Five years after facing the first explosive allegations of plagiarism, Chris Spence has lost his fight to hold onto his PhD at the University of Toronto. An appeals tribunal at the university has upheld an earlier ruling last June that recommended stripping the former education superstar of his doctorate after it found 67 examples of passages in his dissertation allegedly taken from the work of others without proper credit. “Plagiarism, particularly plagiarism of the nature and extent found in (Spence’s) thesis is a very serious offence,” the appeals tribunal said in its decision, dated last Friday. The independent tribunal’s recommendation last June to cancel the degree is consistent with decisions in all similar cases at U of T and “was neither procedurally unfair nor unreasonable,” the appeals panel concluded. “Indeed, we think it was correct.”However, that may not be the final word on the subject, according to Spence’s lawyer Darryl Singer.

Source: thestar February 07, 2018 22:18 UTC