Lucian Bode's plagiarism case: UBB Ethics Commission to re-analyze PhD thesis
The Babeș-Bolyai University of Cluj-Napoca (UBB) has begun reworking its plagiarism analysis of Interior Affairs minister Lucian Bode’s PhD thesis.
The news broke after PressOne’s investigative journalist Emilia Șercan revealed two weeks ago that the minister plagiarized at least 18.5% of his paper, despite UBB’s finding just 2.95% of it was plagiarized.
In a written response to daily Libertatea, the institution’s ethics commission said that the re-analysis process covers “what Mrs. Șercan had found” and not the entire paper.
“The presumption of correctness is overturned with evidence, not with assumptions. The rule applies not only to this thesis but to all theses, which must in principle be treated equally by UBB,” the letter reads.
“18% (e.n. Mrs. Șercan’s claim) is suspicion, for the time being, starting from new notifications, and we will see how much of this percentage will be confirmed through objective institutional analyzes and reporting to formal publication practices.”
The PNL politician obtained his PhD in 2018 after defending his thesis “Energy security and resource management at the beginning of the 21st century” in front of a committee made up of Prof. Adrian Ivan (UBB), Prof. Radu Carp (University of Bucharest), university associate Adrian Basarabă (West University of Timișoara) and Prof. Dan Lazăr (UBB).
He came under fire in recent weeks for allegedly failing to credit the sources properly and freely translating documents from English to Romanian in his thesis without proper citation. The plagiarized content was found on 65 of the 194 pages, according to Șercan’s findings.
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