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They call him “the plagiarism hunter.” He calls himself “meticulous” and an “addict.”
Stefan Weber, however, is easily recognizable in German-speaking Countries where titles can be used to indicate social status. He is the undisputed terror among academics, politicians and celebrities.
Weber is an Austrian communication professor who has made many people’s lives difficult and ended their careers. And what started as a hobby has now developed into a business with five freelance “collaborators”, as he calls them, working with him to reveal the misdoings of lazy, sloppy or downright sneaky writers.
Annalena Bayerbock is his latest target, the Green Party candidate who will replace Angela Merkel at German Chancellor.
Weber, 51, got started on what would become his life’s work in 2005, when he himself was plagiarized by a German theologian, Joachim Fels, who explained that his failure to acknowledge Weber’s work properly in his doctoral dissertation was the result of an editorial mishap. While he seemed to believe that the matter would be settled, he wasn’t aware of who he was dealing.
Weber’s public complaint ultimately triggered a university investigation revealing that 86% of the first 100 pages of Fels’ dissertation was plagiarized from Weber’s work. Weber was featured prominently by major media outlets. A German television crew followed Weber, and even door-stepped Fels who was eventually stripped of his doctorate.
Weber, who was armed with only commercial software and an almost photographic memory, has pursued a number of notable figures over the years.
Following allegations that she embellished her CV, Weber ran her newly published book, “Now: How We Renew Our Country,” through Turnitin and other plagiarism-detection programs. The program marked 12 passages in the book as nearly identical to those from other sources.
“Willful deceit,” said Weber, who once worked as a tabloid journalist and who publicized his findings in his blog and through numerous interviews with major news organizations in Germany and Austria.
Experts warned against applying the standards of doctoral dissertations for a nonfiction book written by a politician. Many saw a concerted campaign to discredit a highly accomplished woman, while others wondered if the far-right had bankrolled Weber’s research. He said that it didn’t.
Still, the episode strengthened a sense of Baerbock as “dubious and sloppy,” Weber said. The number of passages in the book found to be cribbed from blogs, news columns, books and the Greens’ election program has since grown to more than 100. Despite leading the polls for the spring, her support dropped to below 20%. However, the plagiarism scandal was not the only reason.
Critics refer to him as an insipid crusader who enjoys character assassination. His drive to keep writers, academics, and other people to the highest standard can sometimes be frustrating to his supporters.
“He always wants to be the best, and he also demands that of others,” said Peter A. Bruck, a former professor at the University of Salzburg who was an academic mentor to Weber.
Those who fail to meet his standards will be told about them. When he discovered that his children’s after-school center had plagiarized its “pedagogical concept,” he promptly chastised school officials.
“I know when I’m annoying people with my meticulousness,” Weber said over lunch at an Italian restaurant near his office in a scruffy industrial district on the outskirts of Salzburg, Austria. He enjoys eating pizza ala diavola whenever he’s not fasting for the diabetes that his doctor had predicted 10 years ago. But, Weber ate a pasta meal while explaining business aspects.
That consists of investigating academics’ publications, court experts’ opinions and books, for which he bills as much as $400 an hour. But the bulk of his clients typically fall into two categories: men seeking to discredit their ex-wives amid or after a divorce (but never vice versa) and people trying to undermine their neighbors’ credibility in nasty disputes over property lines.
He stated that he is now receiving about 50 queries per month. Also, people are starting to send him tips regarding big cases like the case he filed against Christine Aschbacher in Austria. Christine Aschbacher was the labor minister of Austria who had resigned in January due to a plagiarism scandal.
“It’s a gold mine,” he said of Austrians’ schadenfreude.
Weber’s life path to where he is now was quite unusual. Stefan Weber was born in Salzburg, to a father who controlled his work hours and a mother who did homemaking. Young Stefan Weber displayed early signs that he could be a mathematical prodigy.
“May you remain humble in triumph,” a teacher cautioned the 11-year-old Weber. Weber excelled in all subjects with the exception of physical education. Weber chooses to take the cable car up the mountain when Birgit Kolb (his current partner) hikes in the Alps.
Weber was a University of Salzburg student when he realized the victory his math teacher predicted would never be achieved. Despite his prodigious memory, he was unable to follow the university math professors and instead turned to “the idiot degree everyone studies: communications.”
Communication was easy. Weber taught at eight German universities of applied sciences, while always striving for tenure. Weber never achieved it.
Weber was 37 when he moved to Dresden, Germany where his then-partner, Anna, worked as a civil servant. As a parent to their children Maximilian (and Anna), he also taught and was a communication consultant.
He also published books critiquing new media and continued to work with Bruck, who still lauds Weber’s intellect and ambition but has little patience for his new career. “From a useful tracker, he transformed into an illegitimate detractor,” he wrote in a 2007 op-ed rebuking Weber for accusing Johannes Hahn, then Austria’s science minister, of plagiarism. The accusation was finally dropped by Hahn.
Weber was back in Salzburg in 2014, and split with his ex-partner the next year.
Weber pointed out Hahn as an example of someone Weber has shamed and not lost their job or title. Hahn went on to be a European Union commissioner. This year, however, when he exposed “plagiarism, wrong citations and poor knowledge of German” in the academic work of Aschbacher, she stepped down within two days.
Weber advocated plagiarism for more than a decade. However, it wasn’t until Aschbacher that the government started to pay attention. “Only since politics has been hit,” he said, “has politics become interested.”
Now, with government funding, he is evaluating how Austria’s universities deploy plagiarism-detection software and is creating a Wiki that is to become the ultimate guide to proper sourcing, quoting and referencing. He said that eventually he hopes to improve standards enough to be able not only to work but also for others.
He will scan and digitize two dissertations from high-ranking civil servants for the moment. Weber took the bound volumes to the floor on his blue Volkswagen, and noticed that they had been written during the aughts when plagiarism was rampant.
“That’s already making me suspicious,” he said with a mischievous grin.
