Pressure Rises On German Science Minister In Plagiarism Scandal

An anonymous reader writes "Germany's minister for science and education, who is currently under investigation by her alma mater for plagiarizing parts of her Ph.D thesis, is facing new accusations: a total of 92 alleged incidents of plagiarism (German) have been documented by a blogger, who calls 'this number of violations inexcusable.'"

Comments

Achtung Schweinhund!

[Hognoxious]

Ich habe kein Versicherung für meinem Polenüberfallenmittelstoff das Ich habe letzes tag beim Strassenbahnhalestelle verloren!

Re:Achtung Schweinhund!

[Anonymous Coward]

NEIN! VERBOTEN!
Vorschrift Z38, Reichskampfstoffministerium, untersagt ausdrücklich die Mitführung von unversicherten Polenübefallmittelstoffmitführungsbehältnissen!
Begeben Sie sich in die Apparatur! Freude wird über Sie kommen!

Re:Achtung Schweinhund!

[snakeplissken]

Wenn ist das Nunnstück git und Slotermeyer? Ja! Beiherhund das Oder die Flipperwaldt gersput!

Re:Achtung Schweinhund!

[Anonymous Coward]

I showed this to a German friend of mine and he died - is that normal?

Re:Achtung Schweinhund!

[Anonymous Coward]

I showed this to a German friend of mine and he died - is that normal?

Yes

Re:Achtung Schweinhund!

[Anonymous Coward]

You sink you are being zo funny! You vant to play rough, ja? OK, ve play rough:

There were zwei peanuts, walking down the straße, und one was 'assaulted'... peanut

Oh who gives a fuck?

[Anonymous Coward]

Plagiarism's okay any day. There's nothing wrong with it at all. Think of all the effort they expend copying all that text! Why don't you want innovation? Why are you copyright property violators so smug!?

I've had enough of this time tell bologna!

Re:Oh who gives a fuck?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, copyright violators don't go around saying that they actually created any of the shit they copy around, in fact most of them go out of their way to tell people who's truly responsible for creating the work. Copy a song, that's copyright violation. Go around saying you fucking wrote the song, that's plagiarism. World of difference between the two.

Re:Oh who gives a fuck?

[metacell]

The Pirate Party is actually clear that they want to retain the creator's right to attribution. It's only the economic rights they want to abolish.

Re:Oh who gives a fuck?

[AliasMarlowe]

Just reading the title of her dissertation ("Person and conscience—Studies on conditions, need and requirements of today's consciences.") is enough to give me the giggles. Some of us got our PhD the hard way - by doing actual science or engineering that advanced the state of knowledge in their field. Just spewing some pseudo-intellectual waffle-gab should not count, except maybe towards a pseudo-PhD.

Re:Oh who gives a fuck?

[Savage-Rabbit]

The Pirate Party is actually clear that they want to retain the creator's right to attribution. It's only the economic rights they want to abolish.

The problem being that the creators sustain them selves by the same economic rights the pirates want to abolish.

Re:Oh who gives a fuck?

[Anonymous Coward]

The Pirate Party is actually clear that they want to retain the creator's right to attribution. It's only the economic rights they want to abolish.

The problem being that the creators sustain them selves by the same economic rights the pirates want to abolish.

hah, like those rights benefit anyone but the corporate powers that be.

Re:Oh who gives a fuck?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, and I might sustain myself with a right granted to me by law that forces everyone to give me a few dollars every so often for no reason at all. I mean, sure, authors think of new material, but the mere fact that that's the only way they know how to sustain themselves doesn't justify such freedom-violating laws. Find a business model or die.

Re:Oh who gives a fuck?

[greentshirt]

Much of science is based on pseudo-intellectual waffle-gab. The experimental method, for example, empiricism, skepticism, many basic classificatory schemes, and actually even the groundwork for modern discoveries such as the atom. But what am I doing tell you all of this stuff, obviously you know the value of pseudo-intellectual waffle-gab, because your signature quotes Voltaire and not Newton.

Re:Oh who gives a fuck?

[Another, completely]

Find a business model or die.

It is nice to have writers because we like to read books. If there is no business model that allows people to work as full-time authors, then it's not just the would-be authors who suffer.

Re:Oh who gives a fuck?

[TFAFalcon]

And those rights also sustain some grandchildren of the creators. The world needs some IP rights, but they are completely out of control right now. So if any negotiations are to be balanced, the anti-IP side has to start with wanting to abolish IP altogether, since the pro-IP side wants to extend it to eternity.

Re:Oh who gives a fuck?

[fph il quozientatore]

Yeah, and I might sustain myself with a right granted to me by law that forces everyone to give me a few dollars every so often for no reason at all. I mean, sure, authors think of new material, but the mere fact that that's the only way they know how to sustain themselves doesn't justify such freedom-violating laws. Find a business model or die.

Exactly. I have a research position at a university. I get paid to write scientifical papers that are then available for everyone to download on my website. Why would the same thing be inconceivable for musicians?

Re:Oh who gives a fuck?

[Anonymous Coward]

Right, like I pay the painter who painted the crossroads every time I cross the street?

Re:Oh who gives a fuck?

[Anonymous Coward]

Find a business model or die.

It is nice to have writers because we like to read books. If there is no business model that allows people to work as full-time authors, then it's not just the would-be authors who suffer.

I'm generally a political lefty but the idea that content creators are supposed to work, essentially for free, so that pirates can enjoy their material is naive and economically unworkable. This anarchistic/socialistic idea of entire professions working for the common good of the community without recompense has been tested an re-tested since before the Spanish civil war and found not to work any more than rampant rapacious capitalism has. It's a bit like those far left wing types that want to confiscate all privately accumulated pensions, put them into a single pot and then redistribute them equally to everybody regardless of how much they contributed. It kills all incentive to contribute. Not that the far left has a monopoly on stupid ideas, fanatics on both sides of the political spectrum are usually a bunch of morons. Whenever I talk about the issue of abolishing the practice of deriving economic benefit from intellectual property the discussion always ends with me asking the question: "How are writers/filmmakers/developers/musicians supposed to sustain them selves in a world where they are not allowed to sell their works?". The best ideas I have yet heard from our pirate friends is that musicians would be doomed to a lifetime of concert touring, writers to charging for access to book readings, filmmakers to deriving revenues from movie theaters and nobody has yet adequately explained to me how software developers are supposed to make money in a world where they can't charge people for software licenses. You can moan on and on about making software free and charging for the services it gives access to but that brings up the dual problems of people feeling them selves entitled to circumventing the pay portals to those services and the fact that not all software is a gateway to a service you can charge access to.

Re:Oh who gives a fuck?

[Anonymous Coward]

Sigh. I hope you are pretty young to have such an idealistic world view.

