claimed as her own intellectual achievements which she had in fact not produced herself”. Schavan’s defenders have suggested that her apparently rather lax approach to citation was common practice at the time and have accused Düsseldorf of overreacting. But Bleckmann said it had been made clear to students even in the 1980s that “unmarked literal takeovers of foreign texts” would be regarded as plagiarism and be subject to disciplinary action. Schavan, for her part, continues to insist that she had no intent to deceive and has begun legal action against the university.

It was the requirement to avoid a conflict of interest while doing so that ostensibly prompted her resignation from the Federal Ministry of Education and Research - a resignation that Chancellor Angela Merkel, herself the holder of a PhD in quantum chemistry, accepted “with a heavy heart”. Düsseldorf had launched its investigation at Schavan’s request after the plagiarism allegations against her were posted on a website called Schavanplag in May 2012. Such sites have proliferated in Germany in recent years since the high- profile resignation of defence minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg in March 2011. The aristocratic zu Guttenberg, once tipped as a future chancellor, had been accused of plagiarism the previous month on a website called GuttenPlag Wiki. He initially dismissed the allegations as “abstruse” but an investigation by the University of Bayreuth, which awarded the degree in 2006 on the basis of a thesis on the development of the US and European Union constitutions, upheld them. Bayreuth revoked the doctorate. The minister admitted he had made “serious errors” but claimed he had not deliberately cheated and blamed his busy schedule for the mistakes.

His initial refusal to resign was supported by Merkel, but her remark that she had “hired a politician, not a scientific assistant” provoked a petition condemning her “mockery” of academic values, which was signed by tens of thousands of doctoral candidates and PhD holders. After nearly two weeks of being ridiculed as “Baron zu Googleberg”, the “minister for cut-and-paste”, he stepped down. Soon after zu Guttenberg’s downfall, another website, VroniPlag, began levelling plagiarism allegations against other high-profile German politicians. Prominent among the seven whose doctorates have so far been rescinded is former rising star Silvana Koch-Mehrin. She resigned as vice- president of the European Parliament and a board member of the Free Democratic Party - the junior members of Merkel’s ruling coalition - in May 2011 amid allegations that she had plagiarised her 2001 thesis, “Historical Monetary Union between Industry and Politics: the Latin Monetary Union, 1865-19”.

The University of Heidelberg announced in June 2011 that it would revoke her PhD after its own inquiry found more than 120 plagiarised passages from more than 30 sources in her thesis - two-thirds of which were not mentioned in its bibliography. According to Debora Weber-Wulff, professor of media and computing at the University of Applied Sciences in Berlin, Koch-Mehrin is among several politicians found guilty of plagiarism who have failed in subsequent attempts to sue their alma maters: precedents, she says, that do not bode well for Schavan. But those taking legal action “get to keep their doctor title until the last court of appeal’s verdict is final”, she notes. “That seems to be why they are doing it.” Weber-Wulff is one of around a dozen volunteers who work regularly for VroniPlag. Although she has been warning about student plagiarism in Germany for a decade, she has been “shocked to the core” by recent events. “How could the advisers accept theses like these?” she asks.

“There are even many cases in which the [works of] advisers themselves were plagiarised and they did not even notice.” She believes that a culture of “cutting corners” has become the norm in German research and “seems to have fostered an environment in which major ethical problems have emerged with very few people willing to say or do something about them. It has shaken my belief in the basic honesty that used to be so firmly connected to German research.” Weber-Wulff argues that VroniPlag is not politically motivated: 16 academics are among the 45 people whose work it has scrutinised (12 politicians have received the treatment). So why have so many German politicians been caught out? One reason might be the sheer number with doctorates: common estimates put the figure at around a fifth of the country’s total. According to François Paquet-Durand, junior group leader at the University of Tübingen ’s Centre for Ophthalmology, this is because in Germany and in neighbouring countries that were part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, holding a doctorate has conferred huge prestige and respectability since the late 19th century. Its use as a form of address is still widespread.

Despite the number of cases, he is reassured by the fact that those caught cheating typically lose their jobs owing to “overwhelming public pressure” - which he attributes to Germans’ ongoing attachment to the strict moral principles of the philosopher Immanuel Kant. However, it transpires that this is not always the case elsewhere on the banks of the Danube. According to Peter Somogyi, professor of neurobiology at the University of Oxford , the zu Guttenberg case had an impact in Hungary: it taught the country’s politicians - many of whom have doctorates - that they could use plagiarism accusations as a means to attack their opponents. Early last year, the Hungarian weekly economics magazine Heti Világgazdaság (World Economy Weekly, known as HVG), which is associated with the country’s socialist opposition, printed allegations that Pál Schmitt, at that time Hungary’s president, had committed extensive plagiarism in his 1992 thesis, “An Analysis of the Programme of the Modern Olympics”. Budapest’s Semmelweis University confirmed the allegations in March 2012 and sent its report to Miklós Réthelyi, minister of national resources and former rector of the institution, who had theoretical jurisdiction in the case.

However, Réthelyi denied that jurisdiction and returned the report unopened. According to a Semmelweis statement, the university’s senate then “considered it its duty to definitively settle” the question of whether to withdraw Schmitt’s doctorate, and voted overwhelmingly to do so. The common reaction was: ‘Ponta may have plagiarised: so what? Everybody does that. We’ve got bigger problems’ A week later, at the beginning of April, Schmitt bowed to intense pressure and resigned his largely ceremonial position, berating his political opponents for kicking up an international storm. However, he maintained his innocence and sought a judicial review - still extant - challenging Semmelweis’ authority to revoke his degree on the grounds that it was awarded by a different university with which Semmelweis had subsequently merged. The political storm also claimed the scalp of Tivadar Tulassay, Semmelweis’ rector, who stood down the day before Schmitt (around three months earlier than his term was due to end).

