A doctoral degree should entail a contribution to a certain area, and tolerance for plagiarism should be zero, Minister of Research, Innovation and Digital Transformation Sebastian Burduja said on Wednesday.
He answered a question during a debate on ethics in moments of crisis and deep change organised by the University of Bucharest, namely if he feels comfortable in a government where there are suspicions of plagiarism regarding some members.
"I think that a doctoral degree should not, you know, be exhibit as a badge: 'I am a doctor'. If you don't have something to say, if you don't have a contribution to a field that you want to focus on, then you don't do a doctoral degree. And I don't think we should admit to PhDs on more or less smart theses people who have no contribution to make. For example, in my PhD thesis, I studied corruption between private entities - it's a field with very little research although it exists in our Criminal Code and in the Code of Criminal Procedure," said Burduja.
According to him, "universities must be very rigorous in the way they select these candidates."
"I have said that the tolerance for plagiarism must be absolutely zero. At the universities that I graduated from, that was the rule," said Burduja.
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