Fake Degree Scandal

As a result, the Senate House Library provided three shocking replies on October 12:
1) From the Card Catalogue records of the Senate House Library, this library should never receive a copy of the original paper returned by the External Examiners.
2) According to another bibliographic record, the Senate House library received a paper in 2011 and sent it to the IALS library.
3) But the IALS library has confirmed that their library no longer holds the 2011 version of the paper.

 

1. Senate House has never received the nal copy of Ms. Tsai's approved thesis for deposit in the designated university libraries.
2. Ms. Tsai's handheld diploma at Dcard was a fake replacement certicate, as it bore an incorrect Vice Chancellor's signature.
3. Ms. Tsai had obtained two replacement certicates in 2010 and 2015, respectively, so they both must be fake for the university policy allows only one replacement certicate ever to be issued to any applicant.
4. All other 108 PhDs of the academic year 1983-84 have their metadata in Senate House Library, but Ms. Tsai is the only exception.
5. While Ms. Tsai's theis has its metadata in the British Library, it hadn't actually existed prior to June, 2015.
6. Ms. Tsai's student record has nothing entered to indicate that she did pass an oral-defense examination or submit an approved thesis in 1983-84.
7. The student record also indicates that Ms. Tsai withdrew from the course of the Mphil/Phd programme on November 10, 1982 and henceforth became de-registered.

 

There were many basic formatting inconsistencies or errors, such as:

1. The thesis catalogue consisted of five pages, two hundred and forty-nine lines, and there were eighty-two catalogue titles and body titles that were inconsistent or incorrect. For example, the second line of the first page of the table of contents ... A World in Transition, the first page of the text had the word "General background". Another example was the title of the first eight lines of the page was the US steel industry crisis, but the text did not contain these contents.

2. The paragraph was wrong. There was no segmentation on one page, a maximum of four consecutive pages of seventy-nine lines without segmentation, a total of twenty-five pages had this phenomenon (such as 291 to 294, 311 to 313).

3. Chapter classification was inconsistent: the first six chapters, each chapter was divided into (A) (B) (C). However, the last four chapters were divided into Section I, Section II, and Section III. In addition, the second chapter of the first part was divided into (A) (B) (C) under the chapter, and then subdivided into (1) (2) (3), but the third chapter was divided into (A) (B) (C) under the chapter , it was subdivided into (a) (b) (c).

4. There were many underlined texts in the dissertation. For example, the word "seriously" on the 15th line on page 47, the word "voluntarily" on the 22th line on page 48, etc., there were ninety-five words like this.

5. The use of hyphens was inconsistent, for example, balance-of-payment (on pages 64, 69, and 70); balance of payment (on pages 23, 67, and 70).

6. The words used in the thesis were inconsistent. For example, 15 percent on the first line of P.54, but 15% on the twenty eighth line. On p.122,340 she used percent; on p.43,110,138 she used %. In addition, there were six "programs" on p.131, but British "programmes" were used on p.32.

7. The catalogue of the thesis consisted of five pages, 249 lines, only ten lines had page numbers, and the rest were not.

8. The thesis was not typeset. The chapter title of the text was not centered, the font size was not different from the text, and there was no blank line between the two. The body and the text were mixed together and written down continuously, and there were no blank lines on the entire page.

 

On June 28, 2019, the president of Taiwan sent a facsimile copy of her mysterious thesis to LSE Library. Ironically, this dubious thesis was already 35 years overdue. The library then enforced a unusual restricted access limitation on the thesis, preventing
anyone from copying and quoting its contents. On July 9, or 11 days after the tardy thesis's arrival, Ms. Tsai, in a rather flippant manner, ashed a doctoral diploma at Dcard, a social-media company based in Taipei, Taiwan. This diploma is dubious for it bears the signature of Adrian Smith rather than that of Lord Randolf Quirk. Note that Adrian Smith was Vice Chancellor of the University of London from 2012 to 2018, whereas Lord Randolf Quirk was Vice Chancellor from 1981 to 1985 when Ms. Tsai
was an LSE graduate student. According to Ms. Tsai's presidential office, the PhD diploma she displayed in person is a replacement certicate issued in 2015, so it bears the signature of Adrian Smith.

However, according to Diploma Production Office of the University of London, any replacement certicate must be identical to the original diploma; i.e. same wordings, same signatures. Further, Ms. Tsai has obtained two replacement certicates for her so-called PhD diploma, but the university policy allows only one replacement certicate ever to be issued to any applicant. Thus her replacements certicates must have come from unknown sources, and they are fake.

 

Does this need to be adjudicated here? It's horribly one-sided and I'm not inclined to believe evidence by a rash of newcomers all posting about the same subject. Or should I say "newcomer"?

 

I’m Taiwanese. I hope international media would attach more importance to this scandal!
Here is a good report from an economic scholar at University of North Carolina at Charlotte:《Can One Earn a PhD from LSE without a Thesis?: The Bizarre Story of President Tsai》downloadable at:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/anfbbo66fql90cu/Lin_report_OCT2019_Eng.pdf?dl=0

 

It could have been predicted that Beijing wouldn't take kindly to President Tsai's resounding reelection victory (by a 60-40 margin). Either that, or Tsai's Taiwanese KMT opposition have gone into full American-style "resistance" mode.

We are seeing some of the blowback right here on Degreeinfo.

No less than eight new personas (questionable whether they are seven distinct individuals or just one who has created multiple log-ins) have suddenly appeared since last night. All of them only posting about President Tsai and all seemingly intent on trying to discredit her.