Re:Oh who gives a fuck?

[cheekyjohnson]

Sigh. I hope you are pretty young to have written such a reply.

Re:Oh who gives a fuck?

[Vintermann]

Well, in that case, you can make the same statement to book buyers: Find a funding model, or die. (Although it's not quite that bad, fortunately).

But there is no lack of other potential funding models. The main difficulty, both for authors and readers, is that we aren't used to these other funding models, and thus we're confused by them, scared by them, and unable to take full advantage of them.

Right now something exciting is happening, as Kickstarter is gradually, slowly, wrapping people's minds around the idea that you can approach creative projects as a investments/ventures for non monetary gain.

Re:Oh who gives a fuck?

[Savage-Rabbit]

Right, like I pay the painter who painted the crossroads every time I cross the street?

That's just a plain stupid analogy.

Re:Oh who gives a fuck?

[HaZardman27]

Don't universities receive grants for producing scientific data? That also ignores the tons of money that comes in through tuition. Where would the money come from to support musicians/artists/software developers if everyone had to rely on such a system? The government? We have something like that already; it's called welfare and is generally reserved for the people who aren't very skilled or marketable in their field. The academic model would be terrible for private business. It's like that one SMBC Comic - academics like to complain about "Publish or Die," but in the real world that's called "Do Your Damn Job or Get Fired." The system in place works just fine: if people like your product, they spend money on it. If they don't, you better find a different source of income.

Re:Oh who gives a fuck?

[HaZardman27]

WTF? How is that even comparable to an artist charging for access to his/her work? The guy who paints crosswalks is a civil servant, paid by your government to provide a public service. Do you really want to support every failed artist with tax money?

Re:Oh who gives a fuck?

[HeckRuler]

software developers are supposed to make money in a world where they can't charge people for software licenses.

Well, as a software engineer, I can answer this one: People pay you to solve problems. Generally they hire you to do so, but I've seen a lot of consultant/contractors do the mercenary thing.
At some of the places I worked, they would be perfectly fine if was open sourced afterwards, as long as they could still use it to solve their problem. Other places, the source was a national secret. But in both, there was a problem, they needed some software to solve it, and they paid me to git'er'done.

There are, indeed, those people that have products out on the web, that you can purchase and run, typically with some sort of DRM to keep the filthy pirates from keehauling them. And if IP laws are relaxed... they'll face the same troubles they do now: The poor pirate them and are unsueable because they're poor and have nothing to take, the rich blatantly steal their ideas and are unsueable because they're rich and can afford better lawyers.

Considering the "give it away for free" model has worked pretty well for Linux and that entire community, I'm going to just declare that this section of the problem has been solved. Our skillset is rare enough and useful enough that software developers as a whole don't have a problem with money.

in a world where they are not allowed to sell their works?

Whoa now. Whoever suggested that is crazy. No. I believe the idea is that they can't sue people for listening/viewing/reading their work. Subtle difference between "not allowed" and "it's an unrealistic expectation". I imagine there'd be a lot of begging, donation buttons, and commissions.

Re:Oh who gives a fuck?

[bzipitidoo]

You doubt that content creators can be compensated by any other system? Really?

Universities use a form of patronage. It has its problems-- for instance, the notorious Publish or Perish pressure pushes researchers towards quantity rather than quality-- but it does produce research. And it is not welfare, nor is it for those of poor skill, quite the opposite. We need some place for deep thinkers to work, and business is poor at providing a suitable environment for that.

The academic model would be terrible for private business

Would it? How do you know that? And do not talk as if currently used business models are the best we can do. They have big problems, such as a tendency to evolve towards exploitative monopolies which must be constantly guarded against by anti-trust watchdogs, extreme shortsightedness that sacrifices the future for immediate profit, and a narrow viewpoint that sees everything through the lens of products and property rights no matter how wildly inappropriate such a view may be. The private bookstore is an excellent example of this. More and more, we're seeing that trying to treat data as if it is a scarce resource does not work.

The bricks and mortar bookstore is doomed. They have huge overhead in their preferred methods of storage and distribution that is becoming harder to support and justify. A new paperback is now approaching $10 per copy at a time that digital copies can be had for $1, and in time, free. I used to shop at bookstores a lot. Now I may go once a year if that. The last time I set foot inside a bookstore was 2 months ago, and it was only to use up a gift card I'd received. Even used bookstores aren't much of a deal compared to digital.

There are many other ways to compensate authors. Patronage is a big one, with many, many variations that we have as yet barely explored. It is not charity. Patrons expect something they can personally enjoy in return. Then there are endorsements and advertising. For musicians, there are concerts. Another avenue of compensation that is not used as much as it could be is merchandising. For instance, Asimov's Foundation series is popular, but I have not heard there are such things as t-shirts, coffee mugs, action toys, and the like for the Foundation. Why not? It's only partly because there isn't enough of a market. It's also because the process of getting the rights to do such a thing is too cumbersome.

Re:Oh who gives a fuck?

[HaZardman27]

And it is not welfare, nor is it for those of poor skill, quite the opposite.

Sorry, I must not have phrased what I was saying clearly. I'm not trying to compare researchers at universities to welfare recipients; I was trying to point out that state-funded artists and content producers would essentially be just that.

And do not talk as if currently used business models are the best we can do

No, they clearly aren't. But the ability for content producers to sell and distribute content digitally is removing much of the need for big business there. With that type of model, an artist or producer's ability to sustain that career is completely dependent on whether or not consumers appreciate his/her work enough to pay for it. If you aren't producing anything of worth, why should you be supported in doing so?

Re:Oh who gives a fuck?

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe you'd fancy paying the carpenter every time you sit in the chair he made, access the building he built, or why not, every time you open or close the door? He's at least not a civil servant. The argument or copyright is still crock shit.

Re:Oh who gives a fuck?

[ThatsMyNick]

The experimental method, for example, empiricism, skepticism, many basic classificatory schemes, and actually even the groundwork for modern discoveries such as the atom.

I read this thrice, and I am pretty sure there is a verb or two missing in the statement.

Re:Oh who gives a fuck?

[Anonymous Coward]

My thought exactly.
My other thought was: How can you possibly determine that plagiarisation has been taking place while comparing two creations of fluff like these.. reminds me of the guy who wrote a bot that could write dissertations. Very few of the proofreaders actually realized that it was all just fake as the bot was very adept att using "big" words and vague concepts..
I wonder for how long our train-wreck of an economy (ie: the west) will be sufficiently strong to be able to support this kind of totally pointless "research".

Re:Oh who gives a fuck?

[BrokenHalo]

I get paid to write scientifical papers...

Scientifical?

I wonder if anyone reads them.