Just weeks after Schmitt’s resignation, a regional newspaper published allegations that former socialist prime minister Ferenc Gyurcsány had failed to submit the required dissertation while training as a teacher at what is now the University of Pécs in the 1980s. Neither the university nor Gyurcsány was able to locate the dissertation. According to Somogyi, the government “blew up” the allegations as part of a campaign to discredit the former leader. Then in November 2012, HVG printed allegations that Zsolt Semjén, deputy prime minister and leader of the Christian Democratic People’s Party, the junior party in government, had plagiarised his 1992 soci-ology doctoral thesis, “An Attempted Interpretation of the New Age”. Budapest’s Eötvös Loránd University , where the thesis was submitted, found significant overlap between his thesis and one of his supervisor’s unpublished papers. The institution did not withdraw his doctorate, which was based on one written at a different institution, Pázmány Péter Catholic University, from which Semjén also holds a doctorate.

Pázmány Péter declined to investigate the charges and the prime minister’s office called the charges a “campaign of slander”. In Somogyi’s view, Eötvös Loránd is “scared” to rescind Semjén’s doctorate. He says that funding both there and at Semmelweis - which he rates as Hungary’s best two universities - has gradually been reduced “with all kinds of excuses” since the plagiarism verdicts, while other institutions, such as Pázmány Péter, have been “pumped with money”. Somogyi also blames Semmelweis’ funding fears for its refusal to act on another set of allegations: he has urged it to withdraw the honorary doctorate of Constantin Copotoiu, the former rector and now senate president of Romania’s University of Medicine and Pharmacy, of Târgu Mureş. Copotoiu, along with two other senior figures at the institution, was implicated in a plagiarism scandal highlighted last year in the journal Nature. Marius Echim, at that time vice-president of Romania’s National Ethics Council, told Nature that its unpublished report “identified clear plagiarism in all three cases and recommended that two of the three professors involved be dismissed from the university”.

However, on the day the report was delivered to the government, 8 June, it dissolved the committee. A replacement with an entirely new membership re-examined the case and largely cleared the senior trio of misconduct, shifting the blame on to juniors. Before it was reconstituted, the ethics committee had been poised to vote on allegations against a senior politician, Ioan Mang, the education minister and computer scientist at the University of Oradea, who had been accused of plagiarism in several of his academic papers. Mang had already resigned from the government in May 2012, just days after being appointed to the new government led by Victor Ponta. Ponta claimed that the accusations were politically motivated. The saga took a sensational turn in June when Ponta himself was accused of having plagiarised his PhD thesis on the International Criminal Court, which he successfully submitted to the University of Bucharest in 2003. Ponta has strongly denied the claims, arguing that he listed all the sources that he “consulted and drew inspiration from” in his bibliography, so “the only reproach that can be brought is the fact that I did not mention the author in a footnote on the [same] page”.

On 29 June, the National Council for Attestation of Titles, Diplomas and University Certificates found that large chunks of Ponta’s thesis had been plagiarised. However, immediately prior to the announcement, Liviu Pop, Mang’s successor at the Ministry of Education, Research, Youth and Sport, annulled the council’s mandate. The newly constituted National Ethics Council then investigated the claims and in July declared that Ponta’s thesis was in accordance with the academic regulations of the time. Interestingly, the Romanian authors whose work he is alleged to have plagiarised have also repudiated the plagiarism allegations. But that was not the end of the matter. Just one day after the council’s verdict, an investigation by Bucharest took a different view and backed the original plagiarism verdict. The association of Romanian academics abroad, Ad Astra, called on Ponta to resign and more than 3,000 academics petitioned the education ministry to revoke his PhD. It has refused to do so, however.

Cristian Dogaru, research fellow in the University of Bern ’s Division of International and Environmental Health, adds that Ponta was even “cynical enough to joke about” the plagiarism allegations after overwhelmingly winning last December’s general election: according to the Romanian press, he observed that “it looks like us plagiarists are voted for more”. Dogaru says that the election result reflected the plagiarism scandal’s lack of impact on ordinary Romanians: “The common reaction was: ‘He may have plagiarised: so what? Everybody does that. We’ve got bigger problems.’” He adds that Romanian politicians continue to believe that their status - particularly in other EU countries - is enhanced by academic trappings. Hence, in addition to acquiring doctorates, they often hold academic positions - with universities apparently only too willing to acquire the influence this buys them in the country’s highly centralised educational system. However, Dogaru believes that common knowledge of the ease with which academic qualifications can now be obtained has eroded their prestige domestically.

Lucian Ancu, postdoctoral researcher at the University of Bern ’s Albert Einstein Center for Fundamental Physics, agrees, noting that many Romanian universities are culturally tolerant of PhD theses that “pick up parts from other sources and glue them together”. The lack of limits on the number of doctoral students an academic can supervise also means that some “barely read” the theses they oversee. “Several reports in the Romanian media have shown that there was a market in theses…and that sometimes even employers of the universities were [involved],” he says. “As far as I know, there has never been a decision to suspend a title or to end a contract of any professor that supervised such a thesis.” Dogaru says that Ponta, like many other European politicians accused of plagiarism, was already a government minister while studying for his doctorate (in his case supervised by Adrian Năstase, Romania’s prime minister at the time). He doubts that active politicians have time to “do such menial tasks as writing a doctoral thesis”. According to Razvan Orasanu, director of research at the Romanian Academic Society thinktank and a senior adviser in the previous government, acquiring a doctorate is a common perk of political office.

“As senior adviser on economic affairs to the prime minister, I was offered the ‘opportunity’ of a PhD in economics, which I promptly declined,” he says. “The person in front of me was shocked that I turned down such ‘generosity’.” This attitude is symptomatic of a lack of collective ethical principle in Romania’s government, Dogaru claims: something he attributes, at least in part, to the country’s Communist years: “The plagiarism cases involving public figures are only the tip of the iceberg: they reflect much larger negative traits that plague Romanian society, such as corruption, nepotism and thievery.” Orasanu, who helped to expose the plagiarism allegations against Mang, is exasperated by the political feeding frenzy that plagiarism allegations provoke - long before any independent expert committee (if one is even involved) passes judgement. “What deeply irks me,” he complains, “is that nobody is interested in the education system, which still needs to function long after [everyone forgets] who Ponta and Mang are. “Supporters of Ponta are busy saying that he respected the rules [in place in] 2003; those who want to knock him down say that he is a copy-and-paste prime minister.

