I cover it all the time on this blog, because it occurs all the time. The latest high-profile case: Romania’s brand new education minister. Apparently he lifted large chunks of other people’s scientific papers.

The scandal comes after the new Social-Democrat prime minister was forced to drop his first candidate for the education portfolio after she was accused of plagiarism.

Of course it’s doubly embarrassing because it’s the education minister. Triply embarrassing because the first candidate for the position has also been accused.

How to explain the pan-plagiarist movement across Europe? And China? And Korea?

etc.

Here’s one theory: America is an anti-intellectual country; in places like Romania, intellectuality has extremely high status. In the US, if you want to make a status statement, you will buy an expensive car; in Europe… well, in Europe you’re likely to do this as well… But you will be as anxious, if you’re European, to display a Ph.D. as you will a Porsche. With everyone scrambling to get advanced degrees, the temptation to cheat becomes huge.

Yes, we’ve got plenty of plagiarists here at home; but it’s beginning to look downright endemic in other parts of the world (I can’t keep up with the Chinese and Korean cases).

… but there’s one more in the clearly infinite line of plagiarizing German politicians – Florian Graf, Christian Democratic Union parliamentary leader, seems to have plagiarized his doctorate.

This is becoming so routine a story, so utterly predictable a series of events, that Graf has chosen to skip the traditional discovery-of-plagiarism steps —

1: Outright, outraged denial.

2: Insistence that whatever’s in the thesis, it was approved by a university committee, so any mistakes are the fault of the reviewing faculty.

3: Acknowledgment that one was very busy pursuing one’s political and family life while writing the thesis, so corners might have been cut.

4: Explanation that your work for the parliament (or wherever) doesn’t require a higher degree, so the whole thing is irrelevant.

5: Offer to rewrite the thesis.

6: In light of the university’s decision to review the thesis (the plagiarism was discovered by a website specializing in running theses through plagiarism-discovery software), a statement welcoming the review, since you are confident the thesis is absolutely fine.

7: In light of the university having discovered flagrant, blatant, omnipresent plagiarism, a statement that you are stepping down from your position.

— and has instead asked that his thesis be withdrawn. Perhaps he is hoping that this straightforward acceptance of the situation will play as dignified and reality-based, and his colleagues in the CDU will leave him alone.

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UD thanks Chris.

… (pronounced strip-tease) is a dance out of Germany. The steps are easy, and indeed the dance is popular all over Europe:

1. Plagiarize your thesis.

2. Be found to have plagiarized your thesis.

3. Be stripped of your thesis.

The latest high-profile strip-theses has been performed by (performed on?) Margarita Mathiopoulos, who

joins the ranks of German political figures to be stripped of their doctorates for cheating in their theses – a group infamously led by former Defence Minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg whose disgrace led to his resignation.

Plagiarism’s always funnier when moralizing scolds do it, and the joke doesn’t get any better than career copyist Richard Land, president of the Southern Baptist Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission. His barking denunciations – via a radio show – of our degeneracy turn out, some of them, to have been lifted from other writers.

Usually a man of many words, Land has responded to the revelation of his immorality very very pithily.

“I apologize. And we’re going to move on.”

Nothing to see here! Move along!

But some are calling for his resignation. They seem to be embarrassed.

South Korea, a “plagiarizer’s paradise,” adheres to the very highest standards of plagiarism.

… goes to the University of Alaska, for refusing to talk about accusations of plagiarism against the dean of students, one of whose jobs was “enforcement of the university’s plagiarism policy.” The dean has just resigned, as it happens, and that’s the end of the matter.

More Hungarian laughs as President Dr. Pal Schmitt refuses to resign over having plagiarized 96% of his dissertation.

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UPDATE: So long, Pal.

UD thanks Edmund, a reader.

“I will prove that as a former Olympic champion I still have perseverance,” the 69-year-old Schmitt said. “I will prove … that I can write a so-called Ph.D. dissertation and obtain my doctorate in this manner.”

No-Quit Schmitt announces the next phase of his Embarrass-Hungary-to-Death project.

In Part I, Hungary’s president was cleared of plagiarizing his university thesis, even though he plagiarized his university thesis. Now the university that gave him a summa for his efforts is going to strip him of his degree, even though he didn’t do anything wrong.

Hungary’s Semmelweis University plans to strip the country’s president of his doctorate for plagiarism even though an investigative committee cleared him of wrongdoing, its rector said on Thursday.

At this rate the guy’s going to have to resign the presidency, even though he did absolutely nothing wrong.

The world press is doing its best to report the plagiarism that wasn’t plagiarism story. Sample headline:

HE COPIED, BUT HE’S NOT A PLAGIARIST

Hungary’s president has also “become a favored target of Internet users, who mock him with memes like Ph+D = (Ctrl+C) + (Ctrl+V).”

An investigating committee has cleared Hungary’s president of plagiarizing his 1992 doctoral thesis, despite the inclusion of many pages copied from other sources and a long list of errors.

A five-member committee at Budapest’s Semmelweis University says academics at the then-independent University of Physical Education should have noticed and called attention to similarities between large parts of Schmitt’s thesis analyzing the Olympic Games and works by other authors.

One of the most contemptible plagiarism scandals UD has encountered features the same character most of these scandals feature: The Junior Colleague. The eminent senior guy accused of having stolen reams of articles published under his name speaks darkly of an incompetent uncontrollable underling… Can’t recall her name. Don’t know where she is now…

The mythic research assistant is merely one component of the Serge Valentin Pangou story, a story which features a senior scientist tearing through one ecology journal after another (including one published by the notoriously cheesy outfit Elsevier) with articles copied from other sources and co-authored by people as mythical as the Junior Colleague. I mean, the co-authors existed… Pangou had even met them once or twice. But all were surprised to find out they’d authored anything with Pangou. All must also be thrilled that their names are now trashed by association.

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Update: Some of the comments on this page, from Retraction Watch, are of interest.

…deep bench.

[Dr. O.P. Murthy is] accused of plagiarism when he printed a book on ‘crime scene investigation’ by allegedly lifting from various books.

However, ironically, Dr [R.C.] Deka, who has been asked to take action against Dr Murthy by the [Medical Council of India], was himself at the centre of a plagiarism controversy.

A discussion.

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UD thanks Dirk.

He seems to have used one of the tried and true methods:

1. Find a book on your subject that hasn’t been translated into your language.

2. Find someone to translate it into your language.

3. Put the translation in your thesis.