Romania’s science minister copies other people’s science, resigns

Ioan Mang, the education and research minister in Romania’s new government, resigned Tuesday after allegations surfaced that at least eight of his academic papers had been lifted, nearly entire, from other sources.

From Nature:

The allegations first began circulating on 7 May, just hours after Prime Minister Victor Ponta, a Social Democrat, announced the appointment of Mang and other ministers of the new government. Last week, former prime minister Emil Boc, of the Democratic Liberals, called for Mang’s resignation, dramatically waving the allegedly plagiarized articles and the original papers in front of television cameras.

The scandal has dismayed many Romanian scientists, who are already nervous that the incoming centre-left coalition government might reverse some of the energizing reforms that were introduced by the previous centre-right coalition to improve the country’s sluggish research system.

Mang is, or was, I suppose, a computer scientist. His political career in Romania is now over. But should he wish to restart it somewhere else, he might want to consider Alberta, where copying academic papers is somewhere above throwing money at homeless people on the list of acceptable political sins.