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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.'"
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.
-- Cheers!
Seriously, what example does that set that your Minister for Science and Education is a cheat?
Go Germany!!!!!!
Be seeing you...
Funny, but fundamentally wrong. Copy and give credit = standard scientific proceeding. Copy and say it's yours = plagitism. It quite easy, really.
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.
... 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.
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.
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
Wenn ist das Nunnstück git und Slotermeyer? Ja! Beiherhund das Oder die Flipperwaldt gersput!
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.)
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.
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
... 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.
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.
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.
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.
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...
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.
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?
My first program:
Hell Segmentation fault
Sigh. I hope you are pretty young to have written such a reply.
Filthy, filthy copyrapists!
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.
xkcd is not in the sudoers file. This incident will be reported.
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.
Apparently wizard is not a legitimate career path, so I chose programmer instead.
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.
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.
Intellectual Property is a monopolistic, selfish, and defective concept. It is "tyranny over the mind of man"
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?
Apparently wizard is not a legitimate career path, so I chose programmer instead.