A.Lašas, after conducting a brief analysis of M.Sinkevičius’s dissertation, states that he would not be as calm as Mindaugas Sinkevičius regarding plagiarism, as there are quite serious problems. The political scientist shared his insights and assessments on his Facebook account.
“Before diving into a brief analysis and assessment, I took two initial steps. First, I submitted this work for evaluation by artificial intelligence (Gemini AI). Why? Because AI has no emotional reactions or preconceived notions about Mindaugas Sinkevičius, and in that sense, the evaluation can be considered neutral. Here is what Gemini responded when I asked it to assess whether the attached document showed signs of plagiarism: ‘The document clearly shows signs of structural and textual plagiarism. Although the dissertation includes an empirical research part (chapters 2 and 3 with LISREL / SEM analysis), the theoretical basis (chapter 1) is largely based on verbatim copying without citing sources, poor quality paraphrasing (patchwriting), and secondary copying and pasting of literature reviews,’” writes A.Lašas.
Then he tested the specialized Turnitin tool, which is designed to detect plagiarism in texts.
“After receiving the results, I took the second step: I deleted all references to Sinkevičius’s own scientific publications to avoid showing self-plagiarism, as I simply did not want to get involved in self-citation issues. That is a separate topic that would require a separate analysis and discussion. After removing self-plagiarism, the Turnitin tool still showed 28% matches, which is relatively high. Of course, some of these matches are bibliographic footnotes, quotes, and other innocent repetitions, but some are obvious plagiarism,” writes the political scientist.
What do we see here? It is that the research problem itself, its core, is already formulated by plagiarizing other authors’ texts.
“As Gemini already noted, it is not difficult to find cases of improper use of other authors’ texts in the theoretical chapter. And these are not just citation errors, but deliberate plagiarism. Why do I say this? First of all, because in some cases entire paragraphs are copied verbatim from other sources without any quotation marks or references. There is not a lot of such longer plagiarism (about 10 more obvious cases), but it is significantly supplemented by smaller plagiarism of one or two sentences.
Secondly, because some improperly used texts of other authors are slightly fragmented by inserting or changing one or two words. Such tricks are done deliberately to mislead plagiarism detection tools, making it harder for them to detect the ‘bombed’ text,” he analyzes.
A.Lašas also provides excerpts from M.Sinkevičius’s dissertation and another text, which, in his opinion, prove that the future prime minister plagiarized other texts.
“What do we see here? It is that the research problem itself, its core, is already formulated by plagiarizing other authors’ texts. Moreover, here not only is plagiarism present, but the problem is also switched from smoking in the original text to alcohol consumption in Sinkevičius’s text. That is already wow! On top of that wow, you can sprinkle some powdered sugar, because Sinkevičius smoothly complements the plagiarized text with one or two of his own words (for example, replacing the word ‘much’ in the original with ‘a great deal’ in his text),” writes A.Lašas.
In his opinion, it is obvious that the prime minister is lying when he tells the media that “the work was prepared ethically and properly, and there is no plagiarism.”
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“Part of this work was not prepared ethically, properly, or without plagiarism. Is that part enough for the dissertation to be evaluated negatively? I will answer you this way: that part is enough for the author of this dissertation not to be allowed to defend it and for a significant part of the introduction and the first chapter of the dissertation to be rewritten,” asserts A.Lašas.
He admits that he did not examine the dissertation content and statistical analysis more closely, but superficially, he is surprised by the huge contrast between the more sophisticated statistical analysis presented in the text and the absolutely absurd charts presented in the second appendix of the dissertation.
“Those charts are meant to describe the age, place of residence, etc., of survey participants, but the cosmic percentages listed there are at the level of a first grader’s (not understanding that the entire ‘pie’ of survey participants cannot exceed 100%) mistakes. And so what? Well, you could just laugh it off, but looking at this absurdity, suspicion arises that the dissertation defense committee did not see this appendix. It was possibly added later (after comments were made during the defense), because it is simply impossible to believe they saw it and let it pass. At the same time, this glaring contrast possibly indicates that Sinkevičius himself did not perform the statistical analysis. Yes, ‘possibly,’ because I have no direct evidence, but it is hard to shake off this thought,” concludes A.Lašas.
What happens next?
BNS reported that recently questions have been raised on social networks regarding M.Sinkevičius’s doctoral dissertation. The latest episode concerns possible plagiarism, where excerpts of other authors’ works are presented under his name.
The Academic Ethics and Procedures Controller told BNS that the service received one complaint about M.Sinkevičius’s dissertation and forwarded it to the university. The ISM University Ethics Committee will conduct an investigation and evaluate the complaint, and the investigation results will be submitted to the Academic Ethics and Procedures Controller’s office.
M.Sinkevičius obtained a bachelor’s degree in management and business administration from the Faculty of Economics at Vilnius University in 2007, and in 2008 he completed a bachelor’s degree in law at Mykolas Romeris University.
In 2009, he earned a master’s degree in marketing and management from ISM University of Management and Economics, and in 2015 he defended his doctoral dissertation “Alcohol consumption in the context of conflicting social and personal factors” at the same university.
What is the prime minister’s position?
Prime Minister M.Sinkevičius states that even if an investigation is initiated regarding his written work, it will end favorably for him.
“Whether I wrote the work myself, I have probably said more than once, and I think that topic should be closed with that. Investigations may be started, but I do not think they will change or deny that the dissertation was prepared and defended publicly, was accessible, and visible,” the prime minister told journalists earlier.
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