UBB Cluj will analyze the doctorate thesis of Minister Lucian Bode

The Babeș-Bolyai University of Cluj-Napoca (UBB) announces that it will analyze the doctoral thesis of the Minister of the Interior, Lucian Bode.

“In the name of academic rigor and transparency, we make the following clarifications:

(1) At the request of the doctoral supervisor, prof. Dr. Adrian Ivan, we have extended the analysis procedure of theses from 1990-2016 to this thesis from 2018. Although the internal procedure was started as a result of the ministry’s request for theses from 1990-2016, there are no restrictions to extend it and to theses published before 1990 or after 2016. All information available to date will be included in this analysis. If, following this analysis, suspicions of violation of academic ethics result, they will be further analyzed by the UBB Ethics Commission, following internal and national procedures.

(2) However, we note that, until this date, UBB has not received any notification of suspected violation of academic ethics regarding the discussed thesis, the approach being an internal one, resulting from self-reports based on information appearing in the public space. We also remind you that the national institution responsible for analyzing ethical suspicions on doctoral theses is CNATDCU, whose decisions transcend the decisions of any university courts“, states the Communication and PR Department of UBB.

USR claims that Bode copied texts from Wikipedia and translated them

Those from USR accused the minister of copying and translating texts from Wikipedia.

“Lucian Bode takes by translating entire texts from other authors and does not indicate anywhere what he wrote he and what those mentioned wrote. This is a lazy form of writing a text and it is a plagiarism.

Otherwise, anyone would translate texts from Wikipedia into Romanian and sign them, if they could find them some academics willing to give him a title, he would become a doctor.

Which is exactly the case of Lucian Bode. A frequent form of plagiarism in the thesis is taking some texts from Wikipedia and translating them into Romanian. Sometimes it is a note that links to a book or article, although the connection between the Wiki text and that source is not clear. Other times there is no note, it is simply translated text from Wikipedia, although it has no note or reference, so it has all the appearance of an original text written by the author.

In many other cases, it’s ideas/text taken from the free presentation on Google of academic articles or books, which makes us believe that Lucian Bode, or whoever wrote the thesis, did not read the articles listed in the bibliography, but only their presentation from Google or from the presentation page of the academic journal, available without paying a fee subscription.

But that’s not all. Texts in the thesis that have footnotes are preceded or followed of other texts that do not have any footnotes, so it would be assumed that they are written by the author of the thesis. Which is not true – when I looked for some of these texts in open sources I found them.

It would be easier for Lucian Bode or his PhD coordinator to indicate what it is written by the author of the thesis, because the opposite exercise, the normal one according to any academic norms of citation – namely to indicate what is taken – is completely unsuccessful in this case.

Basically, the thesis is a compilation of translations from open sources, most introductions of academic articles where the phrase was obviously lengthened by topic changes – very likely also to reduce the degree of similarity from anti-plagiarism software“, claim those from USR.

See HERE the analysis made by the USR.