Re:Oh who gives a fuck?

[metacell]

The problem being that the creators sustain them selves by the same economic rights the pirates want to abolish.

That's another discussion, but here goes: Creators can earn money without copyright.

For example, a lot of music artists have discovered that they earn roughly the same amount of money by putting up their music on the Internet for free, and selling signed copies, merchandise, extra material, and so on. A lot of people are prepared to pay because they want to support the band, they have the cash and can't be bothered to find the material on a filesharing network, or they want to be sure they get the best quality as fast as possible. Plus, the added exposure draws more people to their concerts.

In fact, the only music artists I've seen complain about piracy, are the ones that are already established and have a steady, safe income ("rent") from albums they've already released. But that's a small, small minority of all artists.

People are also prepared to pay to see films at the theatre, and to see them shortly after the release date. A lot of people download the film to see if it's worth watching, then pay to see it at the theatre a second time.

Usually, there are only low-quality copies filmed with hand-held cams available the first few weeks -- but even when high-quality copies are leaked before the premiere, as with the first Spider-Man film, the film still does well if it's any good.

When it comes to writing, there are (and have always been) precious few authors that have been able to support themselves on writing alone. The vast majority need to have a day job, or supplement their income with writing-related jobs, such as journalism, teaching, holding lectures and workshops, and so on. And yet, people keep writing, even when they'd earn more money washing dishes. As an amateur writer, I know.

Also, I accidentally lied in the GP -- the Pirate Party doesn't want to abolish all the creator's economic rights. They only want to legalise private copying. The artist will still have an exclusive right to commercial use.

Re:Oh who gives a fuck?

[metacell]

The best ideas I have yet heard from our pirate friends is that musicians would be doomed to a lifetime of concert touring, writers to charging for access to book readings, filmmakers to deriving revenues from movie theaters and nobody has yet adequately explained to me how software developers are supposed to make money in a world where they can't charge people for software licenses.

But that's exactly how most musicians, writers and programmers earn their living today.

Most musicians derive the majority of their income from concerts and merchandise. It's only the stars that get significant income from album sales.

The vast majority of writers derive the majority of their income from writing-related jobs, such s teaching, workshops and journalism -- if they don't just have a day job.

The vast majority of programmers work with writing custom software for a specific customer, and get paid directly by that customer -- not by writing general-purpose software that's sold off-the-shelf.

No fun

[tsa]

I've been plagiarized once. This bitch had copied one of my articles I wrote in a Proceedings of a conference, with pictures and everything, and used it in an overview article. The worst part of it is that my professor didn't care about it. I'm still mad, and it happened 15 years ago.

Re:No fun

[Anonymous Coward]

Get over it, sweetcakes! I need my A's, B's, and C's to recuperate my health fully! I'm tired of you hitchbacked complainers ruining any chances I have of receiving my spindleback!

Re:No fun

[RogueyWon]

Plagiarism does seem to be getting more and more common, with people getting ever more casual about it. When I was at University in the 90s, there were a small number of students caught engaging in plagiarism. If it was felt to be deliberate, it was basically immediate expulsion. If it was more likely to be carelessness or ignorance of proper academic processes, the consequences were still severe (being made to redo substantial chunks of work).

Speaking a couple of months ago to a niece who's now at University, I was told that around a third of the students in her year for her subject had been caught copying material from the net. The response, a few sessions where they were sat down and told "Plagiarism is bad, mkay".

I came across a hilarious example of (non academic) plagiarism a couple of months ago, while sifting a pile of job applications.

This was the first sift and I had a pile of about 50 in front of me (which I was aiming to get down to about 15 or so by weeding out the obvious no-hopers). We had three other people sitting down with a similar pile (200 applications for 2 posts - this has been the norm for us over the last couple of years - I guess the job market is a scary place right now).

Anyway, I'm only being fairly cursory about it, but even so, I spot that three of the applications seem to use the exact same stock few (clumsy, badly worded) paragraphs. I tap the first line of one of these paragraphs into google and the first hit is a "how to write a job application" site. A very poorly put together site (think site design that dates from the circa 1998 geocities era), written by somebody whose first language is probably not English. The paragraphs in question aren't even particularly relevant to our job application form (which is fairly specific and focussed).

A quick e-mail around to the other people on the panel turns up a total of 6 forms which use text from that site. Clearly it had somehow managed to get a high ranking for a few of the relevant search terms. But seriously, you're competing against hundreds of other people and you decide to use material you've copy/pasted from something that is only one step away from having animated gifs of dancing cats? Unless said site had itself plagiarised its content from somewhere else, of course..

Re:No fun

[Anonymous Coward]

You've been plagiarized from twice. Looks like you're pretty mad about that 'tsa' thing too.

Re:No fun

[alendit]

I have been plagiarized once. This bitch had copied one of my articles I wrote in a proceedings of a conference, with pictures and everything, and used it in an overview article. The worst part of it is that my professor didn't care about it. I am still mad, and it happened 15 years ago.

Re:No fun

[dkf]

I've been plagiarized once. This bitch had copied one of my articles I wrote in a Proceedings of a conference, with pictures and everything, and used it in an overview article. The worst part of it is that my professor didn't care about it. I'm still mad, and it happened 15 years ago.

I've had a student in a class plagiarize my own articles back at me. In retrospect it was both funny and sad, but at the time I was very exasperated that they could be that stupid. No, they didn't get a pass in the class. Nor did they get an opportunity to retake; their original work was even worse too, so much so that if they're reading here, I'd advise them to keep on plagiarizing instead of trying to have original thoughts.

Re:No fun

[Savage-Rabbit]

Plagiarism does seem to be getting more and more common, with people getting ever more casual about it. When I was at University in the 90s, there were a small number of students caught engaging in plagiarism.

Are you sure plagiarism rates are increasing? Maybe it's simply that these days, with everything being digital, it is way easier to uncover plagiarism. I wonder what would happen if one was able to digitize the scientific literature of the last 100 years and then started plagiarism checking Phd. thesis from the same period with a computer.

Re:No fun

[Anonymous Coward]

Did it affect you negatively? Apart from negative feelings that is.
Captcha: puberty

Re:No fun

[Chrisq]

I've been plagiarized once. This bitch had copied one of my articles I wrote in a Proceedings of a conference, with pictures and everything, and used it in an overview article. The worst part of it is that my professor didn't care about it. I'm still mad, and it happened 15 years ago.

I've had a student in a class plagiarize my own articles back at me. In retrospect it was both funny and sad, but at the time I was very exasperated that they could be that stupid. No, they didn't get a pass in the class. Nor did they get an opportunity to retake; their original work was even worse too, so much so that if they're reading here, I'd advise them to keep on plagiarizing instead of trying to have original thoughts.