But the [bigger] issue is plain: do we still want a PhD thesis to mean something?” The plagiarism cases involving public figures are only the tip of the iceberg: they reflect much larger negative traits that plague Romanian society ‘A degree is a degree! Whether fake or genuine…it makes no difference’ The legitimacy of the educational qualifications held by Pakistan’s politicians has also come under scrutiny in recent weeks. In the run-up to this month’s historic elections - the first transition from one democratically elected civilian government to another in Pakistan’s history - the newly strengthened and supposedly independent Election Commission of Pakistan has scrutinised candidates to determine whether they are fit to serve in national and provincial assemblies. Anyone caught with a fake degree has been deemed in violation of an article in the constitution stating that MPs must be of “good character”. Eleven lawmakers who served in the previous government have been disqualified from running again on these grounds. Fake degrees among politicians flourished under the previous president, Pervez Musharraf, after he introduced a requirement for MPs to hold degrees or religious qualifications.

The law, introduced shortly before the 2002 elections, was officially billed as a way to raise standards of governance, but was widely seen as an attempt by Musharraf to purge the ranks of members of the major parties who opposed his military rule. However, most candidates produced “degrees” in time for the elections and by 2008, even the few who had been barred six years earlier had produced the required certificates. There was little scrutiny of their validity. Two months after the 2008 elections, the law was scrapped on the grounds that it ostensibly barred most of the population from holding office: in Pakistan, less than 1 per cent of the population has a degree and literacy hovers around the 50 per cent mark. “Requiring a specific level of education for being in the contest for political office is undemocratic,” argues Rasul Bakhsh Rais, professor of political science at the Lahore University of Management Sciences . “Musharraf enacted this law with a political motive to keep certain known politicians out of the assemblies.” In 2010, the Supreme Court began investigating whether existing lawmakers who had run for office while the degree law was in effect had abided by it.

This was widely seen as an attempt to clear the ranks of the ruling Pakistan People’s Party. Chief justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, who is known to loathe the PPP and President Asif Ali Zardari, oversaw the investigation. At the time, Mr Chaudhry was also pushing to have the deeply unpopular president tried for corruption and his actions were applauded by wide sections of the population. But analysts warned that the Supreme Court’s activism paved the way for unelected bodies to take over the country - a familiar threat in a nation ruled by the military for half of its history. Stoking public outrage during the investigations, Nawab Aslam Raisani, at that time chief minister of Balochistan Province, publicly declared: “A degree is a degree! Whether fake or genuine, it’s a degree. It makes no difference.” When a provincial lawmaker from the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz party was asked to provide evidence of his academic qualifications, he produced certificates that showed him receiving a master’s degree in 2002, a bachelor’s in 2006 and matriculating from school in 2007.

Salmaan Taseer, at that time governor of Punjab (he was assassinated in 2011), commented on Twitter that he should be “disqualified for stupidity, not fraud”. According to media reports, of the 13,490 candidates who contested the 2008 elections, about 2,000 have fake degrees. In the latest round of scrutiny, former education minister Sheikh Waqas Akram had his degree and A-level certificates declared fake by the Higher Education Commission, a branch of the Ministry of Education that he headed from 2005 until this year. Questions have also been raised about President Zardari’s qualifications. According to his official biography, he studied business and economics at Pedinton School in London, graduating in 1976. There is no record of an institution by that name. “The legislators with fake degrees have always offered the same excuse,” explains Rais. “Political necessity forced them to violate the law because they would not leave the political arena uncontested.

“But when such a large number of cheaters occupy seats in our federal and provincial assemblies, people within and outside the country rightly question the standard of our society and the quality of our democratic leadership.” Annabel Symington Guttenberg resigns - The Local Guttenberg resigns 1 March 2011 10:43 CET+01:00 Embattled German Defence Minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg resigned on Tuesday amid intense political pressure following revelations he plagiarized large parts of his doctoral thesis. "It's the most painful decision of my life," Guttenberg said at a hastily arranged press conference in Berlin. "The reason is I am no longer certain I can carry out the high responsibility of my office." The conservative minister had informed Chancellor Angela Merkel and President Christian Wulff earlier of his intention to step down. “I was always prepared to fight, but I reached the limits of my strength,” he said. His resignation marks the final chapter of a scandal that brought down Germany's most popular politician. When accusations Guttenberg plagiarized parts of his dissertation surfaced nearly two weeks ago, the minister initially played down the matter, calling the allegations “abstruse.” But just days later he dropped his Dr.

title, admitting that he made “serious errors,” though unintentionally. Guttenberg's alma mater, the University of Bayreuth, later officially stripped the 39-year-old political shooting star of his law doctorate. However, Guttenberg on Tuesday made clear he was not stepping down due to the plagiarism affair, but rather because the scandal was deflecting from the reform of the German military and the challenges faced by the nation's soldiers. "There has been a dramatic shift in the attention of the public and the media," he said, referring to how the recent death of troops in Afghanistan had been overshadowed. "When this is at the expense of the soldiers I can no longer justify it." The Bavarian aristocrat personally thanked Merkel, who had faced increasing criticism for her support of Guttenberg in recent days. Press Review | GuttenPlag Wiki | Fandom powered by Wikia Bearbeiten Spiegel Online: Guttenberg 'Moving Abroad for At Least Two Years' "After months of hiding from the spotlight, Germany's fallen former defense minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg is ready for his next big move -- abroad.