Hwan 2 posts since yesterday.
Frank Shieh 1 post
Lilian - 2
Niko Niko - 1
Rita Fang - 1
Alice - 5
Katherine Chu - 1
and True Light with 0 posts but one 'like' for the propaganda work of his/her compatriots.

The fact remains, and no amount of noise can make it go away:

PRESIDENT TSAI IS THE PRESIDENT OF A DEMOCRATIC COUNTRY.

Xi Jinping can't say that.

PRESIDENT TSAI WAS ELECTED TO OFFICE BY HER COUNTRY'S PEOPLE

Xi Jinping can't say that.

This appears to be Hwan:

https://www.facebook.com/hwanclin/

He may or may not be a business professor at UNC Charlotte. (Perhaps he needs to file a FARA registration.)

https://belkcollege.uncc.edu/directory/hwan-c-lin

Degreeinfo may be acquiring a reputation in some unsavory circles. Read the comments to the facebook post below.

Somebody called Kai Hsu writes: "They seem to think LSE already verified Tsai's degree and did not dig any deeper. I think that they are strong Tsai supporters anyways."

Hwan replies "We have had plenty of evidence against Tsai's lies. Let's start to share what we have over there."

https://www.facebook.com/hwanclin/posts/174384167268731

It's still unclear to me whether its Beijing doing this, the KMT doing it, or whether there is any real distinction between them at this point. But they certainly seem to have planted an agent of influence in North Carolina of all places.

 

I wonder which members of the Professor's family continue to reside in China?

 

I live in The US. It has been President Tsai’s tactics to label those who questioned her fake PhD degree as the Red camp or Beijing-related. Ms. Ing-wen Tsai has been cheating on the PhD degree for 35 years.

 

How about if I let your boss in North Carolina know that this is how you're spending your free time? Do you think the university will be happy to learn that they are becoming an agent of Chinese propaganda?

 

I thought you opened a fair forum for discussion.
My department chair has a copy of my report.
So, what is the purpose of your initiating the discussion?

 

Well, at least I'm not the only person that Kizmet is threatening these days. (post edited by Moderator)

 

Part of my job is to take out the trash. Sometimes I like to look at it a bit before I throw it away. It's also a part of my job to provide useful information to our members, like the FBI Cyber Crime website

https://www.ic3.gov/default.aspx

Have they seen your report?

 

By the way Steve, I didn't call you an asshole, I simply suggested that you not present yourself as one.

 

Dear Site Owner or Staff,
Please go ahead to delete my account immediately because I no longer have any interest in this website or expect any so-called "useful information" I will get here. I thought I signed up for an account to participate in the discussion I am interested in. I liked the real "useful information" and then I was labeled. There is no point to label any user or to judge anyone's opinion without stronger evidence or at least a fair discussion.

 

Umm, ok. Considering that you only registered a few hours ago it doesn't seem like a big loss. But just so you know, we don't "delete accounts" here. If you don't want to participate then simply stay off the site.

 

1. According to the LSE study regulations, doctoral students must first take a master's degree, so Tsai first entered the master's class. According to her school records, Tsai paid tuition fees in 1981 and 1982, and then suspended due to financial difficulties. On 1983 June, she re-entered school without paying tuition fees. At the same time, Tsai submitted two papers in a chinese journal, and her titles were all doctoral titles.

2. On 1984 Feb, she "got a degree", but did not indicate whether it was a PhD or a master's degree. Judging from the time and academic schedule, Tsai should obtain a master's degree. Because of the LSE regulations, she cannot grant a doctoral degree and will still be awarded a master degree.

3. In 2015, some people questioned the authenticity of Dr. Tsai. After questioning her degree in June 2019 after being investigated by Dr. Lin, Tsai finally showed her 2015 "reissued" graduation certificate. According to LSE regulations, the content of the reissue certificate must be exactly the same as the original certificate, that is, the signature of the "Vice Principal" field of the certificate should be the Vice Principal of the LSE in 1984. The reissued certificate violates the school's custom regulations and is suspected of being forged.

4. According to LSE regulations, 3 doctoral dissertations that have passed the review must be provided to the university and 3 library collections. However, Tsai's thesis, whether in paper or digital electronic format, was not found in the library before June this year.

5. In June of this year, Tsai provided a copy of the LSE thesis, but requested that the school should not copy, photocopy, shoot, or even cite the content without my consent.

6. The index of Dr. Tsai's dissertation only appeared in the LSE library search system in 2019. However, at the beginning, there was no entity (not available), and there were two authors. The library immediately changed to Tsai's personal work.

7. Dr. Xu went to LSE and said that the "doctoral dissertation" was rough and full of errors and did not meet the requirements of the system. For example, Chapter 1 is missing 7 pages, and the typo is corrected by "handwriting". The notes are not "up" as required. The "Name" of the chapter paragraph and the content on the following page are different. There is no "summary". The paper was written in 1984. At that time, there was no computer typing, and only typewriters could be used, but 90% (334 pages) of the text was typeset by computers, and only 10% used traditional typewriters.

 

1. LSE Library Collection Information uploads indicate that the personal thesis provided by Tsai in private is not a PhD thesis.

LSE collection details differences:

Comparison of LSE's official thesis graduation thesis (left) and Tsai's personal thesis (right):


2. The oral examination approval letter provided by Tsai does not have the official registration officer's signature, the date of the document, and the payment is not in the UK's usual format.

Comparison of notification letters passed in oral examinations:



3. The book retrieval system of the University of London's Institute of Advanced Law has not found Tsai's degree thesis:

 

This is such a useless forum. I thought it was devoted to useful discussion. Unfortunately, the moderator behaved in unusual ways. I do not want to waste time here any more.

 

How about take his evidences seriously before labelling him as the PRC?