supply and command

What the Common People Think About our Research

(taken by FJM on 12 December 2011)

Note: the above picture is an historic photograph. Meanwhile, this frank expression of the popular voice has been removed.

Local Cooling: Neckar River Frozen Once Again

Although I was born in Heidelberg and have lived here for 18 years of my life, I had never seen the Neckar river frozen. Yet this morning, as I was cycling across Theodor Heuss bridge at a freezing -11 degrees Celsius (~12,2 °F), I finally witnessed this bold spectacle of nature for the fist time:

taken by FJM, 11 February 2012

The reason we can experience this welcome side-effect of icy temperatures again, is, of course, the shutdown of the Obrigheim nuclear power plant in 2005. For more than 40 years, the plant's cooling water had been led into the river, keeping the water temperature consistently above 0 °C. Now the gradual fading-out of nuclear power in Germany might spark a Renaissance of ice-skating in the south-west.

Turner Likes Heidelberg!

More on Cheating

German Joys alerts us to this highly interesting dialogue between a New York college professor (“T” for teacher) and a man who ghost-writes student essays for money (“C” for cheater). In the course of their conversation, T and C discuss the incentives for plagiarism in higher education:

C: Now, I’m not saying there’s no virtue in forcing people to take classes in things they aren’t interested in. But plagiarism is going to happen in a society in which you are told, “This is something you need to do in order to have the life you want, and in order to have the life you want there are things you must do that you don’t want to do, and may even be incapable of doing. Now, we don’t really care where you went to high school, and we can’t speak to the quality of your English professors. So, here, write a paper about philosophy. And if you cheat, we will fucking expel you.” But if you don’t cheat, you’ll get a D, which is as good as being expelled. And that’s a rock and a hard place.

T: I was discussing this very issue with a representative of my department, and that is indeed the case. In a rational choice model, it’s actually, in certain cases, if you get at all behind with your work—all of them have jobs, many of them have children, some of them are not native English speakers, so they’re already at a disadvantage relative to the course that’s being taught to them—and the course that’s being taught to them can’t be “dumbed down to their level” because then the degree becomes meaningless anyway… The rational choice model encourages cheating.

I think “C” is raising an important point here, one that has not been emphasised enough in the past and that certainly did not receive enough attention in the coverage of recent German plagiarism scandals. In a previous post, I have used the term Titlemania to describe Germany’s insane obsession with academic titles. For irrational reasons, the German professional world craves for job candidates with the letters D and R in front of their names, thus incentivising people to pursue doctoral degrees even if they have zero intention to work in academia afterwards. This, obviously, leads to universities being swamped with often mediocre dissertations, and to their staff having to waste their time with research attempts whose printed results are destined to end up in some library’s basement never to be consulted again. Now, “C” establishes a convincing link between a professional culture that values pretention (“you have to do/ to have X in order to get the job you want/ be successful/ become rich”) and plagiarism by noting that the degree of pretention and the frequency of cheating are likely to be positively correlated. A first step to remedy this problem could be for universities not to admit students to degree programs in whose contents they are not interested. Obviously, this would require a careful selection process, but the increase in quality of produced dissertations will eventually reflect the benefits of selection.

 

Improving European Academia...

Silvana Koch-Mehrin has been elected to the European Parliament's research committee. Prost!

Ritschl and Kamm on Greece

LSE economic historian Albrecht Ritschl and TIMES columnist Oliver Kamm have both made the case for a Greek bailout. In a SPIEGEL interview, Ritschl points to the fact that restructuring the debt of a bankrupt country can be the basis of a successful restart and a more prosperous future. According to Ritschl, no country exemplifies this better than Germany, whose fast post-war recovery was buttressed by generous US aid programs, debt relief and the putting-on-hold of reparation payments to countries who had fallen victim to German occupation (that includes Greece). Similarly, Oliver Kamm recalls that Germany’s export-oriented economy has been one of the big beneficiaries of the single currency. Kamm notes that a Greek exit from the Eurozone could trigger a domino effect that could eventually lead to the dismantling of the Euro. Compared to this scenario a new Greece bailout package would incur only minor costs.

Both points are, I think, important. If the bankruptcy of a member state of a currency union is not answered with aid programs and debt relief, the only real options left are debt default and eventually monetary reform followed by a massive devaluation of the new currency. This, however, would have disastrous consequences to the monetary union’s remaining countries, especially to those also suffering from severe structural debt problems. As these countries will find it increasingly difficult to finance themselves through the capital markets, exiting the union will look more and more like an attractive option. Step by step, this will lead to the union’s erosion.

