German defence minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg, known in tabloid headlines as Baron Cut-and-Paste, resigned Tuesday following revelations that parts of his doctoral thesis had been cribbed without acknowledgement from the work of other writers. It wasn't justa few lines, either. Gregor Aisch, who runs a German data visualization website, has produced a graphical depiction of zu Guttenberg’s borrowings. [Larger version here.] Dark red lines represent complete or masked plagiarism, while the lighter red depict other categories of plagiarism. Longer bars correspond to normal text, while smaller bars represent material in footnotes. Altogether brazen. For the data underlying his image, Aisch drew on another...

02 March, 2011