“I was careless”: Plagiarism allegations: Diana Kinnert admits mistakes

“I was careless”
Allegations of plagiarism: Diana Kinnert admits mistakes

Diana Kinnert is a publicist, former hope of the CDU – and recently targeted by plagiarism hunter Stephan Weber. She is said to have copied more than 200 places. Kinnert reacts differently than most celebrities whose works Weber publicly scrutinized: she directly admits the mistakes.

After allegations of plagiarism in two of her books, the publicist and former CDU politician Diana Kinnert apologized for the lack of care in her works. “I have looked at the supporting documents for both books and must admit that I made mistakes in the correct citation and paraphrasing and the completeness of the references,” Kinnert told the “time“. The well-known plagiarism hunter Stephan Weber claims to have discovered more than 200 incorrect passages in her two books “For the Future I See Black” (2017) and “The New Loneliness” (2021). He writes this down in a blog entry his website.

The research published by Weber on Friday states that Kinnert copied from several authors such as Ulf Poschardt and Leander Scholz without citation, i.e. either did not provide a clean source on site or in the bibliography.

The Austrian expert writes that passages from Wikipedia were also found in both books. “Whereas the first book is characterized by large-format, almost verbatim assumptions, the assumptions in the second book are smaller, but all the more numerous,” says Weber. “In the first book, 22 plagiarism fragments were found, in the second 203 plagiarism fragments. In many plagiarism sites, violations of the copyrights of the authors concerned can also be assumed.”

Kinnert doesn’t want to talk about the “why”.

According to the “Zeit” report, Kinnert apologizes to the authors whose authorship did not receive the recognition they needed. “I’m also sorry for these mistakes, because they have an effect on general system trust,” says the author. She didn’t do it on purpose. “I didn’t work carefully and was careless. I’m sorry.”

According to the report, the 31-year-old does not want to go into the background to the mistakes. “Whether life crisis, double burden or structural problem – in the end it would have been my job not to let a book emerge when I was overwhelmed,” said Kinnert accordingly. In addition, according to her own statement, the publicist is already in contact with the publishers so that the positions can be checked.

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