The current eurozone debt crisis reveals once more that EU policy makers are caught in an “elitism trap”. European finance minister must be aware of the dire ramifications of further delay on the Greece issue, yet they keep playing tactical games in order to appease the angry man in the street. And who can blame them? When doing the right thing is bound to trigger an electoral backlash caused by irrational popular sensitivities (some two thirds of German voters oppose financial aid to Greece), doing nothing until the issue gets out of the media spotlight must seem like an attractive option. If anything has ever presented a convincing case for a European Monetary Fund (i.e. an institution that can react adequately to sovereign default without having to fear being voted out of office), the Greek tragedy certainly did!

Of Titles and Twats

Silvana Koch-Mehrin, until recently vice-president of the European Parliament, has joined Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg in losing a doctoral degree. The former German defence minister had his doctorate withdrawn after his Alma Mater, the University of Bamberg, noticed a few indefensible shortcomings in Guttenberg’s dissertation (the most blatant one: pretty much none of its 450 pages had been written by the alleged author). Now, Koch-Mehrin has met the same fate. Three days ago, the University of Heidelberg announced that her degree was to be scrapped. Investigators had found 120 instances of obvious plagiarism in her doctoral dissertation, which Koch-Mehrin had submitted to the university’s philosophical faculty in 1999.

Yet, while the two cases are similar, the two fraudsters could not have behaved more differently in the aftermath of their respective exposure. While Guttenberg eventually stepped down from all political functions, retired to his Franconian castle and even announced his intention to leave Germany, Koch-Mehrin has kept her seat in the European parliament. Worse, she has started a childish skirmish with her former university. In a press statement, she claims that Heidelberg knew about the weaknesses of her dissertation: “[They] were known to the University of Heidelberg for 11 years, for all these words can be found in the written assessment of my supervisor. His highly critical remarks were seconded explicitly by the second examiner. […] The board of examiners awarded my doctoral degree in full awareness of the obvious weaknesses of my work. Today the board sees this differently.”

One is tempted to say to the poor girl: “Shut up, you are making it worse”. It is mind-boggling to see a respected parliamentarian complaining about the decision of an independent academic commission while not displaying any awareness of having made fundamental mistakes. After years of studying and alleged independent research, Koch-Mehrin evidently does even not grasp the basics of good academic conduct. She does not seem to understand the difference between a poor dissertation – which her supervisors thought she had produced – and a plagiarised one – which she did submit.

Was the RAF like the GIMF?

A few weeks ago, following his reading of this New York Times article, a friend asked me about my thoughts on how to prevent the radicalisation of German Muslims. The article reminded me of an essay written by Michael Buback some three years ago on the impending release of the murderers of his father, German Attorney General Siegfried Buback. In it, he draws a parallel between the terrorism of the Red Army Faction (RAF) and today’s prevailing Islamist violence. “Perhaps the terrorists’ hate for this Attorney General”, writes Buback,  “was increased

by the fact that he recognized the enormous dangers of terrorism early (which one would, of course, expect from an official with so much experience in the investigation of crimes against the state) and gave clear warning of the possible dangers. Later events show how correct his warnings were. We now see the ubiquitous threat of terrorism almost daily in news programs. We are confronted with the consequences of terrorist violence every time we board a plane. Leading politicians in free, democratic countries are forced to live subject to intensive security measures. They must often work in areas screened-off from the public, behind security fences and protective walls. Sometimes, in fact, the buildings from outside are so fortress-like that they resemble buildings intended for prisoners. The fact that there are ever more terrorists whose fanaticism drives them to take their own lives in addition to those of strangers makes the planning and execution of measures against terrorist brutality especially difficult.”

I find this comparison intriguing, not only for the historical challenges it poses, but also with respect to

Quote of the Month

"We have all chances to bring anarchy on a good way"

Günther Oettinger, conservative prime minister of Baden-Württemberg and designated EU-commissioner for Energy.

Watch him make this sensational statement here.

20 Years On

And now it's been 20 years that the Berlin Wall fell. Media commemoration has been pretty much alike across the board - but this web documentaire on France 24 stands out, as it features a brief interview with German historian Hubertus Knabe. His most recent book, Honeckers Erben ("Honecker's heirs") lucidly demonstrates that political agitation from former SED-members is among the main causes of widespread Ostalgia (= nostalgia for the communist dictatorship) in the former East Germany.