It could have been even funnier if one of your colleagues marked it without realising before you saw it!

Re:No fun

[Alex Belits]

Yesss!!! It does not matter that public is deceived by a plagiarist. It does not matter that plagiarist is given credit and authority based on things he copied from somewhere else! It does not matter that real author is deprived of recognition for his work.
It's about FEEEEEEELings!

Please kill all your friends, then yourself.

Re:No fun

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't thinking anything worse than one of my students getting a bad mark for work they stole from me.

Re:No fun

[dkf]

It could have been even funnier if one of your colleagues marked it without realising before you saw it!

To be honest, I forget whether it was myself or one of my colleagues who first saw this paper. The plagiarism was really obvious; it was a truly incompetent hack job that cribbed without citation from quite a few important papers in the field, and the student didn't even bother to make the formatting styles consistent. The indentation and font changed between paragraphs. Anyone knowledgeable enough to mark the subject on which the paper was supposed to be would have given similar marks.

But the big fat zero for plagiarism would still beat the outright negative for the original parts of the paper, which managed to be wrong in every way I can conceive of, sufficiently so that I could be sure it was original. The depth of lack of understanding (let alone ability) was profound. Before you ask, the rest of the class had no real problems producing reasonable work. Heck, the other times we've run the course even students who failed it did far better than this one guy; he was that stand-out bad. Sometimes, you've got to just fail someone utterly for the good of everyone else.

Considered from now, many years later, I'd guess that the part I'm angriest about is that he made it onto the course at all. He was a total waste of my time, time that could have been spent helping other students who did work and did try to understand and would have benefited from a little more guidance. (The work some of them did was amazing, and made me proud to have had some hand in teaching them.)

Re:No fun

[Anonymous Coward]

"To be honest, I forget whether it was myself or one of my colleagues who first saw this paper. The plagiarism was really obvious; it was a truly incompetent hack job that cribbed without citation from quite a few important papers in the field, and the student didn't even bother to make the formatting styles consistent. The indentation and font changed between paragraphs."

Yeah, I've seen that too, mainly for stuff cribbed with cut-and-paste from web pages. The font changes, spacing, etc. all changed abruptly from paragraph to paragraph, and sometimes between sentences. Those ones are pretty pathetic. Easy to notice and easy to find on the web. Apparently they never heard of "Paste Special->without formatting". They can't even do a good job of plagiarism!

Re:No fun

[drinkypoo]

Please kill all your friends, then yourself.

Dude, that is not cool.

It's kill all your relatives, not friends.

Re:No fun

[cyberdime]

Are you sure plagiarism rates are increasing? Maybe it's simply that these days, with everything being digital, it is way easier to uncover plagiarism.

That or perhaps the many eyes of the Internet, bloggers, anonymous Wikileakers, etc. Maybe we can call it opensource journalism or at best the start of opensource government (ex. the anti-ACTA movement).

Re:No fun

[Inda]

I have been copied just the once. This bastard had duplicated a single of my articles I typed about the events of a symposium, with images and the whole lot, and used it in a general idea piece of writing. The most unpleasant part of it is that my university lecturer didn't worry about it. I am still round the bend, and it occurred 15 durations previously.

Re:No fun

[gorzek]

I get tasked with reviewing resumes, too. Sometimes I'm completely baffled as to what someone was thinking when they wrote it. I've never seen one that was obviously lifted from an online template, though. Most people are simply not trained on how to write a good resume, and they don't want to take the time to learn--they want someone else to have done the work for them.

As for cheating, it does seem like cheating is on the rise among students. Part of it is that it's easier now than it ever was in the past. This provides a great temptation. On top of that, there's the laziness factor I mentioned above. I really don't know where this came from. I was born in 1981 and I've never felt the urge to cheat my way through academics. What good is a degree if you didn't actually learn anything to get it, and you just cheated the whole way through? What kind of ethical standard does such a person have? I sure as hell wouldn't want them making any important decisions in a business environment.

She should step down.

[Nyder]

Seriously, what example does that set that your Minister for Science and Education is a cheat?

Go Germany!!!!!!

Re:She should step down.

[Anonymous Coward]

While I agree that it's inexcusable, Bush cheated the elections, so...

Go USA!!!!!

Re:She should step down.

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, no he didn't. Bush went to court to make sure the same rules at the start of the election were in place at the finish of the elections. That is what the Supreme Court ruled on and said had to happen. You would have a hard time claiming that the person wanting the rules to be the same when they finished as when they started is a cheat in any other way. Just because keeping the same rules was to his advantage does not make him a Cheat. Just because you do not like him does not make him a cheat.

This is besides the point that every study done on the recounts have declared Bush to be the rightful winner. Including one done with actual access to the ballots that the hanging chads and dimples and everything was being counted.

Re:She should step down.

[man_of_mr_e]

Actually, no. In fact, the supreme court found that the rules that were in place before the election were unconstitutional. In particular, the rules regarding recounts were unconstitutional because there was no statewide standard for counting ballots, and thus ballots could be counted differently in different counties. This, the Supremes ruled, was a violation of the equal protection clause of the 14th amendment.

Those counting rules were in place prior to the election, but the SCOTUS ruled that the recount had to be stopped because (in part) of this violation. The other part was that putting a statewide standard in place would take too long, and would prevent certification of the vote in time to meet the mandated date that certification was required (December 12th, which was also the date of the decision).

Basically, it was all a huge cluster fuck, with conflicting rulings, laws, standards, etc.. In fact, because the counting process was ruled to be in violation of the 14th amendment, SCOTUS should have ruled that the original count was not valid as well, and forced the SCOFL to mandate a standard and then do a full recount by that standard. That way, the rules in effect prior to the legitimate count would have been the same as after the legitimate count.

Re:She should step down.

[metacell]

I'm not contesting that Bush turned out to be the rightful winner in the end, but both sides did use a lot of dirty tricks to make the decision go their way.

Re:She should step down.

[Anonymous Coward]

SCOTUS should have ruled that the original count was not valid as well, and forced the SCOFL to mandate a standard and then do a full recount by that standard

Absolutely, but you make the mistake of supposing the courts were after justice. The Florida Supreme Court gave out a tongue-in-cheek ruling favoring Gore. The US Supreme Court then showed the Florida Supreme Court their place with a tongue-in-cheek ruling of another magnitude.

In America, the Supreme Court isn't there to rule objectively from law and overarching principles. Rather, the Supreme Court consists of political players who use their expertise to dress their whims in legalese.

A good example is the idea that the Constitution guarantees everybody legal presentation (it doesn't, but the Supreme Court is who decides). Then, somebody got a death penalty because their public defender slept through the proceedings and appealed. The Supreme Court, in its infinite wisdom, ruled that nowhere in the Constitution does it say that your guaranteed legal representation must be awake...

