Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) Legislator Ann Kao (高虹安), the party’s Hsinchu mayoral candidate, yesterday defended herself against accusations that her doctoral dissertation plagiarized two studies she coauthored with other researchers.
The Chinese-language Mirror Media earlier yesterday reported that when Kao previously worked at the Institute for Information Industry, she received a subsidy from it to study at the University of Cincinnati, but her doctoral dissertation in 2018 allegedly plagiarized partial content of two previous institute-funded studies that she coauthored and presented at a 2017 conference.
The magazine reported that up to 4,161 words, or 25 percent, of her 16,519-word dissertation were the same as text from the two studies, as well as several pictures and graphs.
Photo: Huang Ching-hsuan, Taipei Times
It asked why she did not gain approval from the institute to cite the material.
Kao yesterday morning shared an e-mail from Jane Strasser, senior associate vice president for research and research integrity at the University of Cincinnati, which said that “the allegations involve self-plagiarism, which is not considered research misconduct.”
The university on Aug. 20 received an anonymous e-mail claiming that her dissertation involved self-plagiarism without citing the original articles and failing to obtain a release agreement from the coauthors, Kao said.
The sender asked the university to investigate the matter, which led to the e-mail from Strasser, which arrived on Aug. 22, Kao said.
Strasser wrote that the allegations “have been made repeatedly and insistently for over a year,” and cited a Graduate School Leadership statement from last year saying that “there is nothing specific to the Graduate School on self-plagiarism, thus this would not be something we would pursue,” Kao said.
“There are no copyright concerns,” and the person in the allegation “has entered the political arena, which may be the motivation for the allegations (or not),” she said, quoting the e-mail.
When she submitted her dissertation in 2018, the university assessed it with SafeAssign, a plagiarism prevention tool, which showed only 6 percent of it matched other sources, Kao said, adding that the magazine’s accusations are malicious.
Moreover, the magazine claimed that the copyright of research reports conducted by civil servants should be owned by the government agency that funded the research, but institute employees are not considered civil servants, she said, adding that an internal investigation the institute conducted last year stated that use of sources in non-profit academic publications is not considered when assessing copyright infringements.
If accusations that her doctoral dissertation was plagiarized continue, she would ask a lawyer to defend her rights, Kao said.
Taiwan yesterday condemned the recent increase in Chinese coast guard-escorted fishing vessels operating illegally in waters around the Pratas Islands (Dongsha Islands, 東沙群島) in the South China Sea. Unusually large groupings of Chinese fishing vessels began to appear around the islands on Feb. 15, when at least six motherships and 29 smaller boats were sighted, the Coast Guard Administration (CGA) said in a news release. While CGA vessels were dispatched to expel the Chinese boats, Chinese coast guard ships trespassed into Taiwan’s restricted waters and unsuccessfully attempted to interfere, the CGA said. Due to the provocation, the CGA initiated an operation to increase
A crowd of over 200 people gathered outside the Taipei District Court as two sisters indicted for abusing a 1-year-old boy to death attended a preliminary hearing in the case yesterday afternoon. The crowd held up signs and chanted slogans calling for aggravated penalties in child abuse cases and asking for no bail and “capital punishment.” They also held white flowers in memory of the boy, nicknamed Kai Kai (剴剴), who was allegedly tortured to death by the sisters in December 2023. The boy died four months after being placed in full-time foster care with the
The Shanlan Express (山嵐號), or “Mountain Mist Express,” is scheduled to launch on April 19 as part of the centennial celebration of the inauguration of the Taitung Line. The tourism express train was renovated from the Taiwan Railway Corp’s EMU500 commuter trains. It has four carriages and a seating capacity of 60 passengers. Lion Travel is arranging railway tours for the express service. Several news outlets were invited to experience the pilot tour on the new express train service, which is to operate between Hualien Railway Station and Chihshang (池上) Railway Station in Taitung County. It would also be the first tourism service
CHANGING LANDSCAPE: Many of the part-time programs for educators were no longer needed, as many teachers obtain a graduate degree before joining the workforce, experts said Taiwanese universities this year canceled 86 programs, Ministry of Education data showed, with educators attributing the closures to the nation’s low birthrate as well as shifting trends. Fifty-three of the shuttered programs were part-time postgraduate degree programs, about 62 percent of the total, the most in the past five years, the data showed. National Taiwan Normal University (NTNU) discontinued the most part-time master’s programs, at 16: chemistry, life science, earth science, physics, fine arts, music, special education, health promotion and health education, educational psychology and counseling, education, design, Chinese as a second language, library and information sciences, mechatronics engineering, history, physical education
RSS