The conservative is preparing to leave the country and rethink his career following the plagiarism allegations that stalled his promising political trajectory." June 2, 2011 Bearbeiten Copy, Shake, and Paste: Plagiarism Detection Software and zu Guttenberg's Thesis (Debora Weber-Wulff and Katrin Köhler) "We* [the authors] couldn't resist. Here we had a thesis, a very large one (475 pages) for which a group of collaborators, the GuttenPlagWiki people, had already determined which bits were plagiarized from which source. We decided to see how plagiarism software would fare on the same material." Gipp.com: Using Guttenberg’s doctoral thesis to test plagiarism detection systems (Bela Gipp) "So far Plagiarism Detection Systems rely solely on text analysis, but text-based detection systems struggle, as study results show, to identify paraphrased forms of plagiarism, idea plagiarism and translation-plagiarism. In our paper 'Comparative Evaluation of Text- and Citation-based Plagiarism Detection Approaches using GuttenPlag' , we have evaluated whether analyzing the citations of a document could help to increase detection rates.

A preprint of our paper (to be published in June at the JCDL 11 conference in Ottawa), in which we evaluate the potential of citation-based plagiarism detection systems using Guttenberg’s doctoral thesis, can be found here ." May 2011 Bearbeiten IP Osgoode: GuttenPlag; German Politican Brought Down By Anonymous Internet Activists (Taylor Venderhelm) "The allegations against Guttenberg first gained public attention following a newspaper article by Andreas Fischer-Lescano, a law professor at the University of Bremen, which questioned the minister’s dissertation. From there, an anonymous online group banded together and began dissecting the material while posting their findings on online forums. As the movement grew, the group utilized an online wiki aptly named the GuttenPlag. The wiki was created by a leader in online plagiarism-hunting, a doctoral candidate with a background in online gaming who goes under the pseudonym “ PlagDoc .” Along with Tim Bartel , an employee of Wikia , the two have been instrumental in organizing the online effort to analyze Guttenberg’s dissertation".

May 24, 2011 Bearbeiten EurActiv: Austrian commissioner faces plagiarism accusations "Former German Defence Minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg, a rising political star who was seen as Chancellor Angela Merkel's political heir, was forced to resign at the beginning of 2011 over a plagiarism scandal. A coalition of citizens and academics had accused him of lifting large sections of his doctoral thesis from outside sources without referencing the information." May 23, 2011 Bearbeiten Financial News: The tragedy of "Herr zu Googleberg" (Giles Turner) "It seems that Guttenberg, now called zu Googleberg by the German press, failed miserably in managing either one, let alone both. But while I was choosing between trying to understand the concept of Gesinnungsethik and choosing another glass of Riesling, my companion informed me the problem was not about the ethics of plagiarism, but about how the perpetrators are being apprehended." – Hinweis: Paywall the Trumpet.com: Guttenberg Returns!

(Ron Fraser) "With the dust hardly settled on the leftists’ efforts to publicize apparent plagiarizing in Baron Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg’s doctoral thesis resulting in his voluntary stepping aside from all political offices, his imminent return to politics is already being forecast by the German press. He is being especially encouraged to do so by party colleagues." Walker's World: Walker's World: Yes, we camp (Martin Walker) "This year, the popular Minister of Defense Karl Theodor zu Guttenberg, was forced to resign his post after he was found to have taken large sections of his Bayreuth University doctoral thesis from other people's work, including newspaper articles, without having sourced the information." May 12, 2011 Bearbeiten Spiegel Online: Two Scalps In One Day - Germany's Anti-Plagiarism Activists On A Roll (Intellpuke) "The online community of anti-plagiarism activists in Germany are going from strength to strength. Their efforts to uncover academic cheating caused a leading FDP politician to resign on Wednesday, and also led a German university to strip the daughter of a former state governor of her Ph.D.

The whistleblowing platform WikiLeaks has been described as the world's most dangerous website. But for German politicians at least, other collaborative wiki-based projects appear to pose a far greater threat. The GuttenPlag Wiki project managed to bring down the conservative rising star Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg in March. He resigned as German defense minister after the collaborative website uncovered widespread plagiarism in his Ph.D thesis." THE CHRONICLE: Band of Academic-Plagiarism Sleuths Undoes German Politicians (Aisha Labi) "A handful of bloggers began looking into Mr. Guttenberg's dissertation and posting their findings in a variety of online forums. As their output grew, it became clear that they would need a more hospitable venue than so many disparate sites or even the Google document that had been created, which allowed access to only about 100 people. The original creator of the site where they ended up collaborating,GuttenPlag Wiki, was a doctoral candidate with a background in online gaming, through which he was familiar with the collaborative wikia format, said Mr. Bartel.

Like many who have been active in the online plagiarism-hunting effort, that person, who goes by the handle PlagDoc, prefers to remain pseudonymous. At the start, said Mr. Bartel, he and PlagDoc were the only two GuttenPlag participants. By the end of the site's first day in operation, about 20 people were active online. 'It's pretty hard to say the exact number of people that are involved,' said Mr. Bartel. Because there is no requirement for participants to sign up, some flit in and out of the forum while others are active on a regular basis. 'Some people don't come back, some people just sign in to fix a typo, some people join every day and work for several hours.'" May 11, 2011 Bearbeiten m&c: Inquiry clears German university over Guttenberg plagiarism (dpa) "The panel at the University of Bayreuth ruled that the doctoral supervisor, Peter Haeberle, could not have recognized the plagiarism when he read the thesis because it was woven together from many sources.

But it said there had been no grounds for Haeberle to award first-class, or 'summa cum laude' honours to the dissertation.'We saw a problem with this,' said Stephan Rixen, chairman of the panel. The thesis had not been 'so original' and the panel could not see why Haeberle had given it such a high mark. Haeberle, who is now retired, was otherwise blameless." Science3.0: A good day for transparency Daniel Mietchen, a contributor of GuttenPlag, summarizes the events of May 11th which was a very successful day for transparency in Germany and as well a special day for the GuttenPlag/VroniPlag activists.

The Local: University plagiarism report slams Guttenberg "The chances for former defence minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg to return quickly to German politics seemed effectively buried on Wednesday after his alma mater said his thesis was full of other people’s work that he had deliberately copied." May 9, 2011 Bearbeiten crowdsourcing.org: The Age of Transparency: The Crowd as a Watchdog (Claudia Pelzer) "...This site should be well known, especially since it has been covered extensively by the media in Germany. It was set up to detect plagiarism in the dissertation (of now former) Defence Minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg, and in six weeks found nearly 1,200 instances of plagiarism (representing over 80% of the entire publication). The founder of the Guttenplag wiki, called 'PlagDoc', is unknown. In February 2011 he released a Google Doc to the public with the dissertation review process and an invitation to participate via Twitter. After the document was overloaded because of the great rush, he transferred the information collected to Wikia.

