Doctoring the truth
The German secretary of defense has finally stepped down after his PhD was exposed as plagiarised
The tedious work of assembling footnotes that usually torments scores of postgraduate students and research assistants has suddenly become a matter of national importance in Germany. After extensive passages of plagiarized material were discovered in his PhD dissertation, the German Secretary of Defense Karl Theodor zu Guttenberg resigned this Tuesday morning.
Guttenberg had been the youngest Secretary of Business and Technology at only 37 years of age. When he became Secretary of Defense after the 2009 election, his immense popularity with conservative voters made him a contender to succeed Angela Merkel as Chancellor.
After initial accusations of plagiarism that Guttenberg had dismissed as "absurd", he recited his familiar canon of conservative values, only to declare shortly after that he would temporarily lay down his Dr. title. Only days later, the website “GuttenPlag Wiki” revealed more passages from the dissertation as plagiarized material, including text from the introduction that had been copied from a newspaper article. So far, passages without correct footnotes have been identified on 271 out of 475 pages – more than 20 percent of the material.
Chancellor Merkel initially countered by saying that she did not need a “research assistant, postgraduate student or PhD”, but a Secretary of Defense, dismissing calls for Gutteberg’s resignation. Faced with these accusations in a special session of parliament, Guttenberg claimed to have "unconsciously" copied the texts and excused his errors with the overwhelming pressure he had been under while simultaneously acting as an MP, writing his PhD thesis, and raising a child. Reminding people of his duty to German soldiers, he attempted to deflect attention away from what seemed to be regarded as a ‘gentlemen’s crime’ by the conservative coalition government.
Having handed back his title to the University of Bayreuth, the storm seemed to subside, after the committee of the university decided not to inquire further into whether he had breached intellectual property rights. That is where academics and students stepped in.
Last weekend, hundreds of students took to the streets in Berlin, waving their shoes in the air in disdain of Guttenberg and calling him ‘Dr. ctrl. C’. An open letter posted online by a group of university researchers, calling for the resignation of Guttenberg to save the integrity of German academic standards, has now been signed by more than 50,000 people. Eventually, eminent professors, including Guttenberg’s former supervisor Peter Häberle, began to speak, saying that the extent of plagiarism was unacceptable.
Nevertheless, after the resignation, German academia will have to address important issues regarding its postgraduate education processes. Why was the former Defense Secretary’s fraud not recognized earlier by the academic committee of the university? How significant was the fact that many academics at Bayreuth had close ties to Guttenberg’s political party? And how is it possible that Guttenberg himself seemed to be ignorant of the extent of the plagiarism in his own work?
Many suspect that the 475 page opus was indeed the work of a hired ghostwriter. Usually, German law dissertations range around 150 pages, often concerning single paragraphs and mainly written for the sake of business-card embellishment. Guttenberg’s, however, as with everything he has done in his career, was more ambitious. Already a member of the German Bundestag, he also made use of the parliament’s information service. This advisory body of academics and experts supplies reports on a large range of questions upon request by MPs. At least six of these reports appear to have been incorporated into the dissertation without citations.
Chancellor Merkel, as of today, has not commented on the resignation as there is no obvious successor. However, the resignation was an important signal to show that academic standards are not just idle conventions, but laws. Breach of intellectual property rights is more than sloppy editing, it is theft. We should applaud all those German postgraduate students that stood up and insisted on the integrity of academic research.
