“Plagiarism is proven”: Polytechnique proposes to cancel the thesis of “Hyperdoctor” Idriss Aberkane

2023-08-30 23:12:34

Polytechnique’s ethics committee has decided. In charge of an investigation for suspicions of plagiarism in a thesis of the lecturer and successful essayist, Idriss Aberkane, the committee noted the cheating and proposes the cancellation of the doctorate, obtained in 2016 at the University of Paris-Saclay and prepared for l’X, its former president revealed on Wednesday to L’Express.

Rendered “unanimously” in September 2022, “this decision was transmitted to both the École Polytechnique and the University of Paris-Saclay”, indicated Benoit Deveaud, who retired recently. “To date, the application of the sanction is still pending,” he said, however. It is indeed the subject of a dispute between the two establishments, the University of Paris-Saclay considering that its application should be up to the École Polytechnique, while the latter does not have the legal means. “Since then, everyone has remained on their positions and nothing is happening,” lamented the former president of the ethics committee.

“Approximate rantings”

The instance had been seized in March 2021 by “a whistleblower” who suspected Idriss Aberkane of having reproduced the documentation of software in his thesis in management science and applied epistemology. After noting this “borrowing”, the commission had contacted the speaker to try to find an “amicable” solution. In vain. Denouncing “approximate rantings”, he had refused to recognize the plagiarism and threatened to take legal action.

A controversial figure, Idriss Aberkane presents himself as the “Hyperdoctor”, holder of “three doctorates” at the age of 29 – the other two having been obtained in diplomacy and “noopolitics” (not recognized by the State) and in comparative literature. He had notably been at the center of a controversy during the Covid-19 pandemic, after implying in a tweet that a patient hospitalized in intensive care was a fake patient.