Subsequently, two interim reports and a graphical representation have been published, which has fueled public debate and ultimately brought the case to the government’s attention." April 2011 Bearbeiten The Independent: German plagiarism scandal widens (Tony Paterson in Berlin) "It has since emerged that the allegations against Mrs Koch-Mehrin are being made by a largely anonymous group called VroniPlag, the same organisation which pursued, exposed and effectively dismissed Mr zu Guttenberg with its plagiarism accusations." Reuters Canada: "Plagarism hunters" plague German politicans´ (Paul Casciato) "The so-called "plagiarism hunters" helped rock the German political establishment last month when popular Defense Minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg resigned after he admitted to copying part of his doctoral dissertation." April 25, 2011 Bearbeiten theTrumpet.com: A Plague on Your Doctorate (Ron Fraser) "Two things set us wondering when the group that has since become known as Vroniplag exposed unattributed quotations in the doctoral dissertations of three high-profile people in German society, two of them being popular politicians —ex-Defense Minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg and Silvana Koch-Mehrin ,

 a prominent Free Democratic politician—the third being Veronica Sass, the lawyer daughter of one of Germany’s most well-known elder statesmen, Bavarian Edmund Stoiber." April 24, 2011 Bearbeiten New York Times: The Whiff of Plagiarism Again Hits German Elite (Christopher F.

Schuetze) "A report by a University of Bayreuth commission charged with investigating the contention that Mr. Guttenberg cobbled together his doctoral thesis from other works without citing them is scheduled to be released this week." April 21, 2011 SPIEGEL ONLINE INTERNATIONAL: Plagiarism Hunters Have Politicians Nervous (Oliver Trenkamp) "The project is a spinoff from a similar platform, called GuttenPlag, which brought down Guttenberg." April 1, 2011 Bearbeiten Case About Bird Flu: Guttenberg and the Faust syndrome (Jane Burgermeister) "...Anyone just needs to glance at the Guttenplag website and see that there is hardly a single page without a passage that has not been lifted from another source. The opening paragraphs are copied word for word from a major newspaper. [...] In fact, a kingly 63.8% of the text is plagiarized. How could on earth can Guttenberg, therefore, expect anyone to believe this plagiarism was an accident?" theTrumpet.com: Plagiarism—First Guttenberg, Then Stoiber?

(Ron Fraser) ">Something is rotten in the state of Denmark,< quoth Marcellus in Shakespeare’s Hamlet. Thinking people could be forgiven for thinking the same in reference to Germany concerning allegations of the plagiarism of doctoral theses attached to two names famous in German politics." March 2011 Bearbeiten The Voice: Copygate: German Minister of Defense Resigns Due To Plagiarism Scandal (Aleksandra Strzelichowska) "Until a couple of weeks ago, life of the German Minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg seemed to be going swell: young, aristocratic, the most popular Minister in Merkel's cabinet, often seen as possible future chancellor." March 28, 2011 Bearbeiten AlertNet: ANALYSIS-Merkel to blame for rout but leadership not at risk Mappus, the prime minister of Germany's rich state Baden-Wurttemberg has lost the regional elections. In regard to his lost he said "a blend of domestic and external events led to his defeat".

Mappus "gave a snapshot of a floundering German conservative government that recently lost its biggest star -- Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg, who quit as defence minister over a plagiarism case -- and appears increasingly out of touch with the public."You know what the key words are: Stuttgart 21, energy consensus, the resignation of Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg, the terrible events in Japan and many others," said Mappus." March 26, 2011 Bearbeiten stltoday.com (USA): Founder sees Wikipedia as an exercise in global democracy (Marlon A. Walker) Jimmy Wales joined a discussion at Washington University yesterday - "He also gave a glimpse into Wikia, a free web-hosting site where people can create wikis, or bunches of interlinked web pages using more simplified coding. A wiki was used recently to determine exactly how much of German Defense Minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg's doctoral dissertation was the product of plagiarism.

Those who worked on that wiki found information on more than two-thirds of the document had been lifted from other sources, Wales said." After news began to spread of the wiki, it went from "zero to a million page views," Wales said." March 23, 011 Bearbeiten The Vermont CYNIC (USA): No News Is Celeb News (Max Krieger) "In Germany, the current scandal is not a drugged-up TV star spouting random catch phrases, but an impassioned debate over academic dishonesty." (...) "Every news channel, magazine and talk show is inundated not with remarks about Germany's pop stars, but about academic honesty and accountability to the people.

I think our media could stand to take a serious lesson from this." (...) "It is the media's responsibility to expose the public to actual news, not obnoxious, useless and brain-draining malarkey." March 21, 2011 The Telegraph: Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg apologises to Swiss journalist over plagiarism row "Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg, Germany`s former defence minister, has apologized to a Swiss journalist for failing to credit her as a source for parts of his doctoral thesis." March 20, 2011 The China Post: Germany ex-minister says sorry to Swiss journalist (The same news were published for example on Daily Herald or, CBSNEWS ) March 14, 2011 Calgary Herald: Ex-minister sends apologies Reuters: PRESS DIGEST - New York Times business news - March 14 "A plagiarism scandal cost Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg his job as defense minister of Germany .

It also laid bare a scramble for influence in the German news media in the post-Gutenberg era, in which the Internet has usurped the primacy of the printing press." March 13, 2011 The New York Times: Gloves Off in German Media Scramble (Eric Pfanner) March 12, 2011 Bearbeiten Executive Intelligence Review: Global Mass Strike Spreads; Glass-Steagall Only Solution (Nancy Spannaus) "When it was revealed that German Defense Minister Karl Theodor zu Guttenberg had plagiarized significant parts of the doctoral dissertation for which he was awarded a doctorate in 2007, and his political cronies continued, despite such blatant fraud, to defend him, more than 50,000 members of Germany's scientific-academic community spontaneously signed a petition online, calling for his instant dismissal or resignation." History News Network: Academic Plagarism Brings Down German Defense Minister (Dónal O’Sullivan) "Faced with mounting protests from legal scholars and the public about alleged plagiarized passages in his doctoral dissertation, German Defense Minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg has resigned.

