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Wednesday Humor: German Education Minister Stripped Of PhD For Plagiarism
Some thought the irony of a Treasury Secretary who cheated on his taxes was extreme but Germany has gone one better as the nation's Education Minister has just been stripped of her PhD due to plagiarism. As Spiegel Online reports, the University of Düsseldorf has revoked German Education Minister Annette Schavan's degree because "she systematically and deliberately presented intellectual efforts throughout her entire dissertation that were not her own." As such, she was guilty of "intentional deception through plagiarism." Allegations that parts of her dissertation were not consistent with academic standards were first raised last spring and were hardened in October when a blogger released detailed findings of citation shortcomings he had found in the education minister's dissertation. Of course, she has taken the political route to this problem - denial - admitting merely to "oversights," and adding that "There was no cheating involved." The university voted 12 to 2 to revoke her degree and invalidate her academic title. Schavan is yet to resign from Merkel's Cabinet. What next? A skeet-shooting gun tzar, a job tzar responsible for thousands of jobs losses while in the private sector, or a Nobel Peace Prize winner building a drone army.
Merkel's Education Minister Has Ph.D. Title Revoked
German Education Minister Annette Schavan has long been dogged by accusations that she had plagiarized parts of her Ph.D. thesis. Now, the University of Düsseldorf has revoked her degree. She may be forced to resign from Chancellor Angela Merkel's cabinet.
It was shortly after 8:15 p.m. on Tuesday evening when Bruno Bleckmann, a professor of ancient history at the University of Düsseldorf, stepped in front of the waiting journalists. He quickly strode up to the microphone to deliver his statement. A faculty board, Bleckmann said, had arrived at the decision to declare German Education Minister Annette Schavan's Ph.D. thesis "invalid and to revoke her doctor title."
Based on an internal university analysis of Schavan's doctoral thesis, which she submitted in 1980, and on her own statement regarding her work, the committee voted 12 to 2 to invalidate her academic title, Bleckmann said. There was one abstention. "As a doctoral candidate, she systematically and deliberately presented intellectual efforts throughout her entire dissertation that were not her own," Bleckmann said. Large sections of the work, he continued, had been taken from elsewhere without adequate attribution. As such, she was guilty of "intentional deception through plagiarism."
The announcement is the worst possible outcome for Schavan. The very suspicion that she had plagiarized parts of her dissertation had "hit her hard," as she said last year. Allegations that parts of her dissertation were not consistent with academic standards were first raised last spring and were hardened in October when a blogger released detailed findings of citation shortcomings he had found in the education minister's dissertation. She has consistently denied the charges, admitting merely to "oversights." Immediately after Bleckmann finished delivering his statement, Schavan's lawyer released a statement indicating that the minister planned to file a legal challenge to the revocation of her dissertation at a Düsseldorf court. "There was no cheating involved," the statement read.
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'Accepted Guidelines'
Bleckmann also rejected Schavan's argument that conventions regarding citations were different at the time when she wrote her dissertation. He said that the board's decision was not a "projection of today's standards back in time." He pointed out that even at the time there were "accepted guidelines" that explained how to correctly cite passages taken from secondary sources. One version of those guidelines had even been published by her Ph.D. advisor, it was recently revealed.
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Schavan is now faced with the prospect of losing her position on Chancellor Angela Merkel's cabinet. It wouldn't be the first time that a German cabinet minister was forced to resign after losing a doctor title. Defense Minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg stepped down in the spring of 2011 after it was determined that he had plagiarized large sections of his Ph.D. thesis. Already, demands have been made for Schavan to resign from her party by the Greens, the Left Party and the Pirate Party.
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Don't forget the illegal gun-running attorney general put in charge of gun ownership regulations!
If you've got a PhD, you didn't write that dissertation.
I've got a PhD. My dissertation wasn't entirely on the up and up. Although, all the ideas (and lies) were entirely my own. Oh well, when in Rome.
you still have the jizz of the profs on your face??
Oh noes! The facade is crumbling!
Shocking that in an ivory tower education culture that discourages creative thinking and rewards lock-step adherence to current established ideas that people would feel compelled to copy the work of others.
Is that a popping "education" bubble I see?
nope, throughout time you always got your phd by getting your "bubble" popped!
“Society is like a stew. If you don’t stir it up every once in a while then a layer of scum floats to the top.” - Edward Abbey
The Tylers should have their PhD (Playa Hatin' Degree) stripped away!
Well, it seems that the Germans actually value their PhD degree and expect the holder to have earned it without ctlr+C & ctrl+P.
Only the germans would actually go after a plagiarist. That's highly white of them.
Here in the USA we would give them a holiday or a pulitzer (Roots).
Because in America the elite are not 'white"?
MLK and Einstein plagiarized. She was not in the protected class of people.
