German Science Minister Stripped of Her PhD 123
An anonymous reader writes "In a move likely to have major political implications, the University of Düsseldorf has revoked the doctoral degree of Germany's science and education minister, Annette Schavan. The committee investigating allegations of plagiarism came to the conclusion that she 'systematically and deliberately claimed as her own intellectual achievements which she had in fact not produced herself.' Schavan wants to appeal the decision in court and has not resigned from her post so far."
PhD's in Germany (Score:2, Informative)
Having a PhD in germany is a status symbol more than anything. I expect this type of thing to happen more often since plagiarism is the easiest way to achieve this status symbol.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re:PhD's in Germany (Score:5, Funny)
Google search for "That's a sweeping and unfair generalization." shows 14 results... Looks like you've got some explaining to do, Mr "I don't use footnotes", or you're about to be stripped of your second post achievement.
Now I'm doing it right, put my post in quotes and google for it and "did not match any documents" is the result.
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
Re: (Score:1)
I get a hit on this [alterslash.org] other website. You have obviously copied vlm's comment word for word, not even bothering to change the username on your post.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:1)
Hey! The "purple monkey dishwasher" is MY thing!
Bribes-for-PhD's scams reported in Germany. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
As opposed to PhDs in other places, like, America!
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Well, I don't know whether a potential resignation of a (education & research) minister counts a "major political implications" in the first place.
The potential break-up of the CSU-FDP coalition in Bavaria over the (non)-abandoning of university tuition fees, that is something which could have major political consequences.
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:1)
I'm sure she deserved her doctorate (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
"His doctorate is an honorary one, bestowed by the Bob Jones University, in South Carolina but he likes to use the title."
In other news, Bob Jones University is some sort of racist Xian degree mill, and amusingly it's logo is a "BJ", which would probably appall the fascists in charge if they knew what it meant.
someone had to say it (Score:5, Funny)
do NOT want!
Re:someone had to say it (Score:5, Funny)
I read this "for her PhD" instead of "of her PhD". I was really confused how that works.
Re: (Score:2)
well, that would be one way to raise money for university.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:someone had to say it (Score:4, Informative)
Re: (Score:1)
Oh, the irony!! (Score:5, Funny)
Naturally!!
Re:Oh, the irony!! (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually the irony gets even better.: A year ago she publicly humiliated another politician because of his shoddy "copy & paste" PhD. http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/german-press-review-of-the-annette-schavan-plagiarism-scandal-a-881783.html [spiegel.de]
Re: (Score:3)
Yeah, she was ragging on his copy/paste skills, not the fact that he copied and pasted his PhD. Let's face it, she's apparently an expert in copy/paste PhD work.
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:1)
"A university committee yesterday evening confirmed accusations, first aired last May, of plagiarism in Schavan’s ethical-philosophical dissertation entitled ‘People and conscience — studies on the conditions, necessity and requirements for formation of conscience today’."
Naturally!!
To her credit, she followed the ethical principles outlined in the disseration, to the letter.
She was stripped? (Score:2)
Pics or it didn't happen... Ohh la la.
Come on, I can't be the first one to think of this joke....
Re: (Score:2)
Pics or it didn't happen... Ohh la la.
Seriously? Have you seen the woman?
Into "Granny Porn", are you?
Re: (Score:2)
But you have to admit, they really know what they're doing.
Re:She was stripped? (Score:4, Funny)
Just found out what she looks like..... Never mind. Can we strip the German Chick from Top Gear instead? Sabine Schmitt?
Re: (Score:3)
Yes please. Sabine Schmitz. My moter always warned me about fast women.
Re: (Score:2)
My moter always warned me about fast women.
Nice, in-context typo.
Re: (Score:2)
You're definitly not german. That happend often enough (3 times during the last 2 years IIRC) to politicans that a PhD is the first thing I think of that can be stripped....
Sad, I know.
Re:She was stripped? (Score:4, Insightful)
Would you even think to make that joke if Schavan was a man? Food for thought.
Re: (Score:1)
Would you even think to make that joke if Schavan was a man? Food for thought.
Have you got something against gays? Food for thought.
