The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Taoyuan mayoral candidate Lin Chih-chien (林智堅) yesterday denied allegations that he plagiarized his two theses at a news conference in Taipei, where he was accompanied by a lawyer.
The accusations against Lin, who obtained two master’s degrees, were first made on July 5 by Taipei City Councilor Wang Hung-wei (王鴻薇) of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT). Wang said that Lin’s master’s thesis from his studies at Chung Hua University plagiarized a report commissioned by the Hsinchu Science Park Administration.
Political commentator Huang Yang-ming (黃揚明) on the same day also said he had found “striking similarities” between the first two chapters of Lin’s 2017 master’s thesis, published at National Taiwan University’s (NTU) Graduate Institute of National Development, and the work of Yu Cheng-huang (余正煌), another student at the same institute whose thesis was published in 2016.
Photo: Tu Chien-jung, Taipei Times
Lin said yesterday that the accusations are unfounded, and he held the news conference to “protect my reputation and prove my innocence with evidence, as well as defend the innocent universities, teachers and students that are affected by the accusations.”
Lin said he did not respond at length earlier because he “wanted to let the evidence speak the truth,” and that preparing evidence from 14 years earlier took time to complete.
Lin said that he wrote the master’s thesis at NTU himself, including developing the topic and research method, and denied the plagiarism allegation.
He has asked an attorney to provide an attestation of the evidence, he added.
Correspondence from February 2016 between himself and then-NTU Institute of National Development professor Chen Ming-tong (陳明通) shows the discussion of his research plan, he said.
Chen provided Lin’s thesis outline to Yu for reference, with Lin’s approval, he said, adding that Yu had nearly finished his studies and had his thesis published first.
“I’m a kind material provider, Chen is a responsible adviser and Yu is a graduate student who worked hard to complete his study,” Lin said.
Regarding the Chung Hwa University thesis, Lin said he was a research assistant to his adviser, and together they presented a report at a conference, which became the basis of his thesis.
It is common in academia that students use state-sponsored projects of the advisers as a basis for a thesis, he said.
KMT Culture and Communications Committee deputy director Lin Chia-hsing (林家興) yesterday said in a statement that Lin’s clarification “raised more questions.”
The sequence diagram provided at the news conference showed that Lin Chih-chien and Yu wrote their proposals and theses at almost the same time, and he said he “referred to the conclusion in Yu’s thesis,” which indicates an element of plagiarism.
Lin Chih-chien also failed to address questions surrounding his research at Chung Hua University, such as how much of the thesis he wrote, he added.
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