Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) Legislator Tsai Pi-ru (蔡壁如) yesterday resigned after her alma mater found that her master’s thesis contained plagiarized sections.
Takming University of Science and Technology — where Tsai obtained a master’s degree in 2019 — on Thursday revoked the degree after a committee found she had plagiarized material for her thesis.
According to the TPP’s legislator-at-large nominee list from 2020, Shin Kong Life Insurance Co deputy chief executive Cynthia Wu (吳欣盈) is to replace Tsai.
Photo: Tu Chien-jung, Taipei Times
Earlier yesterday, Tsai denied the accusations, telling a news conference that the thesis was her own work.
She said she would wait for the full review report from the university, but was “willing to resign as legislator if flaws are found.”
“When I entered the master’s program it was not to make my educational background look better on paper, it was to fulfill work requirements, as I was new to public office,” she said. “I wanted to improve my understanding of how social media are used in politics, the types of things politicians post about and how social media affect results at the polls.”
Tsai’s thesis was about the attention given to municipal issues on social media, which required her to collect a large amount of data and to cite many sources, she said.
“If in that process I accidentally made omissions, I am willing to own up to my mistake,” she said. “I hope the committee will make its findings public so that they can serve as an example for improvement, for myself and others.”
PUBLIC ATTENTION
National Chengchi University professor Tsai Tseng-chia (蔡增家) said the case is expected to garner more public attention.
“The public is going to be watching this, so the review committee should publish its findings and let the public be part of the review process,” he said. “Otherwise, it will be impossible for anyone to have any substantive discussion on whether Tsai Pi-ru was at fault. The situation will only result in people attacking each other.”
Echoing similar comments from Tsai Pi-ru, Tsai Tseng-chia said making the committee’s findings public would help her make improvements to her academic writing and better equip her to defend herself against the allegations.
Tsai Pi-ru said she believes the parts of the thesis on daycare and the aging population was deemed problematic.
“[Takming] university said I had not included a source. I told them the source was a Facebook post by a city councilor, but as there is no way to search for specific posts on Facebook, I could not go back and make a proper citation,” she said.
A Keelung high school on Saturday night apologized for using a picture containing a Chinese flag on the cover of the senior yearbook, adding that it has recalled the books and pledged to provide students new ones before graduation on Thursday. Of 309 Affiliated Keelung Maritime Senior High School of National Taiwan Ocean University graduates, 248 had purchased the yearbook. Some students said that the printer committed an outrageous error in including the picture, while others said that nobody would notice such a small flag on the cover. Other students said that they cared more about the photographs of classmates and what was
GOING INTERNATIONAL: Rakuten Girls squad leader Ula Shen said she was surprised that baseball fans outside of Taiwan not only knew of them, but also knew their names Major League Baseball’s (MLB) Oakland Athletics on Saturday hosted its first Taiwanese Heritage Day event at the Oakland Coliseum with a performance by Taiwanese cheerleading squad the Rakuten Girls and a video message from Vice President William Lai (賴清德). The Rakuten Girls, who are the cheerleaders for the CPBL’s Rakuten Monkeys, performed in front of a crowd of more than 2,000 people, followed by a prerecorded address by Lai about Taiwan’s baseball culture and democratic spirit. Taiwanese pitcher Sha Tzu-chen (沙子宸), who was signed by the Athletics earlier this year, was also present. Mizuki Lin (林襄), considered a “baseball cheerleading goddess” by Taiwanese
A 14-legged giant isopod is the highlight of a new dish at a ramen restaurant in Taipei and it has people lining up — both for pictures and for a bite from this bowl of noodles. Since “The Ramen Boy” launched the limited-edition noodle bowl on Monday last week, declaring in a social media post that it had “finally got this dream ingredient,” more than 100 people have joined a waiting list to dine at the restaurant. “It is so attractive because of its appearance — it looks very cute,” said the 37-year-old owner of the restaurant, who wanted to be
EVA Airways was ranked the eighth-best airline in the world for this year, the only Taiwanese carrier to make it into the top 25 Airline Excellence Awards this year, aviation reviews Web site AirlineRatings.com said on Wednesday. AirlineRatings.com has a seven-star rating system to evaluate more than 360 airlines around the world every year, EVA Airways said in a statement on Thursday. “We are delighted that efforts by the entire EVA staff have been recognized by Airline Ratings,” EVA Airways president Clay Sun (孫嘉明) said in the release. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the company identified and adopted services and procedures that enhance and
RSS