Re: (Score:2)
It's the same food I just baked up! I'm glad you liked it enough to jot down the recipe and hack it.
Re: (Score:2)
Interesting comment.
It's certainly a guy thing. Is it sexist?
Well, I know a guy, a computer scientist. Since he's gay, in an entertaining turnaround from the usual, he comments on other male computer scientists hotness, but completely ignores such things for female ones.
Re: (Score:2)
Since he's gay, in an entertaining turnaround from the usual, he comments on other male computer scientists hotness
That would be like one of those joke "The World's Shortest Books..." lists, presumably.
Re: (Score:2)
Are you sure he's not abusing the stereotype to make the same point that I was? If his analytical skills aren't restricted to his work, I'd bet that he is.
Re: (Score:1)
Me.
She'll have to wait (Score:5, Funny)
Until she can copy off someone else's letter of appeal.
Re:She'll have to wait (Score:5, Funny)
Until she can copy off someone else's letter of appeal.
No problem, shes studying for her law degree right now.
Started yesterday, should be done tomorrow.
Re: (Score:2)
Nice insight in your ideas about women's rights tough.
Re: (Score:1)
Did she copy Lobachevsky? (Score:4, Funny)
The great Tom Lehrer
Re: (Score:3)
Maybe...
She went to university in Bonn ....Minsk!
Whose sister city is
(of course Tom Leher copied from Danny Kaye's Stanislavsky sketch from the Jack Benny show, but he gave him credit)
Should have done better (Score:1)
Romania's prime minister, Victor Ponta, was also accused of blatant plagiarism and it was all over the TV. His paper was nothing more than copy-pastes. So what happened? Well, there was this committee that was investigating these things and they were supposed to give their opinion on whether it was plagiarism or it wasn't. Two hours - TWO HOURS - before they were to give their response, the committee was officially dismantled. That didn't stop them from saying that it was plagiarism of the worst kind, but t
Re: (Score:2)
HA! I can top that!
In Pakistan, there is this organisation called "Higher Education Commission", which administers our universities; our court asks them to assess the degrees of our, ahem, *elected* politicians, because there was accusation of them being fake. Guess what happens, the politicians try various tactics, and in the end, decided to end the damn commission itself!
The bloody commission that governs our entire higher-educational system!
To speak in American terms, it's like eliminating the entire DMV
Re: (Score:3)
Society doesn't value lying, cheating and deceptive practices for political carriers. At least not openly. Be careful of what you want. It's not because it's all commonplace behind the scene, that you want it to become the new normal, as it will just make it another grade worse.
Re: (Score:2)
It was a meta joke where OP was lying about the public not liking being lied to, to make the humorous point that the public likes it.
I LOLed at both the post and your response that missed the point, but it would have been much funnier if OP merely cut and pasted some historian or philosopher writing about the same subject, seeing as that was the whole point of the story.
Something like "It is not titles that honor men, but men that honor titles." other than Machiavelli probably could never have predicted he'
Re: (Score:1)
Well, at least she doesn't have a PhD anymore, so better take the jobs you can get. If that means keeping the current one, then all the better.
She wouldn't be the first (Score:4, Insightful)
Defense Minister Guttenberg resigned from his post for the exact same reason a while back. Getting a PhD in Germany is a hardship and I can well imagine that some people would like to "cut some corners" to reach their goal.
Re:She wouldn't be the first (Score:5, Informative)
Mr. Guttenberg resigned because his whole Ph.D. - done outside the university while he was already a politician - was a lousy Copy&Paste job including copying papers done by the research arm of the parliament for him. Especially also in places where he claimed original thought.
Mrs. Schavan did the Ph.D. at the university before she started her career and seemingly ca. 15 years before she went into heavy politics. As far as I understand her Ph.D. was revoked because of incorrect citations (i.e. she named sources but not marked text as direct citation) in her literature section.
The only commonality is that both lost their Ph.D..
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:3)
No, if you actually follow the university announcement and the evidence, it turns out that her actions are considerably worse than Guttenbergs.