Re:She should step down.

[Anonymous Coward]

This is no “versus”. The USA has horribly bad government science committee chairmen too.

Both our politicians are evil pieces of shit. Both our citizens love to complain but hate to change anything, or they couldn't complain anymore. Let's leave it at that. (France, and other countries: You're welcome to join in too.)

Re:She should step down.

[will_die]

USA is still number one, the head of the department in charge of our taxes, aka IRS, is a tax cheat.

Re:She should step down.

[azalin]

Well sometimes it takes a crook to catch the cheaters, but in that case they probably just settle things with a nice campaign donation.

Re:She should step down.

[Anonymous Coward]

The Supreme Court, in its infinite wisdom, ruled that nowhere in the Constitution does it say that your guaranteed legal representation must be awake if you're black.

FTFY

Re:She should step down.

[Anonymous Coward]

Here in the US Vice-President Biden is well known for plagiarizing. He got caught while he was in law school, has been caught several times since in speeches.

Re:She should step down.

[Anonymous Coward]

Gore lost. Get over it.

The Supreme Court ruled that the vote would stand and that Democrats couldn't keep requesting recounts and trying to change votes.

Re:She should step down.

[KDR_11k]

They're politicians, if you take them as an example for anything except being amoral scum you're doing it wrong.

State of the question

[Anonymous Coward]

As an university teacher once told me: Copy from 1 is plagiarism, from 5 is an analysis, from 92 is summarizing the state of the question

Re:State of the question

[alendit]

Funny, but fundamentally wrong. Copy and give credit = standard scientific proceeding. Copy and say it's yours = plagitism. It quite easy, really.

Re:State of the question

[Anonymous Coward]

Get on over it, you blimey little bastard! I've revealed the Truth of Things! I've revealed the Truth of Things at once!

Re:State of the question

[metacell]

Well, if something is generally known to experts in the field, there's no need to give credit; everyone already knows who discovered it and won't believe it's you.

Re:State of the question

[Endovior]

Emphatically NOT true. 'Generally Known' and 'Known to Experts' are two entirely different sets, with very minimal intersection; at the levels of doctoral research, even the experts don't have time to read all the papers, and there really isn't a lot that can be said to be 'Generally Known'... so 'Generally Known to Experts' isn't a useful criteria. And even if something was so 'Generally Known to Experts' that citation really would be redundant, it's still useful to have the citation. That makes it easier for your expert readers to look up the original for cross-referencing, for non-expert readers to have access to background info they lack, and for keeping track of relevant statistics like 'How many works have cited this work?' All that's ignoring the fact that it's impolite to not cite, but that much goes without saying.

Re:State of the question

[ThreeKelvin]

Thank you!

I spent two months of my PhD, first trying to find an elusive proof for an obscure bit of math that I needed, that, according to the papers on the topic, was "available in the litterature", and then, after I finally gave it up, I painfully reconstructed the proof.

"Available in the litterature" ticks me off, almost as much as "... from this, it is easily seen that ...".

Re:State of the question

[alexgieg]

Well, if something is generally known to experts in the field, there's no need to give credit; everyone already knows who discovered it and won't believe it's you.

It's safer to err on the side of precaution. Why risk being called a plagiarist when all that's needed to avoid trouble is to change from this:

Blah blah blah blah.

To this:

"Blah blah bah blah." (Author, "Title", p. Page)

?

My guess is that most plagiarism out there is more a case of laziness than of anything else.

Hmm... perhaps there's an unexplored market out there for auto-quoting services for lazy researches, who knows? Submit your unpublished paper, get all unintentional plagiarisms marked for review, click a button and have them turned into proper quotations in any style your paper uses, either all at once or individually, and download the result.

Re:State of the question

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah. I once had a reviewer for one of my papers state: Part X of this argument is not trivial, so there should be an argument for it or a reference, or at least you could say "It is easily seen that X". I guess "easily" means the opposite of what it means to normal people in some people's papers.

Re:State of the question

[metacell]

I guess I was a bit vague -- I was thinking of things that were discovered decades ago and considered standard tools by now. For example, when you write a physics paper, you don't need to explain where you get the laws of motion and mechanics from. Or when you write a paper on molecular biology, you don't need to mention who discovered the structure of DNA.

Anyway, I get your point.

Science?!?

[Anonymous Coward]

Schavan received her doctorate in educational science in 1980 from the University of Düsseldorf; her dissertation was entitled: "Person and conscience—Studies on conditions, need and requirements of today's consciences.

This isn't science anyway, just brabra like most lawyers write about...

Re:Science?!?

[Anonymous Coward]

Rape is perfectly acceptable. You've been indoctrinated by the cows-come-home elites to believe otherwise. It's perfectly normal to spew your seed into an unwilling victim's vagina. Why wouldn't it be? It's natural!

Re:Science?!?

[Hentes]

Which is why I find most of these scandals pointless. Her PhD is worthless regardless whether she copied it or not.

Not tolerable in this level

[Tharindu_Rusira]

This is really bad in the perspective of the country more than as a personal disgrace to a minister, if she is proved to be guilty.

Re:Not tolerable in this level

[azalin]

It might be, if she had been the first this year. I have lost count on just how many PhD scandals involving ministers or high ranking politicians there have been in Germany in the last two years (double digits). The whole thing started last year when the minister of defence and current shooting star of the ruling party was found guilty of plagiarism in his PhD. After that, people started to take a closer look on other prominent figures PhDs. Guess what happened next...

Re:Not tolerable in this level

[KDR_11k]

Yeah and the first time it happened the politicians were the only ones who thought it wasn't a big deal. Guess this is the reason why.

As Tom Lehrer would put it

[zugurudumba]

Nikolai Ivanovich Lobachevsky would be proud.

Everything worth saying

[Anonymous Coward]

Everything worth saying has been said. The merit of ideas should be independent of the source.

Plagiarism is just a branch of the immoral concept of copyright.

Re:Everything worth saying

[Anonymous Coward]

Everything worth saying has been said.

Post-modernism is a dead end, exactly because of this.

But, OK, you have an expensive sounding excuse for your lack of originality.

Seems to become a national hobby...

[Fusselwurm]

... after Mr Guttenberg had to quit as Defence Minister because of plagiarism, it seems to have become a sport to topple politicians this way. It's a fun thing to watch.

Re:Seems to become a national hobby...

[Erikderzweite]

Just as it became customary for politicians to get a PhD and a fancy "Dr." to the name, a part of the public has decided to read their theses. This is how a democracy works.

Re:Seems to become a national hobby...

