In the space of seven years, Idriss Aberkane has roamed television sets, haunted conference rooms, sold hundreds of thousands of books and united a community of no less than 312,000 followers on X (formerly Twitter). The recipe for this success ? An incredible CV of which he never misses an opportunity to praise the merits: “Three doctorates” at only 29 years old, “including one from the Polytechnic School”. But after more than two years of deliberations, the ethics committee of the École Polytechnique considered that Idriss Aberkane had plagiarized his thesis, published in 2016 (which the latter contests).
Anyone who knows the pedigree of the character, to whom L’Express devoted an investigation, will perhaps see in this twist yet another mystification of the “hyperdoctor”. Anyone familiar with the academic world will undoubtedly be more concerned that a student from one of the most prestigious French schools, Polytechnique, was able to plagiarize nearly 47 pages of his thesis. And not to be worried for seven years, even though his media coverage was partially based on this diploma.
Until now, the phenomenon seemed to mainly concern foreigners: German ministers, senior Chinese leaders, Russian officials… But, in the space of three years, suspicions of plagiarism have multiplied in France. Mainly concerning the theses of the lawyer Arash Derambarsh, and the Jesuit economist Gaël Giraud.
However, France is not Germany, where the Grandes Écoles do not exist, and where the doctorate is one of the only ways to differentiate yourself on the job market. It is also not China, where promotions within the CCP strongly depend on the level of diploma, nor Russia which has a significant black market for doctoral theses. This is why in a country like France, renowned for its academic and intellectual rigor, it is first of all astonishment that predominates…
Duping the jury’s vigilance
13,900 doctors graduated in 2022, according to the Ministry of Higher Education and Research. That is to say an increase of 2%, after an increase of 15% in 2021. If cases of plagiarism remain on the margins, several methods nevertheless make it possible to fool the vigilance of examiners – and even that of anti-plagiarism software. Starting with the use of a simple online translation tool applied to the original text, supplemented by a slight rewriting on the part of the student.
Simpler still: in certain disciplines, such as the humanities, plagiarized work may be so old that it has not been digitized on the Web. In other words, only a curious person, an enthusiast or a specialist is likely to discover the deception…
In 2022, the philosopher Philippe Chevallier revealed in L’Express that he had detected strange similarities with the work of historians in the work to be published by Editions du Seuil by the economist Gaël Giraud Create a shared world, adapted from his theology thesis defended in 2020. To verify his intuitions, Philippe Chevallier had to go… to the library, most of the sources to be reviewed were not (or not entirely) available online, and this fact undetectable by anti-plagiarism software. A second version of the work was finally published.
“Plumb effect”
How can such cases escape the vigilance of a thesis director? “Some professors take 10, 15, sometimes 20 doctoral students under their responsibility, with a view to career advancement,” explains Georges Haddad, professor of mathematics and former director of the Panthéon-Sorbonne University. “But it is impossible to seriously supervise so many theses.”
“Potential fraudsters can choose a professor who is losing ground, eager to return to the academic world. When he is approached, he is therefore flattered that the student’s choice fell on him and accepts even if the subject of the the thesis is far from his area of expertise, explains Mariano Casado, lecturer specializing in neuroscience in the Department of Biology at the Ecole Normale Supérieure (ENS), and former professor of Idriss Aberkane. And if, a Once the thesis is submitted, he realizes the deception or finds the thesis incomprehensible, it is too late to turn back because for him that would mean going back into the closet. He must therefore choose juries capable of validating the thesis without make waves.”
In the Giraud case, the jury’s blindness could be explained, according to Philippe Chevallier, by the fact that the author “had taken care to cite the authors from whom he borrowed the work. But only in places, which gave an appearance of serious. In reality, the borrowings were much more numerous than the references would suggest. To the point that even certain footnotes, whose erudition impressed, were in reality directly copied from paragraphs borrowed from others, from which Gaël Giraud had changed a few words. Added to this was what the philosopher calls “the plumb effect”. How can we imagine that a doctoral student would have taken the risk of appearing before a jury of specialists who could have recognized the borrowings? “This remains incomprehensible to me,” concludes Philippe Chevallier.
Juries of convenience
But the reason for such blindness, on the part of the thesis director as well as the jury, can sometimes be summed up in one word: complacency. Georges Haddad thus distinguishes two cases: “distress plagiarism”, which comes from a desperate doctoral student, looking for a way to get out of it by picking left and right, without always being totally aware that This is plagiarism. And “organized plagiarism, with the complacency of the jury, in a political or careerist logic”.
In 2020, while the mathematics professor was president of the Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne University, the disciplinary section of the academic council of the establishment had estimated that the thesis of the lawyer and elected LR de Courbevoie (Hauts-de- Seine), Arash Derambarsh, was tainted with plagiarism. She had decided to withdraw his diploma obtained in 2015. According to The world, one of the members of the jury chaired a cultural association in Courbevoie at the time, while another had seen his work published by Arash Derambarsh in 2011. When the affair broke out, the members of the jury declared to the daily never having detected plagiarism. “It is very unusual to designate as pre-rapporteur of a thesis a teacher-researcher who does not belong to the discipline in which the thesis is defended,” noted the members of the disciplinary section in their decision. After numerous legal twists and turns, the cancellation of Arash Derambarsh’s thesis was confirmed by the National Council for Higher Education and Research (Cneser), ruling on disciplinary matters.
Embargo request
Legal safeguards are supposed to guarantee the balance of the jury, in particular concerning the presence of members from outside the doctoral school and the establishment, or in matters of parity. But what can such criteria do in the face of friendships, common political interests or even the nature of a research system based on publish or perish (publish or perish)?
When the thesis is validated, other factors may contribute to concealing the alleged fraud. Starting with a request for an embargo lasting several years. In the Aberkane case, the disputed statement was located precisely within one of the parties placed under “industrial embargo for five years” in order, he said, to protect “lines of code”. It was therefore necessary to wait until 2021 for the thesis to be available for consultation. “The responsibility is also that of the establishment and not just of a guilty scapegoat. The discovery of his inadequate behavior should have taken place well before the submission of the manuscript, by his thesis director or his doctoral school,” insists Michelle Bergadaa, professor emeritus at the University of Geneva and president of the International Institute for Research on Academic Fraud and Plagiarism (Irafpa).
And if, through a combination of circumstances, the plagiarism ends up being unmasked after the defense, then a new battle begins. On the one hand, the university, concerned about its image since “to admit plagiarism is to disavow the jury, even the university”, translates Michelle Bergadaa. On the other, the former student who, if he has any, can count on his fans to defend him…