Patrick Graichen has his doctoral thesis reviewed by the University of Heidelberg. There is a suspicion that the State Secretary from the Economics Ministry, who was only dismissed last week, has violated citation rules. He has already asked the university to check, says Graichen der picture on sunday.
At the same time he rejected the suspicion against himself. The points at issue all came from the historical reference to the actual scientific core topic of the work entitled “Municipal energy policy and the environmental movement” https://www.sueddeutsche.de/politik/.” The scientific core of the work is thus from the criticism expressed not affected in my opinion,” he argues. The plagiarism expert Jochen Zenthöfer said in an interview with the newspaper: “There are 30 plagiarism fragments, some of which consist of several sentences.” They came from two essays by the environmental sociologist Karl-Werner Brand. Although this is generally quoted, “but only in very few places, at least 30 references are missing”.
Zenthöfer’s verdict: “Violations of good scientific practice are evident, and intent to deceive is also obvious.” Zenthöfer compares the number of positions with the doctoral thesis by CSU General Secretary Martin Huber. His Munich University had subsequently complained about considerable scientific deficiencies, but saw no proven deception and did not withdraw the title. Nevertheless, Huber refrains from leading him.
Economics Minister Robert Habeck (Greens) announced Graichen’s resignation as State Secretary on Wednesday because he had not sufficiently separated private and professional life. First Graichen had to admit that he proposed his best man for an important post. Then internal checks revealed that he also classified a BUND Berlin project as worthy of funding, even though his sister sits on the board of the state association.