[pnot]

I find it particularly entertaining because Germany seems reluctant to recognize foreign doctorates -- i.e. if you got your PhD outside Germany, you may not be allowed to call yourself "Dr.". The implication is that a German PhD is somehow intrinsically superior. The politicians seem to be doing a good job in dragging down the superior branding.

Maybe this explains the "Dr. Dr. Dr."s and "Dr. mult"s I've heard about: writing three PhDs is probably easier if you're copy-pasting :-).

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[Anonymous Coward]

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Re:AVG LiveCD with TrueCrypt + daily updates

[KevReedUK]

Hmmm... I wonder... SPAM, or an example of plagiarism for comedy value? If the latter, kudos for getting it in under the radar!

No actual plagiarism

[Anonymous Coward]

This is actually old news... And it has been quickly determined that the accusations are bogus. It's a desperate plot by political enemies against the minister.

For example, the first instance of alleged plagiarism is the following text:
Schavan's thesis:

Dabei haben sich – vergröbernd dargestellt – zwei unterschiedliche Verhältnisbestimmungen herauskristallisiert: [...]

Allegedly plagiarised text:

Er hat nachgewiesen, daß jedes Tier mit seiner artspezifischen Umwelt in einem Funktionskreis verbunden existiert.

Even if you don't understand German, it should be obvious that no text has been copied. The accusators of schavanplag call this "concealed" plagiarizing. There would be some truth to this if Schavan had actually known the source and paraphrased the text without citing. It is, however, equally likely that she had just came to the same conclusions based on the same sources.

Some minor quality problems have been found, too. For example, some citations contain typos. While that should not happen, it's far from plagiarism. (Furthermore, the thesis was published in 1980. Without computers, it's much harder to avoid such errors.)

Re:No actual plagiarism

[Anonymous Coward]

You are a liar. The text you are calling "allegedly plagiarised" does not appear on the wiki page having your quotation from the thesis.

Re:No actual plagiarism

[Anonymous Coward]

Bullcrap.

See: here

Re:No actual plagiarism

[Chrisq]

This is actually old news... And it has been quickly determined that the accusations are bogus.

Do you have a reference to this?

Re:No actual plagiarism

[Anonymous Coward]

I hope this gets modded up.

I have nothing against people who paraphrase a common sentence. There are only so many times a certain thing can be said, and I think it is silly to blame people for using a clear 5-word sequence that they _might_ have seen elsewhere. Especially when millions of non-native speakers write scientific papers, I prefer they steal a clear sentence, then that they invent a sentence that nobody understands.

I also have nothing against paraphrasing a few sentences or an idea that was published elsewhere, if attribution is given.

Most automatic "plagiarism-detecting software" fails miserably at these two things.

What I do not like is people who clearly steal an idea, then even manage to write it down in nearly the same words as the original author, but without attribution. It happened to me, and it is quite frustrating.

However, the world does not end with this. There are much worse crimes. I would prefer we teach people the right mentality, then to witch-hunt people who might have copied a half sentence.

Re:No actual plagiarism

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, it sems that I switched tabs and copied the wrong text:

For the following text from Schavan's thesis:

Dabei haben sich – vergröbernd dargestellt – zwei unterschiedliche Verhältnisbestimmungen herauskristallisiert: [...]

the text claimed to be the original is:

Man kann drei verschiedene Ansichten über das Verhältnis des Menschen zum Tier unterscheiden[FN 2].

The conclusion is exactly the same.

The text I have accidentally copied seems to have come from the next page with alleged plagiarisms, which was open in another browser tab.

Sorry for that.

Please refrain from calling other people names, btw. Thank you!

Re:No actual plagiarism

[Anonymous Coward]

anything that is typed there, I could have typed as well (perhaps not in so perfect German). Without ever having read either of these previous works.

Re:No actual plagiarism

[Anonymous Coward]

You are still lying by severly distorting the facts and taking things out of context. On the page you mention, Schavan obviously paraphrased the source without giving any attribution, including literal copying of the phrases "unüberbrückbare Kluft", "unter Naturzwang stehendes Tier", "gradueller Unterschied". While this might not count as criminal copyright infringement, it is still a violation of established scientific practice, and thus has no place in a PhD thesis.

Re:No actual plagiarism

[Anonymous Coward]

I would prefer we teach people the right mentality, then to witch-hunt people who might have copied a half sentence.

What about people who have copied a half sentence 92 times? And what if these people are actually in charge of setting the standards for teaching the right mentality?

Re:No actual plagiarism

[Anonymous Coward]

This is actually old news... And it has been quickly determined that the accusations are bogus.

Do you have a reference to this?

He doesn't because this is wrong as well. The news is that the amount of plagiarism that had been detected has increased substantially since the original accusations. And even back then, several leading experts on plagiarism talked of "grave scientific misconduct", "scientifically worthless work", "suffcient for revoking her degree".

Re:No actual plagiarism

[Anonymous Coward]

If you read more of the alleged instances of plagarism, the pattern is pretty clearly that she copied structure and content including footnotes and references but mostly re-worded everything. I still think this qualifies as plagarism. One pretty clear example of plagarism, or at least "scientific mis-conduct" is e.g. this part which is written to look like 4 books were used to write the section, with titles of the books given in the foot nodes. But apparently only a single secondary source was used, with all foot notes lifted from that source, as indicated by multiple errors and inaccuracies that were copied as well (with no mention of the secondary source itself).

Re:No actual plagiarism

[ericloewe]

While that particular passage is very, very far from plagiarism, there are others that are a bit closer. A quick check did not yield any verbatim copies, though.

Re:No actual plagiarism

[Anonymous Coward]

He doesn't because this is wrong as well. The news is that the amount of plagiarism that had been detected has increased substantially since the original accusations. And even back then, several leading experts on plagiarism talked of "grave scientific misconduct", "scientifically worthless work", "suffcient for revoking her degree".

This story of SPIEGEL online is clearly marked with a date: "5.05.2012

Re:No actual plagiarism

[Anonymous Coward]

He doesn't because this is wrong as well. The news is that the amount of plagiarism that had been detected has increased substantially since the original accusations. And even back then, several leading experts on plagiarism talked of "grave scientific misconduct", "scientifically worthless work", "suffcient for revoking her degree".

This story of SPIEGEL online is clearly marked with a date: "5.05.2012

So what? Do you think the additional instances of plagiarism will lead these guys to soften their judgement?

Re:No actual plagiarism

[Wandering Voice]

I'm taking an English class, and was warned that even that is considered plagiarism and if caught it would not be treated any differently than outright copying.

The Germans are self-policing...