He was lousy even in his plagiarism. She intentionally rephrased and covered up where the copied from. Guttenberg did a copy&paste job - Schavan copied and then rephrased so if you would put the phrase into a search engine, it would come up empty. But she only changed words, she didn't add any original thoughts.
That's plagiarism at its worst - intentional and dec
Re: (Score:2)
Getting a PhD in Germany is a hardship
Getting a PhD anywhere should be a hardship. If you could just get one by sending off a coupon on the back of a cornflakes packet it wouldn't mean a lot.
Re: (Score:2)
I totally agree.
However, in Germany, PhD students are more often than not in the total mercy of arrogant professors with even sadistic tendencies and nobody to control them. Compared to doing research in a british, dutch or american university (based on people I know), being a PhD student in Germany is a very lousy deal. The doctorates get relatively good money with full benefits, but that doesn't really sweeten the pill.
Meanwhile in the US (Score:5, Insightful)
current Committee on Science, Space and Technology member Paul Broun...
" embryology, evolution, and the Big Bang are "lies straight from the Pit of Hell ... lies to try to keep me and all the folks who are taught that from understanding that they need a savior."
former Committee on Science, Space and Technology member Todd Akin...
"If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down. "
on Evolution - "I don’t see it as even as a matter of science, because I don’t know if you can prove one or the other."
-------
I'd love to see that kind of zeal put on the backgrounds of US politicians.
Re: (Score:2)
If people want to get all religious about things, one of the worst sins has to be willful ignorance.
Re: (Score:1)
Makes me think of an old Tom Lehrer song... (Score:1)
Obligatory Merkel Titanic image (Score:2)
Plagiatsvorwürfe gegen Merkel!
http://www.titanic-magazin.de/typo3temp/pics/b08249c126.jpg [titanic-magazin.de]
should censure U of Dusseldorf too (Score:3)
How does a university not know a dissertation is full of plagiarism? Only by wearing blinders!
Dissertations are supposed to be carefully checked by at least 3 professors. Her major professor and committee was at best rubber stamping her work without bothering to check anything. Or they were so incompetent or lazy that none were aware of whole areas of work in their field? How else to explain a failure to recognize plagiarism? And how could they not notice that a student's ability and knowledge had wide gaps? Shop talk should have exposed her as a fraud long before she got anywhere near graduation. Also, she may have a history of cheating, unless she earned a B.S. and M.S. honestly, and only resorted to cheating for the PhD? I suppose that could happen-- someone who had an easy time in school and never experienced failure might be tempted when facing it for the first time.
So how could this happen? They were deliberately overlooking serious problems because it suited them in some way. If it wasn't outright bribes and implied threats, as in, her family was a large donor who might not wish to donate any more if she didn't receive the degree, it could be that the department or school was too eager to boost their numbers.
This kind of crap is a black mark for everyone who legitimately earned a PhD.
Re: (Score:2)
Get real. Computers make detection of plagiarism so much easier and combined with the internet and digitisation of so many literary works pretty much guaranteed. Of course it makes creating truly original equally difficult and the likelihood of similar works which were not glimpsed let alone researched much more likely but of course if you want to earn your doctorate you should be forced to add something new and original to the field, really that is the whole point.
Re:should censure U of Dusseldorf too (Score:4, Informative)
How does a university not know a dissertation is full of plagiarism? [...] So how could this happen?
A) The Ph.D. thesis in question was submitted 1980. Long before computer checks and internet groups gathering to check Ph.D.s.
B) It was not "full of plagiarism". You might want to fetch (non-marked) copy from the net and find the sentences in question before you accuse others of intent.
Re: (Score:3)
I don't read German, so unless there's an English translation, I'll have to pass on reading a copy. Are you speaking from knowledge or have you not read it either?
I'm not doing the accusing. Schavan herself admitted "careless mistakes". She's not denying that the dissertation has problems! She's only trying to wiggle out of characterizing those "mistakes" as plagiarism. Most damning is that the university agreed that what she did is indeed plagiarism. Revoking a degree, and not just any degree but t
Re: (Score:2)
Her lawsuit sounds more like a desperation move to drag things out or bully or tire the opposition into giving up, rather than a serious attempt to exonerate herself by raising good points.
