4 ms·

The cases range from very serious to trivial (and in my opinion not actually plagiarism). Some that should have lost their jobs did like Guttenberg, others didn

The cases range from very serious to trivial (and in my opinion not actually plagiarism). Some that should have lost their jobs did like Guttenberg, others didn't. And some didn't lose their jobs and indeed should not lose them, because there wasn't any serious plagiarism. The case that started this was Guttenberg, and that was very blatant plagiarism on a large scale in his PhD thesis. That one was certainly intentional. The most recent one was the Green chancellor candidate in the current election, Baerbock. In my opinion her case isn't actually plagiarism as it was mostly about collections of facts in her book. So some very short passages were taking from other sources, but these were things like the list of countries that joined the EU. What I hate about these cases is that it is pretty much impossible to determine how serious the cases are from the news coverage. You have to actually look into the alleged plagiarised sections yourself. The first case was a real and very serious case that rightfully stopped Guttenberg's political career at that point. But since then this has also become a political tool, and some of the people doing this have clear political motives for it.

oezi 5y ago
What I hate is that a few politicians with their deceit, sloppy work and negligence have stained all people with PhDs. Basically everyone assumes now that a PhD can be gained by copy / pasting snippets into a thesis.
- tinco 5y ago
  Surely thats's the fault of the university right? A PhD would normally be very critically read by people that are themselves deeply embedded in the literature. I imagine it should be very hard to plagiarize signicantly in a PhD thesis.
- Zanfa 5y ago
  Apparently it can be. An interesting question now is how many of the PhDs given out are thanks to copy / pasting vs actual hard work.
  - woodson 5y ago
    Well, in some disciplines PhD theses can be basically a few journal or conference papers stapled together (with intro and conclusion tying things together). At least there would likely been more scrutiny during the publication process of these papers than is usually the case for theses.
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notanzaiiswear 5y ago
Or maybe you didn't like the party of Guttenberg, but you do like the party of Baerbock? It wasn't about "collections of facts" in her book, but verbatim quotes. It also wasn't her first transgression in that respect. Nobodys says she (and others) are not allowed to quote things, they just have to provide references for it. Personally I am tired of these people - they seem to feel entitled to have PhDs and whatnot without doing the actual work. We are even supposed to feel sorry for them, when actually, they should just do their jobs without the superfluous titles.
- deleted 5y ago
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- dustintrex 5y ago
  I have no particular affiliation to any German political party, but I also find the Baerbock case a bit ridiculous. The book is essentially her election manifesto, you pretty much expect it to consist of various party publications glued together with anecdotes, and the bar is much lower than (say) a PhD thesis that's supposed to be both genuinely original and thoroughly cited.
  - notanzaiiswear 5y ago
    She doesn't really face any consequences for it, either, no PhD to lose or anything. The reason it made the news is because before that, she faked lots of entries in her CV, suggesting qualifications she doesn't have. The book was just a piece of the puzzle.
- bildung 5y ago
  Note this is about two distinct types of work: Guttenberg faked a dissertation to obtain an academic degree, Baerbock did so when publishing a pop culture book, essentially the offline equivalent of a medium/substack account. Not a fan of plagiarism either way, but those two cases are hardly comparable. Both are copyright issues, but faking a dissertation adds fraud to the equation and disqualifies the person from future academic work.
tjansen 5y ago
>> So some very short passages were taking from other sources, but these were things like the list of countries that joined the EU. No, these were not just facts, but slightly edited passages taken from studies and other books (https://www.tagesspiegel.de/politik/plagiatsjaeger-stefan-weber-mindestens-29-copy-und-paste-funde-im-buch-von-baerbock/27393574.html https://www.tagesspiegel.de/politik/plagiatsjaeger-stefan-we...). But in the end, she probably didn't do it herself, but her ghostwriter. She doesn't have much luck with people working for her. Like her financial officer who embezzled 270000 EUR from the party and later has been accused of prostitution (sorry, only German: https://www.berlin.de/aktuelles/berlin/2811150-958092-neue-vorwuerfe-gegen-exschatzmeister-der.html https://www.berlin.de/aktuelles/berlin/2811150-958092-neue-v...).
nsajko 5y ago
The problem with Baerbock's case is that Weber literally applied the same standard that would be relevant to academic work to her political statement book. Anybody who takes a look at Weber's examples of Baerbock's "plagiarism" sees that he's either an idiot or an useful paid idiot. Also of note is that this seems to be a part of a larger anti-Baerbock campaign in the media, perhaps similar to the one Corbyn faced in the UK, where she is being disproportionately (compared to other politicians) and unfairly targeted. Take for example the issue with the resume mentioned by notanzaiiswear here, there were some really minor inaccuracies (on the level that it's necessary to argue about semantics to show that), and it was weaponized against her by the media.