[acidfast7]

... as shown by the website here: http://de.vroniplag.wikia.com/wiki/Home/English

As an academic who earned a PhD in the US and worked as faculty in Sweden and now Germany, you're being quite naïve if you don't think this happens in every country including the US. The difference is that the Germans self-police (in standard volunteer wiki-style), while the US and Sweden do not, to my knowledge.

As far as it being a "sport", that's ridiculous. Being that we (Germany's inhabitants) take titles very seriously, with good reason, as the Chancellor has a doctorate in Quantum Chemistry, every thesis should be thoroughly scrutinized.

I would wager my degrees that the percentage of pages plagiarized are very similar between the US, Sweden and Germany. We just find the plagiarism over here and hold politicians (and all others) accountable.

Re:The Germans are self-policing...

[Tom]

The difference is that the Germans self-police (in standard volunteer wiki-style), while the US and Sweden do not, to my knowledge.

Even in Germany, this is quite new, and only started when one infamous dazzler (who I'm not going to name because it would only improve his Google rankings) was uncovered, denied everything and went on the offensive as PR experts tell you to do in such cases - except that the Internet geeks banded together and ripped his PhD thesis apart page-by-page showing massive abuse so much that he not only lost his PhD but also had criminal investigations for copyright violations launched against him and public pressure forced him to give up all his political positions.

He's since twice tried a comeback, both times the public made it clear that we don't like liars and fraudsters.

That was a part of recent history that makes me proud, but it is very recent history.

Re:The Germans are self-policing...

[acidfast7]

Sure, it's a new phenomenon.

But you must admit that the time between the technology being available (all dissertations being publicly available in electronic PDF form and OCR being widely implementable, the wiki framework for crowd-sourcing a problem, and the media being willing to really hang a prominent member of a prominent noble family out to dry) and the rise of self-policing websites has been extremely fast.

Also, he has 12 names plus a von and zu trailer. That alone would prevent me from typing his name.

Re:The Germans are self-policing...

[Anonymous Coward]

Last time I checked, twelve of the then sixteen members of the German federal cabinet held earned doctorates, and two of the other four had comparable advanced academic credentials in law. Scanning politicians' dissertations is more of a sport in Germany because there's a lot of subject material.

It's also a fact of life in Germany that a few people enjoy playing 'Anzeiger', and bringing the sins of their neighbors to the attention of the authorities. Very few Germans are like this, and the others all groan about them, but there are enough of these folks to plague politicians, and maybe that's at least a constructive outlet for their obnoxiousness. So Germany has political plagiarism scandals the way other countries have political sex scandals.

Of course, poring over what a cabinet minister wrote thirty years ago, on a narrow topic unrelated to their current work, may not have much more relevance to their performance in office than keeping careful track of their bodily fluids. Still, the difference from the perspective of a headline reader is somehow refreshing.

Re:The Germans are self-policing...

[Anonymous Coward]

I checked some of the so-called plagiarism from that site.

This seems partially an automatic checker. To give an example in English, if two people write "The fourth amendment to the United States Constitution", flags go up, you have just plagiarized 8 words!

Other cases are basically "XX claimed that the president would not be able to exercise his veto power if..." which is compared to work XX (which was probably cited): "The president would not be able to exercise his veto power if ...".

Of course I did not check every single example, but I think many of these are not plagiarism, if you would forbid this thing, people would just start turning words around to make the checkers fail. And if even that is not allowed: look, they are talking about the same subject, they credit the original, must you really require them to write a sentence totally different for making the exact same point?

There is something as being too purist....

Re:The Germans are self-policing...

[Anonymous Coward]

As far as it being a "sport", that's ridiculous. Being that we (Germany's inhabitants) take titles very seriously

The Germans' attitude toward titles and formalities is ridiculous.

In California, I had two German coworkers. Everybody from CEO down went by the first name. I asked one of these German coworkers what would happen if the two of them made a business trip to Germany together. Upon landing in Germany, would they continue addressing each other informally as "du?" He said that would probably be awkward and they would automatically slip into addressing each other "Sie" (= "sir"). After all, we are talking about 30-year-old engineers.

Re:The Germans are self-policing...

[acidfast7]

"Sie" doesn't really indicate "Sir." Also, it's very environmentally conditional. The same person could be "du" at home and "Sie" at work. I have to admit that the workplace is much more formal in Germany than in the US and I'm not sure that's actually bad ... unless one can't handle the formality.

Re:The Germans are self-policing...

[bradley13]

That seems odd, especially from younger engineers. In Germany, co-workers in a business situation go by "du" and first-names very quickly; certainly as soon as they are working on a project together. This is even true for geezers like me (far side of 50). It's just not completely automatic, like in English.

In English *everybody* is on a first-name basis, which is extreme in the other direction. When you first meet someone, why should you immediately pretend to be friends? Especially if one of you is in a position of authority over the other? Unless you are in a tiny company where you are in daily contact, addressing the CEO of your company as Mr./Ms. Smith seems like simple politeness. Calling everyone by their first-name is pretending to a familiarity that just doesn't exist.

The fun begins in German-speaking countries where companies use lots of English internally. Find a situation where the English-language culture requires first names, but the German-language culture requires last names, put in a mix of people speaking a mix of languages, and watch our heads explode.

Re:The Germans are self-policing...

[bradley13]

If you have a couple of identical phrases, that's no big deal. When you have pages and pages of such phrases, it indicates a problem. Identical phrases happen by coincidence, but it is surprisingly rare.

I check my students' work regularly for plagiarism. If you use a bit of sense, and pick out a phrase that contains specifics but is not standard (i.e, not "the fourth amendment"), you almost *never* find an exact match.

Here's a negative example: take the first sentence of the previous paragraph: "I check my students' work regularly for plagiarism". Google currently returns zero exact matches for this phrase, even though it doesn't seem like anything particularly special.

Here's a positive example (sorry, it's in German): "ein Speichermedium, das wie eine herkömmliche magnetische Festplatte". This phrase appeared in a homework assignment last year, and returns zillions of Google hits. Examining the hits, and it turns out that they are all copied from the Wikipedia article describing SSDs. This isn't yet proof of plagiarism, but when I find 10 or 15 paragraphs have been copied into the homework, well, the situation becomes clear.

Re:The Germans are self-policing...

[dunkelfalke]

Has got nothing to do with the chancellor having a doctorate in quantum chemistry. She has supported the fraudster Guttenberg as long as it was possible.

Re:The Germans are self-policing...

[nospam007]

"In California, I had two German coworkers. Everybody from CEO down went by the first name."

Were their firstnames 'Doktor'?

Re:The Germans are self-policing...

[Anonymous Coward]

criminal investigations for copyright violations launched against him

Liar. Copyright is a purely civil manner.

Re:The Germans are self-policing...

[DarenN]

No, their names were "Herr"

Re:The Germans are self-policing...