That won't happen.
This year we have federal elections here in Germany and the opposition will not let this chance to weaken the ruling coalition go to waste.
Especially since their own candidate for the position of chancellor it doing his best to sink his own candidacy.
Re: (Score:2)
You can have a look on the possible plagiats on http://schavanplag.wordpress.com/ [wordpress.com] (google translation might be necessary for non German speakers). Note that this is basically the 'prosecutors' position (except that in this case the prosecutor is a community of people on the net) not the findings of the university.
How many of them would you have found without computer help?
And I don't believe that "important officials" are less likely to have their degree revoked in Germany. I think it is actually more likel
Re: (Score:2)
She has got neither B.S. nor M.S, going straight for the PhD after her high school diploma.
Re: (Score:2)
She has got neither B.S. nor M.S, going straight for the PhD after her high school diploma.
Is that normal in Germany? I'm pretty sure you couldn't do that here in the UK even if you were some sort of genius.
A. seems pretty inapplicable 4 a Science Minister (Score:1)
Schavan’s ethical-philosophical dissertation entitled ‘People and conscience — studies on the conditions, necessity and requirements for formation of conscience today’.
You mean a politician is a cheater and liar? (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
As an Atheist or Mithraist (Roman) she would probably do fine... she probably hasn't accumulated enough chutzpah to make a passable imam khatib?
Non-news for Germans (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Still, it is a new low: a Science Minister lost her PhD. She has also been very vocal in criticizing von Gutenberg for doing basically the same. On top of that she has no university degree at all now which is funny for a Science Minister.
Re: (Score:2)
This is a PhD in philosophy, it would be pretty much worthless even if it was legit. It's far harder to cheat in an actual science.
Oh my God! (Score:1)
Re:Smear campaign or missing job qualification? (Score:5, Insightful)
It is now a smear campaign to point out someone is a cheater and a liar?
She has had many years to admit this. She chose not to.
Re: (Score:1)
So you assume she's guilty on the basis that she was accused? Sounds like an effective smear campaign!
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
What accused? She's already been found guilty. The summary alone specifically says her PhD has been revoked.
Re: (Score:2)
It is now a smear campaign to point out someone is a cheater and a liar?
She got her doctor title 30 years ago, not last week. You might not call it a smear campaign, as it is based on truth, but I find it always rather iffy when something that somebody has done 30 years ago counts more then all that which he has done since then. It's not like it was noticed that she cheated because of incompetence at the job, but just because it's currently a trend to dig through old doctor thesis of politicians in Germany.
Re:Smear campaign or missing job qualification? (Score:5, Insightful)
When the University officially strips you of your degree, it's moved from "smear campaign" to "substantiated charges".
Re:Smear campaign or missing job qualification? (Score:4, Informative)
Yes, people from her party claimed that the University didn't handle the case properly.
Just as people from opposing parties said the opposite.
This is just the usual politics.
The decision to strip her of her title was made by a commission with 15 or 16 members, with 2 opposing and 1 abstention.
So far, the German courts always upheld such decisions from Universities.
Mrs. Schavan has the right to appeal the decision. Doesn't mean she will get the result she's looking for.
Re: (Score:2)
Whether she's doing a good job has relatively little to do with any titles she might now not hold any more.
Generally speaking, you're right.
But there are a few more details to take into account:
- She is the secretary of education. If she does/did not conform to the standards, how can one expect the current students and faculty to do so?
- She criticized a former colleague when he lost his PhD under similar circumstances.
- Like him she would not lose the job as a secretary for loosing the PhD, but due to lying during the whole affair instead of admitting guilt.
All of this, obviously, only if the appeals court come
Re: (Score:3)
Whether she's doing a good job has relatively little to do with any titles she might now not hold any more.
Oh yes, it does. She's the minister for education and science.
I could accept someone in that position who doesn't have an academic title. It would be a bit odd, but hey, we've had defense ministers who didn't go to the army (back when military service was still compulsory).
But one who had acquired an undeserved academic title through intentional deceit? Sorry, that's a slap in the face for everyone who worked hard on their titles, and such a person can not be the one in charge of the educational system and