Heat Pump State Secretary Patrick Graichen (51) has already lost his job, does he now have to give up his doctorate?
Plagiarism expert Jochen Zenthöfer examined Graichen’s doctoral thesis (“Municipal energy policy and the environmental movement”) for BILD – and found several suspicious spots.
“It’s about 30 fragments of plagiarism, some of which consist of several sentences,” says Zenthöfer, who had already found the plagiarism in the dissertations of CSU General Secretary Martin Huber.
“The analysis of Patrick Graichen’s doctoral thesis shows that plagiarism does not only occur in the Union,” says Zenthöfer. His verdict: “Violations of good scientific practice are evident, and intent to deceive is also obvious.”
Patrick Graichen himself firmly rejects this accusation. The offending passages would all come from the “first part of the work, which represents a historical introduction to the actual scientific core topic of the work”. “In my opinion, the scientific core of the work is not affected by the criticism expressed,” says Graichen to BILD. “But the last and decisive judgment must be made by the University of Heidelberg.” After receiving the BILD request, he asked the university to review the doctoral thesis.
Just formal errors like CSU General Secretary Martin Huber?
According to plagiarism expert Zenthöfer, the scope of the suspected plagiarism roughly corresponds to the extent of the plagiarism in the doctoral thesis by CSU General Secretary Huber. After the allegations of cheating became known, he asked the Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich for an examination. Result: The “handling of the formalities” does not correspond “to the scientific requirements for a dissertation”, but an intention to deceive “cannot be proven beyond a doubt”. The “requirement for a possible withdrawal of the doctoral degree” is therefore “not given”. Huber has since refrained from using his doctorate.
If the University of Heidelberg came to a similar assessment of Graichen, this would mean that the former State Secretary would be able to keep his doctorate.
The alleged plagiarism found so far is between pages 34 and 77 of Graichen’s 268-page work. They all come from two essays by the environmental sociologist Karl-Werner Brand. According to Zenthöfer’s analysis, the essays are also cited by Graichen, “but only in very few places, at least 30 sources are missing”. Here Graichen suggests to the reader that these are his own thoughts, when in fact they came from Brand and another author, Hellmann.
“Graichen works his way along these essays, adding his own passages again and again. However, he refrains from citing the sources of some strange thoughts and original formulations,” says Zenthöfer. It remains to be seen whether the University of Heidelberg sees it the same way.