President Ma Ying-jeou's (馬英九) Harvard University doctoral thesis contains more than 1,000 errors that violate the university's freshmen writing guidebook, a report on the Boston-based Web site examiner.com said yesterday.
The news could come as an embarrassment to the president, who prides himself on his English ability and served as former president Chiang Ching-kuo’s (蔣經國) interpreter shortly after graduating.
Ma’s thesis, which discussed issues surrounding the Diaoyutai Islands, was titled Trouble Over Oily Waters: Legal Problems of Seabed Boundaries and Foreign Investments in the East China Sea. It helped Ma graduate from the university's Law School as a Doctor of Juridical Science (SJD) in 1981.
The errors came to light after a retired teacher interested in Ma's views on the islands looked up the thesis, the story said.
It reported that the retired teacher was so shocked at the “sloppy scholarship” that she spent a whole year studying the document and checking all the footnotes.
The results of her work turned up more than 1,000 errors, including misspellings, missing words, grammatical problems and misattributed material and footnotes, the Web site report said.
The report, by Michael Richardson, said that although the teacher had yet to discover evidence of plagiarism, “she is suspicious and continues digging into the paper.”
The teacher had contacted Ma's former faculty advisor, Detlev Vagts, to voice her concerns, the report said.
It added that Vagts, who said he didn't keep a copy of the work, told the teacher in writing: “Although I would like to be helpful with Ma Ying-jeou’s thesis my ability to do so is limited.”
Nevertheless, he assured the teacher that he had “high standards for approval” and was “fully satisfied that Ma Ying-jeou met those standards.”
Presidential Office Spokesman Wang Yu-chi (王郁琦) said the value of a doctoral thesis should be its viewpoints and contributions to the specific field.
The fact that the president received an SJD from Harvard was the best proof of the quality of his doctoral thesis, he said.
ADDITIONAL REPORTING BY MO YAN-CHIH
FALSE DOCUMENTS? Actor William Liao said he was ‘voluntarily cooperating’ with police after a suspect was accused of helping to produce false medical certificates Police yesterday questioned at least six entertainers amid allegations of evasion of compulsory military service, with Lee Chuan (李銓), a member of boy band Choc7 (超克7), and actor Daniel Chen (陳大天) among those summoned. The New Taipei City District Prosecutors’ Office in January launched an investigation into a group that was allegedly helping men dodge compulsory military service using falsified medical documents. Actor Darren Wang (王大陸) has been accused of being one of the group’s clients. As the investigation expanded, investigators at New Taipei City’s Yonghe Precinct said that other entertainers commissioned the group to obtain false documents. The main suspect, a man surnamed
DEMOGRAPHICS: Robotics is the most promising answer to looming labor woes, the long-term care system and national contingency response, an official said Taiwan is to launch a five-year plan to boost the robotics industry in a bid to address labor shortages stemming from a declining and aging population, the Executive Yuan said yesterday. The government approved the initiative, dubbed the Smart Robotics Industry Promotion Plan, via executive order, senior officials told a post-Cabinet meeting news conference in Taipei. Taiwan’s population decline would strain the economy and the nation’s ability to care for vulnerable and elderly people, said Peter Hong (洪樂文), who heads the National Science and Technology Council’s (NSTC) Department of Engineering and Technologies. Projections show that the proportion of Taiwanese 65 or older would
Democracies must remain united in the face of a shifting geopolitical landscape, former president Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) told the Copenhagen Democracy Summit on Tuesday, while emphasizing the importance of Taiwan’s security to the world. “Taiwan’s security is essential to regional stability and to defending democratic values amid mounting authoritarianism,” Tsai said at the annual forum in the Danish capital. Noting a “new geopolitical landscape” in which global trade and security face “uncertainty and unpredictability,” Tsai said that democracies must remain united and be more committed to building up resilience together in the face of challenges. Resilience “allows us to absorb shocks, adapt under
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday said it is building nine new advanced wafer manufacturing and packaging factories this year, accelerating its expansion amid strong demand for high-performance computing (HPC) and artificial intelligence (AI) applications. The chipmaker built on average five factories per year from 2021 to last year and three from 2017 to 2020, TSMC vice president of advanced technology and mask engineering T.S. Chang (張宗生) said at the company’s annual technology symposium in Hsinchu City. “We are quickening our pace even faster in 2025. We plan to build nine new factories, including eight wafer fabrication plants and one advanced
RSS