Thursday, July 7, 2011

Oxford quotation style

Jorgo Chatzimarkis, German representative in the EU for the FDP party, is currently being investigated for plagiarism in his dissertation. VroniPlag has him currently listed at 70%.

He was on a TV talk show on Sunday, for whatever reason, trying to defend himself by redefining the rules of what good scientific practice is, in order to "prove" that his thesis is okay. It was quite a bizarre show, as he evaded direct questions, the talkmaster Anne Will asked leading questions that presupposed the correct answer. There was a guy with a "von" in his name and a journalist/blogger, and then Anke Domscheidt-Berg, standing up for VroniPlag. She had joined the chat the night before, spent a few hours asking questions, and understood quite a lot of what the group does and why.

Chatzimarkakis defended himself with, among other things, the argument that the work was "intertextual" and that he was using "Oxford style" quotations, that he learned when he was at Oxford. The latter has so enraged German students in Oxford, that they are energetically defending their school. One blogger, at uxp.de, noted that he seemed to have missed the chapter on "intertextuality" in the 1250 page regulations that were handed out to them the first weeks. He continues:
Das können sich die nächsten VroniPlag-Persönlichkeiten gleich aufnotieren: An jeder größeren Uni in jedem Land sind deutsche Studenten unterwegs, die es nicht lustig finden wenn man deren Uni schlechtredet. (The next ones up on the VroniPlag stage please note: There are German students at every larger university in every country, and they are not amused when people talk trash about their universities)
I just saw a tweet that Chatzimarkakis has now also resigned from the European research council - but I don't have verification on that yet.


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