oezi 5y ago

What I hate is that a few politicians with their deceit, sloppy work and negligence have stained all people with PhDs. Basically everyone assumes now that a PhD can be gained by copy / pasting snippets into a thesis.

tinco 5y ago
Surely thats's the fault of the university right? A PhD would normally be very critically read by people that are themselves deeply embedded in the literature. I imagine it should be very hard to plagiarize signicantly in a PhD thesis.
Zanfa 5y ago
Apparently it can be. An interesting question now is how many of the PhDs given out are thanks to copy / pasting vs actual hard work.
- woodson 5y ago
  Well, in some disciplines PhD theses can be basically a few journal or conference papers stapled together (with intro and conclusion tying things together). At least there would likely been more scrutiny during the publication process of these papers than is usually the case for theses.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

notanzaiiswear 5y ago

Or maybe you didn't like the party of Guttenberg, but you do like the party of Baerbock? It wasn't about "collections of facts" in her book, but verbatim quotes. It also wasn't her first transgression in that respect. Nobodys says she (and others) are not allowed to quote things, they just have to provide references for it. Personally I am tired of these people - they seem to feel entitled to have PhDs and whatnot without doing the actual work. We are even supposed to feel sorry for them, when actually, they should just do their jobs without the superfluous titles.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
dustintrex 5y ago
I have no particular affiliation to any German political party, but I also find the Baerbock case a bit ridiculous. The book is essentially her election manifesto, you pretty much expect it to consist of various party publications glued together with anecdotes, and the bar is much lower than (say) a PhD thesis that's supposed to be both genuinely original and thoroughly cited.
- notanzaiiswear 5y ago
  She doesn't really face any consequences for it, either, no PhD to lose or anything. The reason it made the news is because before that, she faked lots of entries in her CV, suggesting qualifications she doesn't have. The book was just a piece of the puzzle.
bildung 5y ago
Note this is about two distinct types of work: Guttenberg faked a dissertation to obtain an academic degree, Baerbock did so when publishing a pop culture book, essentially the offline equivalent of a medium/substack account. Not a fan of plagiarism either way, but those two cases are hardly comparable. Both are copyright issues, but faking a dissertation adds fraud to the equation and disqualifies the person from future academic work.

tjansen 5y ago

>> So some very short passages were taking from other sources, but these were things like the list of countries that joined the EU. No, these were not just facts, but slightly edited passages taken from studies and other books (https://www.tagesspiegel.de/politik/plagiatsjaeger-stefan-weber-mindestens-29-copy-und-paste-funde-im-buch-von-baerbock/27393574.html https://www.tagesspiegel.de/politik/plagiatsjaeger-stefan-we...). But in the end, she probably didn't do it herself, but her ghostwriter. She doesn't have much luck with people working for her. Like her financial officer who embezzled 270000 EUR from the party and later has been accused of prostitution (sorry, only German: https://www.berlin.de/aktuelles/berlin/2811150-958092-neue-vorwuerfe-gegen-exschatzmeister-der.html https://www.berlin.de/aktuelles/berlin/2811150-958092-neue-v...).

nsajko 5y ago

The problem with Baerbock's case is that Weber literally applied the same standard that would be relevant to academic work to her political statement book. Anybody who takes a look at Weber's examples of Baerbock's "plagiarism" sees that he's either an idiot or an useful paid idiot. Also of note is that this seems to be a part of a larger anti-Baerbock campaign in the media, perhaps similar to the one Corbyn faced in the UK, where she is being disproportionately (compared to other politicians) and unfairly targeted. Take for example the issue with the resume mentioned by notanzaiiswear here, there were some really minor inaccuracies (on the level that it's necessary to argue about semantics to show that), and it was weaponized against her by the media.