Chatzimarkakis loses court case about loss of doctorate

Georgios Chatzimarkakis dissertation was analysed by VroniPlag and found to have more than 70% of the pages containing plagiarism. The University of Bonn rescinded his doctorate, and he took the University to court. On March 22, 2012 the court in Cologne ruled against him. The judgement was published today, and it is quite a judgement: http://www.justiz.nrw.de/nrwe/ovgs/vg_koeln/j2012/6_K_6097_11urteil20120322.html

The court follows the documentation of VroniPlag and mentions it a number of times in the judgement. The court makes clear that both word-for-word and paraphrased copies need to be clearly marked and determines that this was not the case in all but two of the fragments VroniPlag documented.

It is great to have a legal judgement on this issue, especially one that is so clear. The court also explicitly discusses how VroniPlag weighs a case, and found this to be logical. If you read German - I strongly suggest reading the entire judgement.

Medical dissertations in Germany

A reader pointed out to me that in 2004 the Wissenschaftsrat, an advisory board on science in Germany, already reported on the desolate state of medical dissertations: http://www.wissenschaftsrat.de/download/archiv/5913-04.pdf  (pp. 74-78, in German)

Medical dissertations and habilitations, with the exception of the occasional exceptional work, often do not reach the scientific standards of other disciplines [...] as a result the study [meant is M. Weihrauch, J. Strate und R. Papst: Die Medizinische Dissertation - kein Auslaufmodell. Ergeb-nisse einer Befragung von Promovierenden stehen im Widerspruch zu oft geäußerten Meinungen, in: Deutsche Medizinische Wochenschrift 128, 2003, 2583-2587] demonstrates that medical dissertations are more similar to diploma theses in the natural sciences than the dissertations done in these fields, when one looks at the data for amount of effort invested and publication success. [translation dww]

It is nothing new that the theses that are original are often very thin. The shortest dissertation I have seen to date in medicine is four pages. VroniPlag has been demonstrating that excessive text recycling takes place in some research groups. What are the consequences? If there has been no reaction to the report of the Wissenschaftsrat in 2004, it is doubtful that any reaction is forthcoming in the near future. Germany just stumbles on, business as usual.

VroniPlag Case 22: Medicine

There was a lot of discussion in the group about working on medical dissertations. They tend, in Germany, to often be lightweights compared to dissertations in other fields. But people who submit and defend a medical dissertation also get the "Dr." to put in their passports and on their shingles, so the group went ahead with this case, especially as it is so special: 48% of the pages are from just one source, and many of these pages are over 75% plagiarized. Have a look for yourself: http://de.vroniplag.wikia.com/wiki/Ahg

Austrian association for academic integrity publishes report

The Austrian Association for Academic Integrity (OEAWI) has published a report on its activities in 2011. The number of cases reported has tripled, the report has a few details on some of the kinds of cases that went to resolution. They have links to the report and other documents at http://www.oeawi.at/de/downloads.html.

Hungary's president has doctorate rescinded

The Austrian newspaper Der Standard reports that the Hungarian president, Pál Schmitt, has had his doctorate, which was awarded in 1992, rescinded. The Semmelweis Medical University in Budapest voted 16:2 for rescinding the doctorate that was granted on the basis of a thesis about the history of the Olympic momement. Schmitt was himself an Olympic fenceman and a member of the Olympic committee of Hungary.

The thesis plagiarizes the thesis of a Bulgarian sports researcher and member of the IOC as well as texts from a German sociologist. The original texts were in French and German, Schmitt only translated them without referring to them. A journalist from the weekly magazine HVG found the plagiarism.

Update: 2012-04-02 The Süddeutsche Zeitung reports that Schmitt has bowed to pressure and stepped down as president of Hungary.

One year of VroniPlag

Here is a wonderful attempt to visualize the work of one year of VroniPlag - makes it awfully clear that the universities need to sort out how to deal with these problems quickly. The map is also interesting.

A graphical representation of the work of one year of VroniPlag plagiarism documentation

VroniPlag Case 21

And another case hits the home page of VroniPlag. Case 21 is another dissertation from the TU Berlin with the same doctoral advisor as Jürgen Goldschmidt. There are copies of the Wikipedia from around 2004, copies of texts about earthquakes in Switzerland that have Iraq switched in, and copies from textbooks. And there seems to be more rolling in by the minute.