The University of Bayreuth, where Guttenberg had graduated with top honors (summa cum laude) in 2007, had earlier stripped him of his title as more and more details about copied pages had come to light. 39-year-old Guttenberg, seen as a rising star in Chancellor Angela Merkel’s cabinet, had attempted to ride out the storm by giving up his Ph.D., claiming that professional and private obligations had caused him to be 'too casual with the sources.' He defended himself by saying that he had written the dissertation over a period of seven years while working as a deputy and being a father of two daughters." March 10, 2011 Bearbeiten EuropeanVoice.com: ‘I did it my way' "Among the unfortunates suffering collateral damage from the plagiarism allegations that forced Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg to resign as defence minister of Germany is Johannes Hahn, the European commissioner for regional policy." nature: Notes on a scandal "Events this month have shown that government stances on academic misbehaviour differ wildly.

(...) German citizens looked to the Internet to discover the extent of Guttenberg's plagiarism, which turned out to be quite shameless." March 9, 2011 reason: The Words You Use Should Be Your Own / Don't Plagiarize or Take On Loan (Michael C. Moynihan) "But Guttenplan is right; there are different standards in different cultures for this type of (allow me to be generous) laziness." nature: Notes on a scandal "Events this month have shown that government stances on academic misbehaviour differ wildly. (...) German citizens looked to the Internet to discover the extent of Guttenberg's plagiarism, which turned out to be quite shameless." University World News: GERMANY: PhD row ex-minister faces charges after resignation "However, the topic also became the focus of a new website, GuttenPlag Wikia, which has been enjoying up to 1.8 million page visits a day.

With everyone able to check the facts surrounding the beleaguered baron and criticism building up in the academic community, even politicians belonging to the ruling Christian Democratic Union began to speak out." March 8, 2011 Bearbeiten thesocietypages.org (Sociological Images): Another Case of Dissertation Plagiarism by a Public Official (Gwen Sharp) "...In this case, however, status didn’t outweigh the plagiarism. The University of Bayreuth, where he earned his J.D. degree, revoked it; over 20,000 academics signed a petition to Chancellor Merkel complaining about her continued support for Guttenberg; and he ultimately resigned." March 7, 2011 Bearbeiten Global Times (China) Throw the book at cheaters among academia "In another development, German defense minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg resigned last Tuesday after being found guilty of plagiarism in his doctoral dissertation.

[...] But until the cheaters pay their huge prices and the tippers are protected and honored, we will still see more scandals sprout up." History News Network: Academic Plagarism Brings Down German Defense Minister (Dónal O’Sullivan) "Apparently, Guttenberg liked Casper’s speech at the fiftieth anniversary of the German Constitutional Court in 2001 so much that he copied entire sentences into his own work, again without specifying his source." [...] When the accusations started to surface, hundreds of net activists began to search for lifted passages and found literally hundreds of examples where Guttenberg had utilized dubious citation methods. [...] The Internet facilitated the minister’s disgrace as activists used sophisticated search tools to uncover the missing sources. A special wiki website titled “GuttenPlag” ( ) invited anyone to help, eventually identifying plagiarized passages in over 75 percent of Guttenberg’s dissertation." New York Times A Folly That Can Cost a Reputation — or Not "'I suspect that if this had happened in France there would have been much less of a fuss,' said Wolfgang Mackiewicz, professor of English philology at the Free University of Berlin.

'Of course no one will say ‘Plagiarism is fine.’ But in Germany we are perhaps extra-strict,' he said. 'In this country a degree is part of a person’s name. It appears on your passport.'" theTrumpet.com: The Messiah Complex "Today’s Germany, restless as it is, yet with a newfound confidence in its nationality, seeks for the hero to lead it. For a moment it seemed Germany had found that hero in the form of Baron Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg." March 6, 2011 Bearbeiten Financial Times: Merkel moves to end Guttenberg fallout (kostenlose Anmeldung erforderlich zum Lesen) "What is less clear is whether the popular support for Mr zu Guttenberg will dissipate, or become yet another destabilising factor for Ms Merkel, the second most popular politician after her former defence minister." Irish Times: Plagiarism "The website GuttenPlag Wiki says it has detected plagiaristic “lifts” on 324 of the dissertation’s 407 pages and is finding more by the day.

Bayreuth University has stripped him of his doctoral title and zu Guttenberg, who resigned his post, admits to “serious mistakes” which had “unconsciously” found their way into his text. Coincidentally, a new anti-Gadafy front has opened up in the London School of Economics where the doctoral thesis written by his son Seif al-Islam is also being checked for plagiarism following complaints by online activists. Now one of the major challenges of academe, plagiarism is claiming high-profile political casualties." The New York Times: London Economics School to Investigate Dealings With Libya "The Times of London reported on a leaked diplomatic cable posted on the WikiLeaks Web site noting that the university had agreed to run a training program for elite Libyan civil servants for $3.6 million. The inquiry the university announced Friday is also expected to examine accusations that portions of Mr. Qaddafi’s 2007 doctoral dissertation may have been plagiarized or ghost-written." (Anm. des Pressespiegels: bereits vorherige Woche wurde eine Ankündgigung in England gemacht, ein Wiki zu dieser Doktorarbeit zu starten.

Mittlerweile wurde das Wiki gegründet und ist hier erreichbar ) March 4, 2011 The Australian: Plagiarism's a new meaning for 'good copy' (David Aaronovitch) CHINA DAILY: Machiavellian economics (Harold James) "Did German Defense Minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg have to tell the truth about the massive plagiarism that pervaded his doctoral thesis, or could a lie be justified because he was performing an important government job?" sciencemediawatch: Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg resigns after being heavily criticised of plagiarism in this doctoral thesis (Anka Lindemann) "There was finally to much criticism: On Tuesday 1 March, the now former German defence minister declared in a short statement to the press that he would give up his ministerial post. In the statement, he said that through the growing pressure on him he finally 'reached the boundaries of his strength'. Over the weekend, the criticism of Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg had reached a new dimension.