[Anonymous Coward]

No, that was their Surname. I think the first name was "Herr"

Re:The Germans are self-policing...

[Anonymous Coward]

The tool is still useful, of course. In my final English class, the teachers employed automatic checkers for plagiarism, and they made sure we saw the results. I believe my final paper was marked as something like 70% plagiarism, although none of it actually was, because the checker was so simplistic that it marked every direct quote as plagiarism, as well as every phrase over a certain word length that had appeared in any paper or source that had been previously submitted to it. Also, for some reason, every single period in my paper was attributed to the work of a biology student in Florida from 2002. The marks for the class ranged from somewhere around 50% to 97%, and as far as I'm aware all instances were ruled as false positives. The tool wasn't the final verdict on anything, it was simply a tipping tool so that the instructors would have a quick link to similar text instead of spending all their time typing suspicious phrases into Google.

It's entirely possible that a sufficiently clever student could use this to mask true copying in a sea of false positives, or possibly to overlay actual dishonesty with a different false positive that appears more accidental, but the amount of work that would require seems significantly more than simply doing the assignment correctly.

Re:The Germans are self-policing...

[Tom]

So, you are a legal expert in german copyright laws?

No?

Thought so.

Make that twice!

[Chrisq]

I've been plagiarized once. This bitch had copied one of my articles I wrote in a Proceedings of a conference, with pictures and everything, and used it in an overview article. The worst part of it is that my professor didn't care about it. I'm still mad, and it happened 15 years ago.

I've been plagiarized once. This bitch had copied one of my articles I wrote in a Proceedings of a conference, with pictures and everything, and used it in an overview article. The worst part of it is that my professor didn't care about it. I'm still mad, and it happened 15 years ago.

(Make that twice)

Here are the "overall statisctics"...

[acidfast7]

http://de.vroniplag.wikia.com/wiki/%C3%9Cbersicht

The graphics at the bottom clearly translate for a non-German audience ... as do the lines through the "type" of doctoral degree directly above the graphic.

For a non-German perspective, I now see how someone could perhaps see this "as sport" as nothing like this has happened anywhere else to my knowledge (and definitely not in the US, where you'd probably be DCMA'd or immediately sued for slander).

Re:Here are the "overall statisctics"...

[acidfast7]

http://de.vroniplag.wikia.com/wiki/%C3%9Cbersicht

Wegman and the GMU.

[Anonymous Coward]

http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/category/global_warming/wegman/

If you're connected, plagiarism is accepted, if hidden as far as possible from public knowledge.

Germans are thiefs.

[Anonymous Coward]

Nothing new here, this has been known thorughout history, they are but thiefing animals.

Just a nutcase blogger with a grudge?

[Peter H.S.]

I have yet to see even one example of plagiarism among the 92 examples given. The blogger seems unable to understand that it is common academic praxis to sum up e.g. a theory from a work. Of course such a summery will bear some resemblance to the original work, otherwise it wouldn't be a summery. But as long as there are good footnotes documenting this, it isn't a problem.

One could in fact argue, that since the blogger doesn't seem to have found even one good clear case of plagiarism, the dissertation comes out strengthened.

Here in Portugal...

[Anonymous Coward]

Politicians don't plagerize a PhD, but rather buy they bachelor's degree in the nearest "friendly" university. Former PM, José Socrates, finished his degree on a Sunday (when the uni is closed) and current Minister, Miguel Relvas, obtained a 3year bachelor's just by doing 4 subjects and getting the rest of the credit in exchange for "work experience".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miguel_Relvas#Academic_qualifications

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jos%C3%A9_S%C3%B3crates#S.C3.B3crates.E2.80.93Independente_affair

Easy. It WAS compared. You just don't like it.

[Anonymous Coward]

The white lines on the walks are useful because they stop cars crashing into each other quite so often. But their creative work gains them no salary, despite EVERY SINGLE ONE OF YOU PIRATES benefiting from it.

As for your artist, if they want to charge people access to their work, don't release it to the public, keep it private and charge an entrance fee to partake of it.

Don't go STEALING my work in making a copy of a copy of your work done by you and a thousand others who only got paid ONCE for it.

Doesn't matter.

[GameboyRMH]

Got rich.

"Fake it until you make it" will beat honest work every time.

Fictitious degrees

[Petronius Arbiter]

In addition to plagarized theses, there are a lot of completely fictitious degrees being flaunted.

A few years ago a senior MIT administrator had to resign.

Last year there was the CEO of a tech company.

About 30 years ago, the President of the IEEE claimed to have a doctorate from a minor German university, but no one could find any record of it. However, his friends rallied around, and he was given an honorary doctorate.

Then there are the unaccredited doctorates. E.g., when Ryerson Polytechnic Institute was transitioning to Ryerson University a few decades ago, many of their faculty did not have doctorates. RU strongly encouraged doctorates, so a bunch of faculty got them from a degree mill in central Europe.

Finally, there's the faculty member at The King's College in Manhattan who lists himself as PhD, Princeton (ABD). ABD means that he does not actually have a PhD, but many readers might not know that.

Most original content has been used up, so....

[couchslug]

...find another metric than a thesis to award doctorates, but give "extra credit" for OC.

Meh.

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm going to be honest, I don't care about plagiarism. I don't care about copyrights in general. The fact that someone transplants information from one place and puts it in another is not a problem, because no one can rightfully own information. Nor can anybody rightfully own an arrangement of words.

Oh sure, I still care about sources, because you need to prove the statistics or obscure information you are citing is true. But it does not bother me if somebody is just ripping that information out of somewhere else. Information is information, whether or not you are "saying it in your own words" is irrelevant. The disgust people display towards the concept of plagiarism is a result of various public school systems beating that into their heads, and the fact many public school systems do this indicates very skewed priorities. School is not about learning information plainly, no, it is also a game of reputation. If you are going to be using this information, make sure you remind people that I said it first, and not just for verification of the information in question, but so that I can get credit for it.

I've spent far too many hours in my college career trying to avoid typing something in the plain manner dictated by common sense, merely because some other author typed it before me and is easily search-able on the internet / library databases. And I can't ever admit that I reworded what I just about to say, because that would be "concealed plagiarism" (even if I thought up the phrase on my own, I would never be able to prove it). It's either find a new way to state "Cat's have fur." or put it in quotes and add it to the bibliographical mountain that is amassing.

What strikes me as ridiculous is that many people argue there is educational value to rewording statements; as if I have been subconsciously learning more from that the entire time. No, screw that. I have been learning from reading, listening to lectures, and doing work many times. The ability to reword "Cat's have fur." into "Cat's are covered in fur." has nothing to do with it. It is just one of many unnecessary hurdles in the education system that push people away.