Quick Update

I have all sorts of links around that need documenting here, but not enough time to do thorough research on the topics. So I'll just drop them here:

• The vice prime minister president of Hungary, Zsolt Semjén, is now also facing plagiarism accusations in his dissertation. The former prime minister president, Pál Schmitt, was already forced to resign because of plagiarism in his dissertation. 
• A historic plagiarism from the 1580s: Giordano Bruno.  (additional article: Auf Gänsefüßchen schleichen, by Elisabeth von Samsonow)
• An article in New Scientist: Fraud fighter: 'Faked research is endemic in China' 
• A discussion is going on in Germany amongst librarians as to how best to deal with all of the rescinded doctorates. Do they pull the books? Stamp them as plagiarisms? Only mark the catalogues? Just remove the "dissertation" label in the catalogues?
• VroniPlag Wiki has released cases #34 (medicine from the University of Ulm), #35 (a habilitation in business science from the Distance Education University in Hagen), and #36 (medicine from the University of Düsseldorf).  
• An interesting dissertation from Halle by Jens Blecher: "Vom Promotionsprivileg zum Promotionsrecht: Das Leipziger Promotionsrecht zwischen 1409 und 1945 als konstitutives und prägendes Element der akademischen Selbstverwaltung". The English abstract:
  At the beginning of the 13th century, the oldest universities of Paris and Bologna acquired ius promovendi, a procedure that differed from the internal examinations and publicly awarded degrees in used in other educational institutions. German universities appropriated this hard fought right and continue to employ it as one of their fundamental academic privileges up to the present. In the nineteenth century, most of the medieval privileges of the university were absorbed into state administration. Only the independent right to graduate students remained. This right not only served as a means to Self-government the faculty, but is also remains an important element with which the University achieves its social recognition. Using examples of discussions surrounding reforms, particularly focused on the Philosophical (Liberal Arts) Faculty, this work will present the evolution of graduation regulations up to the end of the National Socialist era. Important caesura along the way include the effects of the Reformation (including both the loss of papal protection and the right of supervision by rulers), the elimination of confessional requirements at the end of the eighteenth century, the development of specialized departments and the reduction in status of the Master’s Degree, the efforts of democratic professors and educational reformers to liberalize the nature of doctoral studies, the role of doctoral studies in the political sphere after the turn of the century, particularly during the Weimar Republic and finally the nation wide standardization and appropriation of doctoral graduation procedures as a political instrument during the Third Reich.  
• The court in Freiburg upheld the rescinding of Veronica Saß' dissertation by the University of Konstanz. The court ruling, although "anonymized" gives lots of details about her grades.
• The court in Cologne upheld the rescinding of Margarita Mathiopoulos' dissertation by the University of Bonn. Mathiopoulous feels that the court did not understand her and is considering continuing legal action.