Not only did previous loyal party fellows and coalition partners start to openly criticise the behaviour of zu Guttenberg, but also the scientific community." Shenzhen Daily (VR China): From chancellor hopeful to Dr. Googleberg "GERMAN Defense Minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg’s resignation Tuesday was a dramatic fall from grace for one of the rising stars of the nation’s political stage. Regularly voted the country’s most popular politician, the 39-year-old baron was forced to quit Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Cabinet amid a deepening political row triggered by allegations that he had plagiarized part of his doctorate thesis. As Guttenberg and Merkel tried to tough it out, the University of Bayreuth last week revoked the doctorate. Media nicknamed the minister 'Dr. Googleberg' and 'Dr. Cut and Paste'. 'It’s the most painful step of my life,' Guttenberg said announcing he was standing down. Internet activists brought Guttenberg down over the past two weeks by exposing his 2006 Ph.D. dissertation (a comparison of U.S.

and European constitutions that got him a Doctor of Law degree) as blatantly faked." March 3, 2011 Sunday Times: Copy cat minister - 'I was so arrogant': German defence minister stripped of doctorate in 'Copygate' Scandal Zeitung aus Sri Lanka, gibt einen Artikel wieder, der zuvor in der britischen Daily Mail veröffentlicht wurde. University World News: GERMANY: 'Cheating Baron' allegation dogs minister' (Michel Gardner) "Such is the impact of the scandal that even the dramatic events in the Middle East and North Africa have been somewhat pushed to the side in the German media. Opposition parties have called for zu Guttenberg's resignation." February 26, 2011 Bearbeiten Quazen: University Revokes Minister’s Ph.d (Lucas Dié) "The University of Bayreuth revoked German Minister of Defence Baron Karl-Theodor von und zu Guttenberg’s right to carry the title Doctor of Law.

University authorities thereby have reacted to claims accusing the minister of plagiarism in his doctoral thesis." February 25, 2011 sciencemediawatch: Outside peer review: Plagiarism and the loss of a title (Anka Lindemann) "The website started with a single tweet promoting it as a collaborative project on Google Docs, (...)" Socyberty: Minister Hands Back His Title (Lucas Dié) "Germany’s Minister of Defence Baron Karl-Theodor von und zu Guttenberg handed back his doctor title received from Bayreuth University in 2007. His decision was the last in a series of serious blunders he produced over his plagiarised doctor’s thesis." ZEENEWS.COM: University strips German defence minister of degree (IANS) "Berlin: The University of Bayreuth stripped German Defence Minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg of his degree on Wednesday, a week after the disclosure that parts of his doctoral thesis were copied.

Ruediger Bormann, the university president, announced the ruling hours after the postgraduate committee of the law and economy faculty met." February 23, 2011 The New York Times: German Defense Minister Defies Calls to Quit Over Plagiarism (Judy Dempsey) presstvmobile.com: German minister grilled over plagiarism "Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg is the star of German politics. The 39-year-old defence minister outshines all with his ever-high popularity ratings, a favourite with the tabloids and the yellow press, of royal blood, a man of action, well mannered and educated. In parliament he now had to answer allegations that he had plagiarized a major portion of his doctoral thesis." (including VIDEO) Socyberty: What is Guttenplag? (Lucas Dié) "Guttenplag is a wiki website written in German. It was founded and set up on February 17th, 2010, amidst a scandal involving the doctoral thesis submitted by Baron Karl-Theodor von und zu Guttenberg.

The scandal had been initiated when Professor Andreas Fischer-Lescano from the University of Bremen exposed eight extensive plagiarisms contained therein." The Wall Street Journal: University Pulls German Defense Minister's Doctoral Degree (PATRICK MCGROARTY) "Opposition lawmakers sought to entangle German Chancellor Angela Merkel in the plagiarism scandal embroiling her defense minister, even as the public seemed largely willing to forgive him for borrowing large sections of his doctoral thesis without attribution. Meanwhile, the University of Bayreuth, where Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg received his doctoral degree in 2007, considered his scholarly transgressions serious enough that it revoked the doctorate Wednesday evening. University president Rüdiger Bormann said a panel of professors unanimously agreed 'that Mr.

zu Guttenberg violated his academic duty to a substantial degree'." February 22, 2011 Bearbeiten BBC News Europe: German minister gives up doctorate after plagiarism row "Germany's defence minister has given up his doctoral title for good, after allegations that he had plagiarised sections of his thesis." The Guardian: German minister temporarily drops doctoral title amid plagiarism inquiry (Helen Pidd) "Germany's embattled defence minister said he would stop calling himself 'Dr' pending the outcome of a plagiarism investigation into his PhD. But if Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg, a baron, thought he would extinguish the scandal with that gesture, he was sorely mistaken. A stream of new allegations have emerged that call into question whether he did any original research for his doctorate from the University of Bayreuth, which he completed in 2006 when already an MP." NewsFlavor: Guttenplag Leaks on German Minister (Lucas Dié) "German Minister of Defence zu Guttenberg was caught out cheating in his dissertation when acquiring a doctorate at the University of Bayreuth.

A Wikileaks like page called Guttenplag has started to collect further incidents of plagiarism to be found in the published dissertation by zu Guttenberg." PEP-NET: The Googleberg Affair (John Heaven) "Germany’s Defence Minister, Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg, has temporarily forgone his PhD following accusations that his thesis is shot through with plagiarism, including unacknowledge quotations from newspapers and other politicians. Some jokers have been selling pared-down keyboards stripped of all but the CTRL, A, C and V keys, necessary to perform the ‘select all’, ‘copy’and ‘paste’ operations; essential weapons in any plagiarist’s arsenal." February 20, 2011 The Local: Guttenberg gets carnival medal for 'courage of his contradictions NewsFlavour: Is Germany’s Minister of Defence a Plagiarist? (Lucas Dié) "Germany’s Minister of Defence got under friendly fire from the University of Bremen over the dissertation he handed in at the University of Bayreuth. Allegations of plagiarism and abuse of copyright are rife in the public domain and with German police.

