Translated material
Pligate plagiarism?
It seems that only recently the scandal with plagiarism, found in the dissertation of the Minister of Defense of Germany, Tsu Guttenberg (Karl-Theodor Freiherr Zu Guttenberg), because of which the young and popular politician was forced to resign and forget about the political career [1]. Now, the German media are warmly discussing borrowings in the scientific work of the Minister of Education of this country. The new plagiarism scandal in Germany is commented on by Kand. Econ. Sciences, researcher at the Center for European Studies IMEMO RAS Natalya Toganova .
The Minister of Education of Germany Annette Schavan is accused of “conscious” deception, and many points in the dissertation that she protected in 1980 indicates the “plagiarism manner of work”. So the work is characterized in conclusion, information about which has leaked to the media on weekends. The conclusion was written at the request of the University. Henry Heine (Dusseldorf), after accusations of plagiarism appeared on the Internet [2].
A. Shavan at the age of 25 defended the dissertation on pedagogy “Personality and conscience: research on the premises, necessity and requirements for the formation of modern value foundations”. The dissertation was counted as a thesis. Scientific adviser A. Shavan claims that the dissertation met the requirements of that time. At the time of writing this text, the publication of the official conclusion of the University of Dusseldorf is prohibited, and the university sued for disclosing information. But if the charges are confirmed, and A. Shavan will be deprived of the title of candidate of sciences, then most likely she will have to leave the post of minister. Almost all leading politicians of opposition parties said that A. Shavan discredited herself, lost confidence and cannot be the Minister of Education. In turn, the Chancellor Angela Merkel expressed support for the post of Minister of Education Annette Shavan since 2005.
Plagiat in the work of A. Shavan was discovered in those sections where the minister describes the existing theoretical approaches (in total in 60 places). She uses other people's generalizations of theoretical work, operates with an established interpretation. The plagiarism is traced at the level of borrowing phrases, phrases and use of the same as in other work of quotes of classics.
The discussion around this scandal about plagiarism affects a wider range of issues than the previous ones. The German media indicate that the meticulousness of plagiarism searches in the works of famous politicians is comparable to the meticulous medieval inquisition to persecute witches. This implies the thought of envy and revenge of the less successful, those who could not write candidate. The requirement that there is no lexical coincidence with other works in the work, simplifies and emasculates the requirements for scientific work, and may not always reflect the presence or absence of the author’s contribution to a scientific discussion. Such a simplified approach to the scientific novelty has already led to cases when German professors were accused of their competitors (for the right to occupy a professor’s position) of plagiarism and were removed from office.
A number of German universities, following scandals, began to revise the rules of citation and borrowing. It is obvious that in conditions when the increment of scientific knowledge occurs much faster than a hundred years ago, and the dissertations are required to “enter” their study into the existing scientific theoretical context (a list of literature in the dissertations in humanities is calculated by several hundred units), the degree of use of literature and other people's thoughts in dissertations is completely different than it was before.
This is especially true for the theoretical part of the dissertation, where the dissertation shows that it operates with existing methods and is guided by a scientific discussion on this issue.
The development of new rules for quoting other people's work is a task that the scientific community must solve it independently. It is unlikely that meticulous identification of borrowings of proposals and phrases in the dissertations of politicians will help to find the optimal solution.
Although this does not mean that the public must be removed from discussion. However, we should not forget that a discussion with a vague idea of the technical side of writing dissertations can lead to a decrease in the level of discussion, as well as prevent the gradual development of new norms within the scientific community. By the way, these norms are already gradually changing. Therefore, the issue of the legitimacy of the application of new norms to the work protected three decades ago needs a special discussion.
1. N. Tuganova. CAZUS Tsu Guttenberg. TRV-hunger No. 4 (73), dated 1.03.2011, p. 1-2. http://trv-science.ru/2011/03/01/kazus-cu-guttenberga