“Would probably hold up in court”
Weidel is said to have worked improperly on his doctoral thesis
December 15, 2023, 7:12 p.m
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The doctoral theses of active politicians are repeatedly subjected to close scrutiny. Citation errors or even plagiarism often come to light. There are also said to be impurities in Alice Weidel’s doctorate. The AfD federal spokeswoman defends herself.
The University of Bayreuth is investigating the question of whether parts of Alice Weidel’s doctoral thesis could be plagiarized. As the “Süddeutsche Zeitung” (SZ) reports, a preliminary examination by the university has shown that the doctoral thesis should be examined in more detail. The work will occupy the university’s “Commission for Scientific Integrity”.
According to the report, two plagiarism detectors had previously contacted the university. They therefore accuse Alice Weidel of having taken over external sources in her doctoral thesis from 2011 and of not labeling them or not labeling them adequately. They prepared a report on Weidel’s work and submitted it to their university, the University of Bayreuth. The report is available to the SZ.
“We don’t see any large-scale plagiarism in Ms. Weidel’s dissertation, but we do see many small fragments of plagiarism. There is a suspicion of plagiarism here,” the newspaper quoted the lead author as saying. Both authors wanted to remain anonymous for fear of possible dangers to themselves and their relatives, but the authors are known to the SZ. When asked, the University of Bayreuth did not comment on the case “for personal and data protection reasons.”
Weidel sees a “campaign” against himself
Weidel firmly rejected the allegations. “My doctoral thesis has probably already been scrutinized by dozens of plagiarism checkers with as much attention as it did without results,” she explained in response to SZ’s query. The allegations were based on an anonymous paper, “which, although not classic plagiarism, did discover citation errors that were quickly blown up into alleged plagiarism.”
On Platform She herself asked for an independent statement from an unnamed scientist who came to the conclusion that the allegations could be rejected as absurd and unfounded. “Accordingly, I look forward to further developments with confidence.”
According to the report, the report presents the allegations on 36 pages and compares sections from Weidel’s doctoral thesis in economics with the alleged original sources. The report lists 32 fragments of plagiarism and 18 mislabeled quotes. These are all individual passages of text, a few coherent sentences or even just sentence fragments, which Weidel is said to have taken over literally or in spirit without making this sufficiently clear.
Plagiarism expert and Berlin law professor Gerhard Dannemann told the SZ after examining the report: “There are citation errors in Ms. Weidel’s work. Revocation of her doctoral title would probably hold up in court.”