Craig Wright's PhD status raises doubts, thesis plagiarized?

Craig Wright, the Australian businessman who claimed to be the creator of Bitcoin, has been accused of extensive plagiarism in his PhD thesis. This notably questions Craig Wright’s PhD status and might eventually be discredited, if the accusation holds ground.

Wright accused of plagiarism

As per the report published in Medium on the 4th of May, he was honoured with a doctoral degree by Charles Sturt University in the past three years. However, Craig Wright’s PhD thesis was reportedly copied to the extent it was easily detected by plagiarism checkers.

The report claimed that over 30 pages of Craig Wright’s PhD thesis were copied word for word from external sources, without any citation. He reportedly wrote his thesis from roughly seven pages of material used in a webpage from a professor in ornithology.

On several occasions, Wright only edited his reference documents by changing them with synonyms, without minding the sentence structure of materials. In addition to being picked up by plagiarism tools, such editing resulted in more errors in Wright’s thesis.

Errors in mathematical equations

For instance, he edited a figure initially written as “optimal choice” to “optional choice,” which was considered as an error, according to the analysis. Also, Wright made more errors as he tried to obfuscate mathematical equations using a different kind of variable notations. 

In his not-so-careful actions, he also transferred errors made in the reference materials to his thesis, without any correction. In response to this, Wright blamed his style and copy editor for most of the errors and citations lacking in his doctoral thesis, according to the report.

How valid is Craig Wright’s PhD?

Craig Wright’s PhD status has been questioned several times on the counts of plagiarism in his materials. Recently, he was accused of plagiarizing most of his 2008 LLM thesis, per the report. The developments are not welcoming, following Wright’s global status. 

For months now, the man in question has claimed to be Satoshi Nakamoto, the real creator of Bitcoin. At a point, he was ordered to make a $5 billion settlement over the arguments on the inception of the world’s most valuable cryptocurrency.