The commission for dissertations in technical sciences at the Estonian University of Life Sciences on Tuesday deemed the doctoral thesis defended by Andres Menind in January this year to be plagiarism.
PhD thesis defended at Estonian University of Life Sciences deemed plagiarism
16th April 2013, 17:59
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The commission ruled to invalidate the decision by which Menind was awarded a PhD in bioenergetics for his thesis, titled "Peculiarities of pretreatment and fuels refining of biomass."
Following a tip-off received by the department of studies of the University of Life Sciences, the text of the thesis was checked with three different plagiarism detection programs and the findings provided by the software were analyzed considering international practice. Experts found the doctoral thesis to be plagiarism.
Paavo Kaimre, the university's vice-rector for research and studies, described the case as deplorable. "This is the first time in the history of the University of Life Sciences that a doctoral thesis is deemed plagiarism and a doctoral degree is revoked. In the said work paragraphs from other authors' work have been used without proper citation, by which rules valid in the university, copyright law and the code of conduct for research integrity have been violated," Kaimre said.