Thanks again to those who took the time and interest to comment on my report Contributors.rofrom 03.11.2022 I systematize and respond in the direction of clarifications and possible directions of action.

The main solution to the pathology of plagiarism is transparency: “PhD theses should be published immediately” (Susufler0, 2022-03-11). There is a website of the Ministry of Education that hosts some of the doctoral dissertations defended since 2016. Some doctoral dissertations are indeed available on a dedicated website (https://rei.gov.ro/teze-doctorate) . Individuals who intend to publish their works in publishing houses can delay this placement, but not for more than 24 months. Regarding the doctoral thesis signed by Minister Lucian Bode, defended in 2018, which started the current discussion, we learn from the mentioned website that it was “published separately” by CA-Publishing. 24 months have passed since the defense of the thesis (“Energy security and resource management at the beginning of the 21st century: Romania in the modern European context”), and the published work, it is claimed, cannot be identified as a volume with an ISBN number, even in the National Library, nor in bookstores , nor in the list of titles published by CA-Publishing. The purpose of this material is not to expand the investigation in question. The question remains for the Ministry of Education: if the doctoral thesis is not published on the platform of the Unified Educational Register neither after two years of submission, nor by any publisher, what happens? Does the Ministry post this thesis on the website? At least in this case it did not happen. Why Institutional complicity with those who, after fraudulently obtaining a doctorate, invent cover-up/disguise schemes as a way of self-protection?

I have already mentioned in the article that generated comments that intellectual fraud is also facilitated by the reductionist approach of recognizing plagiarism only with the help of similarity coefficients provided by special software. One of the commentators in this regard notes that “it is not about plagiarism 2.0, it is about ideas. We are still silent about original studies that do not serve anyone” (Shakhrai Sigismunda Shmeno, March 11, 2022). Why so? For the simple reason that similarity software cannot detect plagiarism. It can only be identified by experts, who are systematically overlooked, including in the UBB paper on the Bode case, because they can lead to the essence of intellectual fraud of the plagiarism type. Obviously, if you omit the plagiarism of ideas, mostly intentionally, you reduce the similarity coefficient and, implicitly, you can quietly manipulate by falsely calculating the similarity coefficient as low as possible.

Another commentator with which I discussed in the email they tell me that plagiarism should be diagnosed and assessed the same whether you are a dignitary or not. Isn’t it because of the title of my speeches that I promote a kind of discrimination against dignitaries, no matter what rank they are? no The argument for the emphasis I place on dignitaries in this discussion is simply summed up by one commentator who reminds us that “he who steals an egg today will steal an ox tomorrow» (Agora, 11.03.2022). An official who practices or has practiced intellectual fraud is a public danger, because at any moment in the position of an official, he can go from petty to big fraud, on a grand scale. (In other words, it seems to me that this idea is supported in the comment signed by Vasyl Trandafir, 11/03/2022.) Also, if you look at the impressive series of high-ranking officials who plagiarized in Romania after December, you can easily see that they have tried for years to delay court decisions on the subject, they have changed the functioning of the institution to facilitate intellectual theft, they have proposed laws , aimed at amnesty for plagiarism, the removal of the title of doctor, as if it were just uncomfortable clothes, etc. Read the whole article and comment on Contributors.ro