- Compelling evidence of further plagiarism by Criag Wright, this time with his 2017 thesis
- Huge areas copied with the occasional word change to avoid plagiarism detection
- University is investigating and could strip his award
Craig Wright could be in trouble with his alma mater after revelations emerged of more plagiarism, this time with his PhD thesis. Just three weeks after he was found to have heavily plagiarized sections of a 2008 dissertation, Wright now stands accused of doing the same for his 2017 PhD thesis, which he ‘earned’ from Charles Sturt University, with the university now investigating the matter.
Dr. Craig Wright’s 2017 PhD thesis is full of stolen work.
This article details significant examples of plagiarism in Wright’s paper.https://t.co/4uvfaknYRO
— Painted Frog (@painted_frog) May 4, 2020
“Substantial, deliberate plagiarism”
News of Wright’s latest wrongdoing has come via the keyboard of Medium user Paintedfrog, the individual who revealed the extent of plagiarism in Wright’s 2008 Master of Laws dissertation. Using numerous screenshots comparing Wright’s work with the source material, Paintedfrog paints yet another picture of Wright the forger, finding “Substantial, deliberate plagiarism…present in at least thirty pages of Wright’s thesis, The Quantification of Information Systems Risk: A Look at Quantitative Responses to Information Security Issues, including one chapter which is almost entirely plagiarized.
As with his dissection of Wright’s plagiarized 2008 work, Paintedfrog goes to great lengths to highlight exactly where and how Wright has tried to get away with stealing other people’s work, adding that Wright signed a pledge at the start of the thesis that the work was his and contained no uncited work from others.
The piece makes clear that Wright has copied text, graphs, and formulae from others working in the same field and tried to pass them off as his own, using the old cheats trick of substituting some words with alternatives to avoid plagiarism detection, sometimes not bothering to do even that. As Paintedfrog points out, Wright didn’t limit his theft to published papers or books, occasionally stealing from websites too.
University Investigating
Paintedfrog goes further in this piece than he did with his previous exposé, postulating the responses that Wright might offer in his defense and knocking them down one by one, leaving Wright with few excuses left, and in a very difficult position – the matter has been passed to the university, who have announced that they are investigating:
Hi everyone. We are aware of the allegations and are investigating them. We won’t be commenting further publicly. We respect every student’s right to privacy.
— Charles Sturt University (@CharlesSturtUni) May 6, 2020
This is not a crypto whitepaper that Wright can quickly edit with no comeback – this is the document that helped earn his PhD and, should the university find that Wright did indeed fall foul of its rules, he could well see his PhD stripped.
Wright has been blasé about the criticism that has come his way in previous years over his plagiarism, but this could prove to be a bridge too far.
