Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Keelung mayoral candidate Tsai Shih-ying (蔡適應) yesterday denied plagiarism accusations and said he would support a National Taipei University research ethics committee examining his doctoral thesis.
Tsai, who is a DPP legislator, described the research questions, purpose and design of his doctoral thesis at the university’s Graduate Institute of Urban Planning, saying that the empirical results obtained from his in-depth interviews were applied to his political platform for November’s mayoral election.
The university mandated use of a plagiarism checking system at the time his thesis was submitted, and he would be confident presenting his thesis again for originality, Tsai said at a news conference.
Photo: Wang Yi-sung, Taipei Times
He said that Keelung residents are aware of his long-term engagement in public service, and that they rank his performance as a legislator highly.
Keelung Mayor Lin Yu-chang (林右昌) is well recognized for his political achievements, and his “opponents will obviously do everything to crush” a rival, Tsai said.
He said he would be frank and open in the face of any attack because Keelung residents know that he is the “most capable candidate to continue Lin’s legacy.”
New Power Party Keelung city council candidate Chiang Hsing-yi (江欣怡), and the party’s Taipei city council candidates Chen Hui-min (陳志明) and Jerry Liu (劉仕傑), accused Tsai of plagiarism at a news conference on Thursday.
They said that parts of his thesis were allegedly copied from Wikipedia and Baidu, as well as Lin’s letter to a media outlet.
Upon receiving information that Tsai’s thesis allegedly contained plagiarized sections, they found in their own investigation that 25 passages were not cited, Chen said.
The three said they plan to send material to the university to support the accusation.
“How can Keelung’s citizens trust a person whose honesty is questionable?” Chiang asked.
Tsai said that he missed some citations, but not 25, and would update the thesis’ reference list.
The most problematic part of the thesis is the results section, which was found to be a “collage” of five texts, she said, adding that 2,457 out of its 7,533 words appear to be plagiarized.
Liu said that page 81 of the thesis contains 707 words that appear to be plagiarized, calling on Tsai and the university to investigate the issue.
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) yesterday supported the candidates’ claims, saying that the thesis includes passages from Taiwanese academics, other students’ assignments and Chinese content farms.
Former KMT Youth League head Lu Ching-wei (呂謦煒) said that Tsai copied content from Baidu and Chinese content farm Read01, and that information cited from a French library was from the KKnews content farm.
The thesis also includes uncited paragraphs written by Tamkang University professor of China studies Chang Wu-ueh (張五岳) and other Taiwanese academics, as well as a student paper from National Quemoy University, he said.
“Keelung’s citizens have discerning eyes and want a mayor who doesn’t plagiarize,” Keelung City Councilor Sean Chang (張淵翔) said, adding that Tsai should apologize and withdraw from the election.
Additional reporting by Shih Hsiao-kuang and Yang Cheng-yu
STRONG RELATIONSHIPS: China would not blockade Taiwan, because President Xi respects him, and Russia would not have invaded if he were president, he said Former US president and the Republican candidate in next month’s presidential election Donald Trump said he would impose additional tariffs on China if China were to “go into Taiwan,” the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported. “I would say: If you go into Taiwan, I’m sorry to do this, I’m going to tax you, at 150 percent to 200 percent,” Trump was quoted as saying in an interview with the WSJ published on Friday. Asked if he would use military force against a blockade on Taiwan by China, Trump said it would not come to that because Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) respected
The Taipei Department of Transportation discouraged YouBike 2.0E users from taking them on long-distance trips after a Taipei city councilor said that riders often use the new electric bike, YouBike 2.0E, to climb Yangmingshan (陽明山). Taipei earlier this year began offering the first 30 minutes of YouBike 2.0 rentals for free, with Taipei and New Taipei offering the YouBike 2.0E on Aug. 30 to encourage rider usage. For YouBike 2.0, the rate is NT$10 per 30 minutes within the first four hours, NT$20 per 30 minutes for five to eight hours and NT$40 per 30 minutes after eight hours. Meanwhile, for e-bikes,
RESOURCE RICH: Taiwan is located in the Pacific Ring of Fire and has up to 30 gigawatts of the potential energy, of which 10 gigawatts could be economically viable Academia Sinica and CPC Corp yesterday began drilling the nation’s first deep geothermal well in Yilan County’s Yuanshan Township (員山). The 4km-deep well is expected to take 18 months to complete and has an estimated investment of NT$337 million (US$10.54 million), Academia Sinica President James Liao (廖俊智) said. “While Taiwan has up to 30 gigawatts of potential deep geothermal energy, with an estimated 10 gigawatts being economically viable, only by digging wells can we determine the actual amount of commercially viable geothermal energy,” Liao said at the project’s opening ceremony. Data collected during and after the excavation process would be used for future
HACKERS’ MARKET: Chat logs about Taiwan and documents outlining ways to take over online accounts were leaked from a company that sells data from hacks Taiwanese cybersecurity specialists found 577 leaked documents which show that the Chinese Communist Party is engaging in “cognitive warfare” against Taiwan through cyberattacks and disinformation campaigns, a documentary released last month by Japanese public broadcaster NHK showed. The filmmakers behind Tracking China’s Leaked Documents said they spent six months visiting seven countries, including Taiwan, where they interviewed members of TeamT5, a malware research and cybersecurity firm, which found the leaked documents. TeamT5 said they discovered a string of mysterious URLs on the social media platform X, which they suspected could be accounts created by hackers or people who leaked data, which led