“Plagiarising professor should still be able to teach”

Molnies — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 22:37:28 +0000

Nils Marius Rekkedal, a professor of war studies especially military theory, at the Swedish Försvarshögskolan (National Defence College), was last year found guilty of plagiarising others work in his 1980 thesis as well as other works done in recent years. The problem was first raised by students, who found that large portions of the textbook they were using in his course was plagiarised, and later other professors found that even his thesis extensively used other historians uncredited research as his own. Vetenskapsrådet (Swedish Research Council) were asked to look into the situation and said that they had never before seen such a serious case of plagiarism. The rector (president) of the college just came out with a statement in favour of the plagiarising professor, in which it’s stated that not only can he keep his job, but he will be able to continue leading scientific research as well as teach classes.

Even more absurd, to me at least, is the fact that other professors at the college have been warned that if they do not comply to working together with Rekkedal they may be losing their job since they then “refuse to do their job”, which is ground for firing. One last thing is that they, the other professors and everybody else involved, are not allowed to talk to anybody about this, which obviously includes the media. Recently Rekkedal himself accused on of the college’s leading professors for offensive treatment against him when the professor questioned that Rekkedal’s work was still being used in the education.

Now, why does this affect me and why do I care? Well first of all I was actually thinking about applying for a course in military history at Försvarshögskolan, something I have now decided not to do because of how the board has handled this issue. Secondly, I honestly find this offensive. There are a few rules in scientific research, one of the most basic ones is the fact that you should never plagiarise and always clearly state what work is your own and what you’ve used from other sources. If the professor in a class can’t even follow this really simple and very important rule how will that look to the students? Morally, he would not be able to, in any way, argue with the students on this issue and that’s not how it should be to study on an university level to say the least. Thirdly, I feel sorry for the other researchers at the academy. Any work they do together with Rekkedal will in the scientific community be seen as nothing more than trash and possible even as copyright infringement, there is absolutely no credibility in work that has the name NM Rekkedal next to it. For the rector to say that those that do not work with him may lose their job is so disrespectful to the honest working scientific researchers.

Things like this really pisses me off. Cite your sources, acknowledge the great research that has already been done by others and if you can’t follow this, the last thing you should be doing is teaching classes. Försvarshögskolan, I’m embarrassed by your total lack of scientific research principals and you’ve definitely lost a potential student here.

Sources:
From SR: [1], [2], [3], [4], [5]
Fron DN: [1]

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“Plagiarising professor should still be able to teach”