Thursday, June 16, 2011

Another "Plagiator" bites the dust

As I mentioned a while back, another prominent German politician, Koch-Mehrin, was accused of plagiarism, and yesterday her university nullified her doctorate.

I wondered in that previous post why so many of the people under review seem to be from conservative parties, and it turns out – according to a colleague of mine over at Heise, who put together the chart you see – that those parties actually have the largest number of doctorates. Not only are the Greens a relatively small party in the German Parliament, but only around 10% of its MPs have a doctorate – half as many as in the CDU or the FDP (Koch-Mehrin's party).

So perhaps the swarm is not as politically motivated as it may seem.

Disappointingly, Koch-Mehrin has yet to step down from her position as a high-level MP in European Parliament (where she continues to make a killing), nor has she admitted any guilt. On the contrary, on the nightly news last night, there was speculation that she might take the university to court to challenge the legality of revoking her doctorate.

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