A criminal investigation has been launched." News Grange: How the Internet Busted Germany’s Minister of Defense for Plagiarizing his Ph.D. Thesis (Frederic Lardinois) „This scandal would likely have rocked Germany’s political scene even before the Internet, but the massive extend of his academic fraud only became public thanks to a massive crowdsourced effort and the smart use of a Wikia-hosted wiki.“ February 19, 2011 Der Spiegel: University Withdraws German Defense Minister Guttenberg's PhD - Google Groups Der Spiegel: University Withdraws German Defense Minister Guttenberg's PhD Showing 1-3 of 3 messages University Withdraws Guttenberg's Doctor Title German Defense Minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg faced a parliamentary grilling on Wednesday. German Defense Minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg has gotten his wish. After requesting that his alma mater withdraw his doctor title in the face of accusations that he plagiarized large sections of his dissertation, the University of Bayreuth complied on Wednesday evening. The minister's popularity does not seem to have suffered. Now it is official.

On Wednesday evening, following more than a week of mounting indications that German Defense Minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg had inadequately cited several extensive passages in his dissertation, the University of Bayreuth, which had awarded him a Ph.D. in 2006, withdrew the title of doctor. Guttenberg, said university president Rüdiger Bormann, had "objectively not conformed" to academic standards. It is not permitted, he continued, to take passages word-for-word without adequately citing where they originated. The university, however, stopped short of a judgement as to whether Guttenberg had intentionally sought to mislead the university. Such a finding, Bormann said, would "surely have been an extended process" -- one that the university deemed unnecessary after Guttenberg himself had requested earlier in the week that the university withdraw the title. It was a strategic move by Guttenberg, one clearly aimed at allowing Chancellor Angela Merkel to resist calls from the opposition to relieve her defense minister of his cabinet position. And it was an opportunity she took full advantage of. On Tuesday, she gave Guttenberg her full political support, saying that his Ph.D.

title was a private affair and that, when she named him to her cabinet, she had not been seeking an "academic assistant." 'You Have Lied and Deceived' Germany's opposition remains unconvinced. Guttenberg was in parliament on Wednesday to face questions about the affair, and politicians from the center-left Social Democrats, the Green Party and the far-left Left Party demanded that he resign. "You have lied and deceived," said leading SPD parliamentarian Thomas Oppermann. "I find it intolerable that the chancellor has decided that an academic impostor and a liar can continue to be a member of her cabinet." Jürgen Trittin of the Green Party said, "Ms. Chancellor, it cannot be allowable that the German military is commanded by a Felix Krull," a reference to Thomas Mann's famous con-man. Left Party parliamentarian Dietmar Bartsch, referring to Guttenberg's title as a baron, said "there was a time when the nobility knew what to do in such a position." The defense minister, however, displayed remarkable calm throughout the grilling. And it was a calm born out of confidence.

A survey released on Wednesday by the German public television station ARD found that fully 73 percent of Germans are satisfied with his job performance. Seventy-two percent believe that Guttenberg's relinquishment of his doctor title is sufficient punishment and that he should be allowed to continue in his position. Squaring the Circle Even as Guttenberg looks to have withstood the scandal, the number of passages in his dissertation that seem to have been plagiarized continues to mount. Whereas last week's story in the Munich-based daily Süddeutsche Zeitung, which triggered the affair, spoke of a handful of inadequately cited paragraphs, the number of problematic sections has since ballooned to well over 100. In addition to copying and pasting parts of newspaper articles and journals, Guttenberg also included entire research notes he commissioned from parliamentary research assistants. Indeed, the opposition has accused Guttenberg of abusing his position as a result -- it is not allowed for government officials to make use of parliamentary research assistants for private matters. It remains to be seen what the long term effects of the affair might be for Guttenberg. He has long been seen as the future of Germany's conservatives and has even been mentioned as a possible chancellor candidate.

For now, however, it looks as though the damage has been minimal. And Guttenberg himself has sought to portray himself as being suitably chagrined. The "errors," he said, stemmed from his attempt to write the dissertation in parallel with his position as a parliamentarian and his duties as a husband and father. "It was surely cavalier of me to believe that I could square the circle." He failed to indicate if the sentence was his alone -- or if it was borrowed without citation. German Defense Minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg announced his resignation during a press conference in Berlin Tuesday. gerquit0301 "I was always ready to fight, but I have reached the limit of my abilities," he said. Overall support for Mr. zu Guttenberg, a Bavarian baron who was featured with his attractive, young family on newspapers' society pages as often as he made political headlines, has remained strong even since the plagiarism allegations surfaced two weeks ago. But pressure from academia and opposition politicians for him to resign has been steadily increasing. The University of Bayreuth, which awarded the dissertation a grade of highest honors in 2007, revoked Mr.

zu Guttenberg's doctorate last Wednesday, and this week a group of professors and doctoral students called for his resignation in an open letter, which has now been signed online by more than 50,000 people. Mr. zu Guttenberg's resignation is a serious headache for Mrs. Merkel, whose party benefited from Mr. zu Guttenberg's broad popularity with German voters. Her Christian Democrats face a tough regional election in Baden-Wuerttemberg on March 27 and Mr. zu Guttenberg, a member of the allied Christian Social Union in neighboring Bavaria, was a strong asset. Mrs. Merkel had repeatedly affirmed her support for her defense minister since the Sueddeutsche Zeitung first reported that large portions of his dissertation in constitutional law appeared to be copied almost verbatim from academic journals and newspaper articles. That support was seized upon my opposition politicians, who had been stepping up their criticism of Mrs. Merkel for standing by an ally they repeatedly denounced as a liar.

Question: The defence minister of which European country resigned in 2011, after he was found to have copied large parts of his 2006 university doctorate thesis?
Answer: Germany