"highly white"? interesting view. here we'd say "very northern", with a special emphasis on good governance (the opposite of corruption)
the interesting thing is that this very moment a whole generation of "doctors" and "professors" of "libaral arts" (like journalism) are trembling in their boots and wonder if they will be targeted
outside of the hard, technical sciences, nearly everybody was plagiarizing, that's why they were picking those "intellectual directions" in the first place
you would't expect this from Germany, eh?
Worst case I ever saw was an interviewee who gave me a copy of his thesis and while reading through it some of the figures and verbiage looked similar to a textbook from another author sitting on my shelf. The figures were exactly the same, the verbiage for whole chapters of the thesis were the same as in the book. I'm still unsure who lifted from whom - but it was even down to the typesetting that was the same. Dude wasn't hired. How it got past his comittee is concerning.
...concerning as in like getting on his four and taking it through every hole at the same time. thats not concerning, that pretty standard down at the "happy home"
There is that.
However, I'm more inclined to figure the comittee didn't really review and/or have the knowledge to review.
You cut me real deep man. Your avatar provided me comfort. Thank you.
Can you really blame the lady? Tired old leftist canards have been around for centuries. It's pretty difficult to reinvent the wheel just to get a PhD stamp from the approved leftist intelligentsia. :-O
Or Goldman apparatchiks in charge of national treasuries.
Does Germany have an Oprah Show for her to go on ?
No, but perhaps they could get one of those camps up and running?
Yes, Sprockets.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aiUVQ-pla24
When do Krugman and Bernanke get stripped for shear idiocy?
Bernanke is clearly on the record for misunderstanding the biggest financial collapse in history, and being completely unaware of it just months before it hit.
There's really no arguing his incompetence.
Since then he's obviously spent most of his time coming up with ways of describing "printing money" to make it sound like some kind of a new cutting-edge concept.
Well, if TPTB remain intact, they'll white-wash him into a hero, just like all of the other snake-oil salesmen of days past. Both Roosevelts come to mind, being nothing but the Bushes of the day.
As Shrub himself stated, "We write history."
Can a dissertation be rejected on the basis of intellectual dishonesty, general lameness or plain evil?
"Bernanke is clearly on the record for misunderstanding the biggest financial collapse" Misunderstanding my ass!
The sheep are the only ones 'misunderstanding' the collapse. Read much history?
GIVE ME A BREAK!
That criminal AND the collapse is ALL what the PLAN is about!
www.synagoguerising.com
The question still remains, is he really incompetent, or just evil and well aware of what he's doing? I'm more inclined to think it's the latter.
ManBernKrug!
ManBernKrug is REAL!
I don't want to see either of them naked.
I just vomitted in my mouth.
I just vomit in nose.
Par for the course amongst politicians and academics.
BTW, it was so cold last week - I saw a politician with his hands in his own pockets...
That story is too unbelievable to be true!
Not just in China. Who would'uv thought.
Its just too easy to "cut & paste then print" these days....go ask the bernanke
I eat apple, Apple is good
In America plagiarism gets you promoted to vice president.
What?! The Pirate Party asked her to resign. What kind of self-respeicting pirate asks another to play nicd.
One requiring more tribute.
Yikes, Gott in Himmel. I bet that the only thing she's ever been stripped of
I bet she looks hot - near the end of Oktoberfest.
Ich bin Fraudliner
The icing on the cake was that she initiated the dumping of another minister: Guttenberg for plagiarism and claimed she felt embarrassed for all scientists. I swear, the quality of humans we have as politicians is more than depressing. It's despairing.
Quality humans would never be evil enough to become politicians, or stupid enough to believe they can reform this criminal syndicate.
Thus, we get one sociopath after another, supported by the self-propelled "reformers."
but they do get the greatest percentage share of half the people who can even be bothered to vote for a shit sandwich or a douche bag
hahahahahahahahaha I needed this.
I nominate her as the first potential candidate for the upcoming 2013 Jean-Claude Juncker & Mariano Rajoy Joint "Lying Is Necessary" Award
www.youtube.com/watch?v=P4fEJIluuR0 Mar 14, 2012 - Uploaded by LuxembourgExposedFeaturing the greatest hits, such as: "When it becomes serious, you have to lie" (Wenn es ernst wird, muss man lügen) & “It is all untrue, except for some things.”
Seconded, although she will have much competition before it is all over. Hillary, Timmay, Barry, Carney, Napolitano, Piglosi, Feinstein...
There's no such thing as an original PhD Dissertation. The entire higher education is nothing but an accreditation scheme built on back-slapping dishonesty.
I believe the classification is inter-disciplinary incest.
Yikes! can anyone in the US executive branch be similarly stripped for emptysuitism?
Nobel Peace Prize Winner Building a Drone Army.
