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Isn’t German politics ridden with scandals at the personal level? I remember several cases of German top politicians faking their academic records.

by flexie 8y ago

oarfish 8y ago
Yes, there have been a few cases like these, but so far as I know it's not wide-spread, so "ridden with scandals" is inaccurate (so far as we know), unless you count lobbyist payments (which is scandalous in my opinion, but probably the same in most nations).
dschu 8y ago
Oh yeah, let's pretend like this is only the case in Germany.
- creddit 8y ago
  What about their post makes it seem like they're suggesting "only Germany" to you?
  - dschu 8y ago
    > Isn’t German politics ridden with scandals at the personal level? ftfy: > Isn’t politics ridden with scandals at the personal level?
EamonnMR 8y ago
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guttenberg_plagiarism_scandal https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guttenberg_plagiarism_scanda... In the US that would probably just lead to a minor apology. I remember a teutophone math professor mentioning that when she was explaining how serious plagiarism was.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
arrrg 8y ago
Plagiarism was the issue, approached systematically first in 2011, in the wake of the Guttenberg† scandal. (Plagiarism was discovered in defense minister Guttenberg’s dissertation in early 2011. His title was subsequently revoked by his university and he resigned as defense minister.) After the Guttenberg scandal a wiki sprung up which investigated more past academic works from people, first mostly politicians. Now, plagiarism is a serious issue, but these politicians were not “faking” their academic records. They actually had those titles, the universities had just failed to identify their plagiarism and given them the titles in spite of it. As such hacking them won’t likely reveal such scandals, only actually looking at those (already public) academic works and searching for plagiarism will … which is what has already been happening. — † Annette Schavan resigned two years earlier because of plagiarism-accusations, so his wasn’t the first case, even when only looking at recent cases.
- jabberthemutt 8y ago
  > Now, plagiarism is a serious issue, but these politicians were not “faking” their academic records. 'Faking' is a word not even strong enough. Those people acquired titles by fraud and deception.
- martinlaz 8y ago
  > Annette Schavan resigned two years earlier because of plagiarism-accusations, so his wasn’t the first case, even when only looking at recent cases. Schavan resigned in 2013, two years after Guttenberg.
omnibrain 8y ago
Another widespread scandal was when politicians used miles gathered on flights payed by the public for private flights. The biggest scandal in the last two decades though was the CDU-Parteispendenaffäre (Big donations to the CDU from unknown donors). But the former Bundeskanzler Kohl took the secret to his grave and Schäuble who accepted illegal donations from a well known arms dealer is still a well respected politician and serves as president (roughly similar to the speaker role) of the Bundestag.

Isn’t German politics ridden with scandals at the personal level? I remember several cases of German top politicians faking their academic records.

by flexie 8y ago

Isn’t German politics ridden with scandals at the personal level? I remember several cases of German top politicians faking their academic records.

oarfish 8y ago

Yes, there have been a few cases like these, but so far as I know it's not wide-spread, so "ridden with scandals" is inaccurate (so far as we know), unless you count lobbyist payments (which is scandalous in my opinion, but probably the same in most nations).

dschu 8y ago

Oh yeah, let's pretend like this is only the case in Germany.

creddit 8y ago
What about their post makes it seem like they're suggesting "only Germany" to you?
- dschu 8y ago
  > Isn’t German politics ridden with scandals at the personal level? ftfy: > Isn’t politics ridden with scandals at the personal level?

EamonnMR 8y ago

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guttenberg_plagiarism_scandal https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guttenberg_plagiarism_scanda... In the US that would probably just lead to a minor apology. I remember a teutophone math professor mentioning that when she was explaining how serious plagiarism was.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

arrrg 8y ago

Plagiarism was the issue, approached systematically first in 2011, in the wake of the Guttenberg† scandal. (Plagiarism was discovered in defense minister Guttenberg’s dissertation in early 2011. His title was subsequently revoked by his university and he resigned as defense minister.) After the Guttenberg scandal a wiki sprung up which investigated more past academic works from people, first mostly politicians. Now, plagiarism is a serious issue, but these politicians were not “faking” their academic records. They actually had those titles, the universities had just failed to identify their plagiarism and given them the titles in spite of it. As such hacking them won’t likely reveal such scandals, only actually looking at those (already public) academic works and searching for plagiarism will … which is what has already been happening. — † Annette Schavan resigned two years earlier because of plagiarism-accusations, so his wasn’t the first case, even when only looking at recent cases.

jabberthemutt 8y ago
> Now, plagiarism is a serious issue, but these politicians were not “faking” their academic records. 'Faking' is a word not even strong enough. Those people acquired titles by fraud and deception.
martinlaz 8y ago
> Annette Schavan resigned two years earlier because of plagiarism-accusations, so his wasn’t the first case, even when only looking at recent cases. Schavan resigned in 2013, two years after Guttenberg.

omnibrain 8y ago

Another widespread scandal was when politicians used miles gathered on flights payed by the public for private flights. The biggest scandal in the last two decades though was the CDU-Parteispendenaffäre (Big donations to the CDU from unknown donors). But the former Bundeskanzler Kohl took the secret to his grave and Schäuble who accepted illegal donations from a well known arms dealer is still a well respected politician and serves as president (roughly similar to the speaker role) of the Bundestag.