President Ma Ying-jeou's (馬英九) Harvard University doctoral thesis contains more than 1,000 errors that violate the university's freshmen writing guidebook, a report on the Boston-based Web site examiner.com said yesterday.
The news could come as an embarrassment to the president, who prides himself on his English ability and served as former president Chiang Ching-kuo’s (蔣經國) interpreter shortly after graduating.
Ma’s thesis, which discussed issues surrounding the Diaoyutai Islands, was titled Trouble Over Oily Waters: Legal Problems of Seabed Boundaries and Foreign Investments in the East China Sea. It helped Ma graduate from the university's Law School as a Doctor of Juridical Science (SJD) in 1981.
The errors came to light after a retired teacher interested in Ma's views on the islands looked up the thesis, the story said.
It reported that the retired teacher was so shocked at the “sloppy scholarship” that she spent a whole year studying the document and checking all the footnotes.
The results of her work turned up more than 1,000 errors, including misspellings, missing words, grammatical problems and misattributed material and footnotes, the Web site report said.
The report, by Michael Richardson, said that although the teacher had yet to discover evidence of plagiarism, “she is suspicious and continues digging into the paper.”
The teacher had contacted Ma's former faculty advisor, Detlev Vagts, to voice her concerns, the report said.
It added that Vagts, who said he didn't keep a copy of the work, told the teacher in writing: “Although I would like to be helpful with Ma Ying-jeou’s thesis my ability to do so is limited.”
Nevertheless, he assured the teacher that he had “high standards for approval” and was “fully satisfied that Ma Ying-jeou met those standards.”
Presidential Office Spokesman Wang Yu-chi (王郁琦) said the value of a doctoral thesis should be its viewpoints and contributions to the specific field.
The fact that the president received an SJD from Harvard was the best proof of the quality of his doctoral thesis, he said.
ADDITIONAL REPORTING BY MO YAN-CHIH
EXPRESSING GRATITUDE: Without its Taiwanese partners which are ‘working around the clock,’ Nvidia could not meet AI demand, CEO Jensen Huang said Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) and US-based artificial intelligence (AI) chip designer Nvidia Corp have partnered with each other on silicon photonics development, Nvidia founder and CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) said. Speaking with reporters after he met with TSMC chairman C.C. Wei (魏哲家) in Taipei on Friday, Huang said his company was working with the world’s largest contract chipmaker on silicon photonics, but admitted it was unlikely for the cooperation to yield results any time soon, and both sides would need several years to achieve concrete outcomes. To have a stake in the silicon photonics supply chain, TSMC and
‘DETERRENT’: US national security adviser-designate Mike Waltz said that he wants to speed up deliveries of weapons purchased by Taiwan to deter threats from China US president-elect Donald Trump’s nominee for US secretary of defense, Pete Hegseth, affirmed his commitment to peace in the Taiwan Strait during his confirmation hearing in Washington on Tuesday. Hegseth called China “the most comprehensive and serious challenge to US national security” and said that he would aim to limit Beijing’s expansion in the Indo-Pacific region, Voice of America reported. He would also adhere to long-standing policies to prevent miscalculations, Hegseth added. The US Senate Armed Services Committee hearing was the first for a nominee of Trump’s incoming Cabinet, and questions mostly focused on whether he was fit for the
IDENTITY: Compared with other platforms, TikTok’s algorithm pushes a ‘disproportionately high ratio’ of pro-China content, a study has found Young Taiwanese are increasingly consuming Chinese content on TikTok, which is changing their views on identity and making them less resistant toward China, researchers and politicians were cited as saying by foreign media. Asked to suggest the best survival strategy for a small country facing a powerful neighbor, students at National Chia-Yi Girls’ Senior High School said “Taiwan must do everything to avoid provoking China into attacking it,” the Financial Times wrote on Friday. Young Taiwanese between the ages of 20 and 24 in the past were the group who most strongly espoused a Taiwanese identity, but that is no longer
A magnitude 6.4 earthquake and several aftershocks battered southern Taiwan early this morning, causing houses and roads to collapse and leaving dozens injured and 50 people isolated in their village. A total of 26 people were reported injured and sent to hospitals due to the earthquake as of late this morning, according to the latest Ministry of Health and Welfare figures. In Sising Village (西興) of Chiayi County's Dapu Township (大埔), the location of the quake's epicenter, severe damage was seen and roads entering the village were blocked, isolating about 50 villagers. Another eight people who were originally trapped inside buildings in Tainan
RSS