The minister's dud doctorate

Rarely has an academic thesis been read by such a wide audience. In the wake of last week’s revelations that the German Minister of Defence, Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg, plagiarised a large part of his doctoral thesis on constitutional law, large numbers of Germans have been searching to find further pasted text in the document. The results of their efforts are presented in the form of a diagram on the front page of Frankfurter Rundschau, which leads with the headline “Dr. G.’s guide to fiddling.“ The daily explains that the internet community has found confirmed instances of plagiarismon 270 of the 407 pages of the thesis, the equivalent of 68.7% of the text. The minister, who has admitted that he was in serious breach of the rules, gave up his title of “Doctor” on 21 February, but has refused to resign from the German cabinet. In the wake of controversy over his management of the German military, the scandal over his thesis comes as another blow to the high-profile minister who was hoping to succeed Angela Merkel.