The „Babes-Bolyai” University (UBB) of Cluj Napoca announced that it forwarded to the National Council to Attest University Titles, Diplomas and Certificates (CNATDCU) and the Education Ministry, the briefing regarding the decision of the Ethics Commission regarding Interior Minister Lucian Bode’s doctoral thesis, according to Agerpres.

„Seeing some discussions in the public space and, in order to contribute to the understanding of the Decision on correct principles, beyond some exaggerations and misunderstandings, some clarifications are needed in respect to the procedures which can and cannot be implemented by various institutions (which also results from a careful reading of the decision). Therefore, based on its own authority established by various regulations, the Ethics Commission of the UBB: analyzed the concrete notifications; analyzed the thesis in its entirety based on two anti-plagiarism softwares,” a release of the UBB showed.

The quoted source mentions that, according to the law, the Ethics Commissions analyzed the notifications which also include the related evidence.

„However, in this case, the UBB’s Ethics Commission analyzed both the evidence presented in the notification and those resulting from the complete verification of the thesis through anti-plagiarism softwares. Texts without quotation or which raise issues from the perspective of their correct attribution were additionally checked. For clarity, the resulting 2.95 plagiarism percentage is related to the entire thesis, after checking the whole thesis, not just a part of it,” the release states.

The UBB also announces that the value of the scientific content of the thesis, which is not the subject of the ethical approach, has not been analyzed. Instead, the Decision of the UBB’s Ethics Commission „clearly” identified the existence of ethical violations and made internal recommendations to Lucian Bode as well, which, however, cannot be imposed directly to him, as he no longer has a contractual relationship with the university.

On Tuesday, the UBB make public the conclusions of the analysis conducted by the Ethics Commission of the UBB on the doctoral thesis of Interior Minister Lucian Bode, establishing that there are „a series of deviations from good publishing norms – quotation errors and some plagiarized fragments.”

The Ethics Commission mentioned that it cannot lay down sanctions in this case, but it can request the author and the publishing house which edited the thesis to correct the identified inaccuracies.

Agerpres