Good One.
Does Tyler's lack of a question mark make the statement wholly rhetorical?
I wonder if Germany acknowledges Kopimism.
The Director of the Toronto District School Board resigned a few weeks back because of plagarism discoveries.
Only solution is to educate these people about the ability to discover plagarism via Internet search, or else hire high school drop-outs (like Ontario Education minister some years back).
Seriously, how can these people think that they will never get nailed on this? Bad PR for Merkel but on the other hand, she now realizes someone she thought was fairly smart is actually an idiot.
Seriously, how can these people think that they will never get nailed on this?
She wrote the thesis in 1980, when internet was only science fiction.
Bad PR for Merkel but on the other hand, she now realizes someone she thought was fairly smart is actually an idiot.
Really? Today Merkels stated that she still backs Schavan.
"a job tzar responsible for thousands of jobs losses while in the private sector"
Correction--Obama's job tzar and head of GE Jeffry Immelt was and is still directly responsible for hundreds of thousands of US job losses, and indirectly millions.
Technically that would be more of a clarification.
I swear we are in an irony bubble. One more story like this and my head just might explode. (Hi NSA!)
"A skeet-shooting gun tzar, a job tzar responsible for thousands of jobs losses while in the private sector, or a Nobel Peace Prize winner building a drone army."
I did nazi that coming but I like what you did there. Slow clap...
How about a gat packing Senator from CA trying to ban handguns?
This is getting beyond ludicrous folks?
And we take these cunts at face value? Shame on us indeed. Seriously I have heard it all now, my mind cannot take much more.
Well, I don't. Besides, I stopped listening years ago. I look forward to the day that I don't even know who holds office.
always remember that anyone can be a politician...anyone can have fake or real PhD's and still be stupid...and vice chancellor versa.
not everyone can have an open mind and common cents (sic) rather than "funny money".
this one even gets better:
http://www.mmnews.de/index.php/politik/11989-roesler-dr-auch-erschwindelt
the vice chancellor roesler fabricating a 59 pages dissertation by summing up a statistical analysis he even wasnt involved in, in order to promote a drug, that led to deaths...
Wake me up when they strip the Obomber of his Nobel prize for the war crimes of killing thousands of innocent civilians and about 200 children.
Meanwhile, hail to the Chief-Drone-Killer. He is above every law known to man.
200? damned by faint praise methinks.
"Meanwhile, hail to the Chief-Drone-Killer. He is above every law known to man."
But NOT to the Eternal One! LOL
But but, she one of the’ Best and Brightest'
This shit sums this whole crap up!
Hard work and ORIGINAL THOUGHT, she doesn't know the meaning the words....nor does she ever want to!
Another 'who never saw it coming'
It's funny that in Germany an education minister needs to at least appear he or she knows something about his or her field.
Silly Germans.
The fact that the elites are not even trying to hide this crap is scaring me - they dont even try - to me this means they dont fear repercussion which means they must have nasty plans for us sheeple.
You constantly hear about 'stupid criminals' in the news, like the guy that broke out of a police station, then headed for the local bar to get a beer - and bragged about his escape! Here is another "I'm smarter than you" clown, who could have stayed under the radar and enjoyed a great career somewhere - but instead joins a political cabinet which brings all your skeletons out of the closet. Is it really worse that she cheated on her PhD, or that no one caught it for over 30 years?
I think the ultimate goal is to get away with whatever you can, so...
from the looks of her, she's also guilty of impersonating a woman
It would be nice if people just quit voting all together. The problem with voting is that it lends legitimacy to these public jackasses. It also provides encouragement, when really people are just voting them in based on a dislike of the other candidate.
If transporter room technology existed, I would beam these absurd people(those in charge) to a single room where they could settle their chicken hawk disputes and display it to the rest of the world so everyone could see how useless they really are.
How do you say "I'm phucked" in German??
Ich bin Heidi Klum.
Suck Ph...Duck
An odd, quioxitic effort to defend the integreity of an academic degree.
It's like sending a valentine's day card to a brothel; only shows that someone has little idea what goes in there.
Couldn't happen here in the USA.
We have national security privacy protections.
Thus, there has been not one word of reproach for any of the graduate work of our Constitutional law expert President
that has been open to public scrutiny.
Oh, ffs, if you're going to do a hit piece, do it properly, with some bite. Get some balls, Tyler.
Her PHD was called:
"Character and conscience — Studies on the conditions, necessities, and demands on the development of conscience in the present day."
Obviously, becoming a politician, founding a career on plagiarism and otherwise living off the gullible, all based on lies, WAS JUST FIELD RESEARCH. She's just proven her brilliant hypothesis, and as such, is a credit to all real social scientists everywhere. That is the humour, that is the barb to ruin her, and that is how you crush a soul. Or does anyone here really believe that her plagiarism (if, indeed, it ever existed) isn't merely an armament against her in the tools of state-craft?
