Turkish Education Minister under Plagiarism Charges - Copy, Shake, and Paste

Debora Weber-Wulff

The Nature blog reports that the new Turkish Minister of Education, Ömer Dinçer, lost his title of professor in 2005 on the basis of plagiarism in a textbook published in his name. Turkish Council of Higher Education took back his professorship title, and Dinçer lost his legal appeals case.

But on July 8, 2011, the Turkish Council of Higher Education cleared him, and on July 13 he was appointed Minister of Education. Nature spoke with the council, which confirmed that they had withdrawn the charge of plagiarism, but refused to elaborate.

Since this is a publicly available textbook, I would hope that Turkish academics can quickly set up a wiki and document the extent of the alleged plagiarism, in order to let the public judge for themselves how extensive the copying is.

Contested plagiarism charge on new Turkish government

Alison Abbott

German politicians found guilty of plagiarism have seen their careers stumble. First came the forced resignation in March of the German defence minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg - the University of Bayreuth withdrew his PhD thesis after identifying extensive plagiarism. Other German politicians wielding doctor titles were then gleefully been targeted by plagiarism software users. Only last month, Silvana Koch-Mehrin of Germany's Free Democratic Party (FDP) was forced to withdraw from the European Parliament's Committee on Industry, Research and Energy after the University of Heidelberg had revoked her plagiarizing PhD. Her predecessor on the committee, Jorgo Chatzimarkakis, had his own PhD revoked by the University of Bonn last week for plagiarism.

In Turkey, on the other hand, a controversial charge of plagiarism has not stopped Ömer Dinçer from being appointed minister of education in Prime Minister Erdogan’s new government. The new government was approved by parliament on 13 July.

Dinçer got his PhD from İstanbul University School of Business Administration in 1984. He went on to build up a high flying academic career in parallel with a political career, becoming chief undersecretary in Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s first government in 2003, and minister of labour in Erdoğan’s second government after 2007 elections.

But he lost his title of professor in 2005 when the Turkish Council of Higher Education YÖK identified extensive plagiarism in his academic book Introduction to Business Administration. Dinçer appealed the charge, but it was upheld in court.

On 8 July newspapers reported that YÖK had quietly cleared him early this year to the dismay of many academics. YÖK confirmed to Nature that it had withdrawn the charge but did not provide reasons.

Dinçer has told newspapers that the charge of plagiarism was part of a smear campaign from a supposed network of people, known as Ergenekon, who favour a military coup.

Doctoral Plagiarism Elsewhere - Copy, Shake, and Paste

Plagiarized doctoral theses are not only to be found in Germany. Janet Stemwedel reports on Adventures in Ethics and Science on the case of chemist Bengü Sezen. She links to Chemical & Engineering News with a report on the disseration and three other papers. She quotes:

The documents—an investigative report from Columbia and HHS’s subsequent oversight findings—show a massive and sustained effort by Sezen over the course of more than a decade to dope experiments, manipulate and falsify NMR and elemental analysis research data, and create fictitious people and organizations to vouch for the reproducibility of her results. ...

A notice in the Nov. 29, 2010, Federal Register states that Sezen falsified, fabricated, and plagiarized research data in three papers and in her doctoral thesis. Some six papers that Sezen had coauthored with Columbia chemistry professor Dalibor Sames have been withdrawn by Sames because Sezen’s results could not be replicated. ...

By the time Sezen received a Ph.D. degree in chemistry in 2005, under the supervision of Sames, her fraudulent activity had reached a crescendo, according to the reports. Specifically, the reports detail how Sezen logged into NMR spectrometry equipment under the name of at least one former Sames group member, then merged NMR data and used correction fluid to create fake spectra showing her desired reaction products.

Correction fluid? I thought that state-of-the-art fakes used Photoshop these days.

Promotion pressure fuels academic plagiarism - The Jacarta Post

Several modus operandi of plagiarism:

1. Taking a research paper or article from a registered science journal, and copying it so that a lecturer can replace the name of the original author with his or her name. This plagiarized item will then be submitted along with their application for promotion.
2. Deleting a section of an already publicized scientific journal, and replacing it with his own article. The bogus article will then be reprinted in a similar font format and paper size. The lecturer hopes to receive acknowledgement by including his work in the journal.
3. Taking credit for a research paper or final-year assignment completed by students attending the lecturer’s class.
4. Directly copying and pasting a research paper, article, or parts of a paper or article, written by another person, usually taken from Internet-based sources rather than a journal, and passing it off as one’s own work. This is the most common method of plagiarism committed by lecturers.(JP/From various sources)

Amid the country’s messy education system, the number of cases of plagiarism involving university lecturers is unlikely to abate. The Jakarta Post’s Hasyim Widhiarto explores the reasons why some lecturers steal from the works of others and how exactly works are plagiarized.>>>