Are we assuming rather hastily with the statements spouted by the Kepala Batas MP recently?
As a graduate awarded with a Doctor of Philosophy, it is presumed that not only does she has a right to speak it and act on it but it should be referenced and based on verifiable sources.
Not quoting based on some dubious and unverifiable sources.
It is an insult and a shame to her alma mater, Universiti Sains Malaysia who awarded her a Master and a Doctor of Philosophy.
She sure did let her parents who were ecstatic and proud of her when she first got entry to do her Masters and PhD at USM, down.
Based on what her lawyers reportedly said, they handed over "reference material" on her claim of a family conspiracy in DAP to police and it is up to them to determine whether the material was authentic.
Why leave it to the police to authenticate?
Is the reference material a book titled `Bahan Kempen Komunikasi Barisan Nasional’ which by now, the front page has gone viral?
As a person with the qualification of a PhD, she has a responsibility to ensure that the sources she referred to must be verifiable.
In doing her dissertation - a written document that requires skill, focus, discipline, subject knowledge, organization and scheduling presumably of around 500 pages - which is a work of original research all students are required to submit in order to successfully complete their PhD, did she just quote from unverifiable sources to reach the outcomes and conclusions leaving the authentication to the university authorities?
Any post graduate students doing their doctoral dissertation will be able to tell you that it reports on novel data and is published so it can be scrutinized by others.
It culminates in your dissertation defense.
Dissertation data sources will come from academic journal articles, scholarly books and publications, academic periodicals and magazines, survey reports, industry and corporate reports, government data, published statistics, laboratory experiments and investigations (e.g. basic sciences), first-hand surveys, interviews, unpublished data (i.e. verified data from experiments but too narrow to publish), abstracts, reviews, and conference presentations by other researchers.
The above lists clearly show that a PhD researcher and dissertation writer must have specific hands-on experience about not only the result of others’ research but also how the researchers obtained the data. A dissertation must venture into criticism of how other studies performed their experiments.
Does she mean to assert that there is nothing in any of the relationship apparently spelt out in that Bahan Kempen Komunikasi Barisan Nasional?
Or is she just plainly caricaturing?
Or that has been always the plan to avoid or deflect issues that her party is presently facing till the ordinary rakyat conveniently forgets about it and thrown it away for something new later.
If she is let off for mouthing something accusatory based on fake documents, it will set a dangerous precedent wherein in future, other politicians would also do the same and later claimed they relied on some unverifiable documents when they make their statements.
If the said person is an uneducated person and not a representative of the people, the public would just ignore him or her.
But if the person who makes it holds a PhD and is also a representative of the people, it is a different picture altogether.
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