Hint: In. Plain. Sight. It's not hard, it's merely fucking retarded at this point that appreciating such plays is so debased. Bring back players who could at least revel in the nuances of such finesse. Or, I suppose, you could go back to watching sports that are fixed, run by paedophiles who aren't prosecuted, making money for people you'd never like.
Aka, they're taking the piss, and when they do it, they play hard-ball.
Win or die.
Oh, I spy a Brit. You don't get that level of cynicism and appreciation of irony anywhere else in the world. Not even the Russians are up to it.
Trust me: the icepick was a tool of irony.
And it led to Mercader's doctoral thesis on Alternative Uses for Icepicks.
"Character and Conscience" She's a woman and has little of the first and none of the second.
Oh this is absolutely rife in Germany.
They like their official qualifications here. Their little bits of paper, certificates for everything (and anything). If you don't have the right level of official qualifications you don't even get a look in, not considered at all. Got to have your Abitur, Diplom, PhD. Outright faking it would be caught immediately so the less ethical simply copy others work.
It has been historically fairly difficult to catch, there's a lot of text out there and you can only read so much, and so much is forgotten. Now however we have computers, search engines, correlation systems and as more and more older work is digitised a lot more of this is going to hit the headlines. Particularly in Germany.
I live in a country in Eastern Europe and there was a scandal here at some point in time where one could buy a master degree at a university in a town somewhere without ever attending classes or do a thesis. The joke that intercity busdrivers used to make when stopping at the local busstation was to anounce a 15 minute busstop to go to the bathroom, to get some refreshments and to buy your master degree.
Don't forget Bill Clinton giving satellite orbiting secrets to the Chinese .... and North Koreans .... nice touch .... commander in jockey shorts ! Obama's paperwork is a little incomplete .... the undocumented mystery man ! www.obamasrealfather.com
Madoff for Ethics Czar.
Bernanke for Czar for a Solid Currency.
Slick Willie for Czar of Moral Decency and Word Parsing.
Michelle O. for Keep Your Ass Looking Fine The Fat Free Way Czar.
http://glossynews.com/wp-content/themes/gazette/thumb.php?src=http://glo...
Obama for Extemporaneous Prompter Reading Czar.
And remember to close your chimney flue to keep the drones out of your bedroom.
The USA is proof that great and true leaders keep a country great.
Isn't it rich .... that all these women are getting into politics .... just when the sick socialist world is going tits up ?
As someone who has their own original ideas "used" without proper attribution, I applaud the Germans.
I'm not sure about the particulars of this case (and don't have time to look into it right now), but one of the patterns I've seen first-hand is that PhDs will only cite other PhDs. Very rarely will you see masters level or undergrad original ideas properly cited, mainly because these people are generally locked-out of the peer-reviewed journals unless they have an academic or corporate affiliation. Even then, they are typically publishing under someone already established in the field, and usually a tenured professor.
And forget about ideas generated by "the rabble." These are very frequently stolen by the academic class. What happens is that some PhD candidate comes across some secondary research and a synthesis and they present this as their own synthesis without attributing the original author. And why should they need to? It's not in the "official literature." Even Master's theses are considered "gray literature," and in all my research reading thousands of papers, I can count on one hand the number of Master's theses that were referenced.
I'm glad the Tylers find this humorous. I'm sure a lot of their work has been ripped off as well, and maybe I can take a lesson from them in good humor. I certainly see the humor of the fact that it was the education minister herself stripped of her PhD, but it does strike a bit of a raw nerve for me.
lighten up Francis.......it is very very very funny, indeed
I wouldn't say it was funny as much as it was karma.
Edit: A bit slow tonight. Didn't get the Stripes reference right away.
Where is that homophobe Francis, anyway?
Geekgirl - your thoughts are pure gold. The world of academia is a den of thieves. Most if not all of the frauds who inhabit this world have never had an original idea of their own, and they have no hesitation about literally stealing the work of others as long as those whose work they steal are not part of the priesthood. I have never had any respect for those who trade on their circle-jerk expertise, and like you I have had my original work stolen, but there is really no recourse. The only compensation is knowing that you have contributed original and helpful ideas to the world even though those who actually benefit are the worst of the worst. They have to live with the deep knowledge that they are worthless frauds, whatever stature they achieve through their theft. At the end, you have to live with yourself, and whatever rewards you have garnered through the frauds you have accomplished are a blight on your soul.
:-) You know what I'm talking about. I can't help but noticing you used the phrase circle-jerk, because I had actually written that and then deleted it, thinking maybe it was a bit over the top. But it's not, is it?
sour grapes! this is what happens when you ask for your gold back.