Another European political plagiarism scandal

First it was German Defense Minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg, who was forced to resign in March, 2011, when it was found that he had plagiarized part of his doctoral thesis. Then Silvana Koch-Mehrin, vice president of the European Parliament, regisigned the following month due to accusations about her university thesis. Hungarian President Pal Schmitt resigned ...

By , a former associate editor at Foreign Policy.

First it was German Defense Minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg, who was forced to resign in March, 2011, when it was found that he had plagiarized part of his doctoral thesis. Then Silvana Koch-Mehrin, vice president of the European Parliament, regisigned the following month due to accusations about her university thesis. Hungarian President Pal Schmitt resigned this year because of accusations -- that he still denies -- about his doctoral thesis. The latest victim is newly appointed Romanian education minister Ioan Mang:

First it was German Defense Minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg, who was forced to resign in March, 2011, when it was found that he had plagiarized part of his doctoral thesis. Then Silvana Koch-Mehrin, vice president of the European Parliament, regisigned the following month due to accusations about her university thesis. Hungarian President Pal Schmitt resigned this year because of accusations — that he still denies — about his doctoral thesis. The latest victim is newly appointed Romanian education minister Ioan Mang:

The allegations first began circulating on 7 May, just hours after Prime Minister Victor Ponta, a Social Democrat, announced the appointment of Mang and other ministers of the new government. Last week, former prime minister Emil Boc, of the Democratic Liberals, called for Mang’s resignation, dramatically waving the allegedly plagiarized articles and the original papers in front of television cameras.[…]

Mang is a computer scientist at the University of Oradea in northwestern Romania, and has served on the senate’s education committee, which tried to hinder the previous government’s research reforms. One of Mang’s papers now under scrutiny (I. Mang Seria Technichni nauki 12, 129–135; 2004) is allegedly a near-identical copy of a manuscript intended for presentation at a scientific workshop and authored by cryptographer Eli Biham, the dean of computer science at the Technion Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa.

Biham notes that he had withdrawn the manuscript from the workshop because of conceptual errors in the work, but had been unable to completely remove the document from the Internet. Mang seems “neither to have read nor tried to understand the claims” in the paper, Biham wrote last week on his website.

Mang did not respond to Nature’s requests for comment on the allegations, but has told Romanian newspapers that the claims are politically inspired. He has pledged to resign if experts can prove the allegations to be true.

It certainly seems like the Guttenberg case has sent reporters digging through politicians’ past academic work, looking for transgressions. It’s tempting to wonder if the kind of people who become politicians are more likely than others to plagiarize, or if academic plagiarism is generally more widespread than commonly acknowledged but politicians are more likely to get caught. 

In any event, getting caught plagiarizing need not necessarily end a politician’s career. You can even go on to be the U.S. vice president.

Joshua Keating was an associate editor at Foreign Policy. Twitter: @joshuakeating

Tags: EU, Europe

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