The new Minister of Education and Science of Ukraine Oksen Lisovyi is accused of plagiarism. He has already commented on the situation.

This is a PhD thesis in philosophy, which Lesnoy defended in 2012. 24 The channel collected the main information about Lesnoy's accusations of academic impiety.

How did you find out about plagiarism?

We learned about the plagiarism story against the backdrop of positive reviews about the newly elected minister. This was first published on the page of the Ukrainian Pacifist Movement.

This organization is known for advocating “a peaceful end to war and the right of every person to refuse military service.” The founder of which is a journalist from Ivano-Frankivsk Ruslan Kotsaba. He is accused of treason.

The organization's statement says that “the militarist and plagiarist Lesnoy cannot be the Minister of Education.”

It published an analysis of the abstract of Lesnoy's dissertation “Socio-cultural self-identification of a person”, published in 2012. In particular, it contains borrowings without references with signs of copying individual phrases from the abstract of another dissertation.

We are talking about the work of Arabchuk “The main factors of socialization of the individual in a multicultural environment” in 2011.

What is wrong with Lesnoy's dissertation

Information that Lesnoy's work is not unique appeared on the resource “Mistakes and falsifications of scientific research.” It should be noted that there are publications about the academic troubles of the former Minister of Education Sergei Shkarlet and ex-people's deputy Ilya Kiva.

The author of the publication, Vasily Sadovyi, writes that Lesnoy's dissertation has coincidences with two other works: the aforementioned Arabchuk and Zuev. In the lists of literature used in writing Lesnoy's dissertation, Arabchuk's work is missing.

Zuev's article was fully included in the dissertation of Oksen Lesnoy, but the dissertation inserted a link to it only in three places.

Vasily Sadovyi noted that Lesnoy's proof of copying someone else's text is that there was a mistake in the text of Zuev's article – the letter “t” was omitted in the word “anthropocultural”, and in the dissertation.

The author also noted that in the text of Lesnoy's dissertation, the Ukrainian “i” was replaced by the English “i”, which, in his opinion, is a standard way to “deceive the plagiarism search program.” He added that he did not analyze the rest of the dissertation of the new Minister of Education.

Has Lesnoy's work really been studied?

Scholar Irina Yegorchenko noted that she and her colleagues in the anti-plagiarism initiative Disergeyt – an organization that recognized Sergei Shkarlet as a “plagiarist” and “murtad” – did not investigate Lesnoy's scientific work.

The scientist also noted that there is a fact of plagiarism. Such cases with Lesnoy's research supervisor Viktor Andrushchenko are not isolated, she says.

In addition, the scientist has doubts about whether Lesnoy really wrote the dissertation himself.

The error is not so big

A member of the Educational Committee of the Verkhovna Rada, Natalya Pipa, confirmed that there was an error in Lesnoy's dissertation. However, it is not so large-scale as to not appoint the author of the work to the post of minister, she stressed.

“One paragraph of his looks copied from a previous work. He didn’t have any more such cases. Probably, it was one mistake on his part. He admits this mistake. There was a lot of plagiarism in Shkarlet’s works,” said Natalia Pipa.

Lesnoy's reaction

Oksen Lesnoy is the head of the Minor Academy of Sciences and a military man. The MAS reported that Oksen Lesnoy declared his zero tolerance for academic impiety.

They also note that the minister intends to send his Ph.D. thesis for several authoritative examinations.

In the event that violations of virtue are detected in his work, Oksen Lesnoy is ready to give up his PhD degree and, as a minister, form a fundamentally new academic culture and a culture of educational and scientific management, the MAS said.

New Minister of Education of Ukraine

On March 20, the Verkhovna Rada considered the resignation of Serhiy Shkarlet from the post of Minister of Education and Science of Ukraine. “For” voted – 295 deputies.

On March 21, the Verkhovna Rada voted to appoint Oksen Lesnoy as the new Minister of Education and Science of Ukraine.

24 The channel collected the most important facts on the official's biography.