At least seven sections of Mindaugas Sinkevičius’ dissertation were copied

Lithuania’s Prime Minister Mindaugas Sinkevičius’ doctoral dissertation contains at least seven sections that were directly copied from foreign publications, according to an investigation by public broadcaster LRT.

The allegations surfaced shortly after Sinkevičius was appointed prime minister, raised by IT specialist Artūras Paleičikas on social media. Paleičikas, referencing past controversies over academic integrity, developed a program to check each sentence of the dissertation.

Sinkevičius defended his 2015 dissertation on alcohol consumption habits and causes, stating he was “completely calm” and that any errors would not be significant. He noted that the work had been publicly available in physical form at the Martynas Mažvydas National Library of Lithuania for 11 years. The dissertation was only recently digitised and made accessible online, where discrepancies—such as statistical diagrams—were later identified.

ISM University, where Sinkevičius earned his doctorate, stated that the dissertation met the ethical standards of the time and that its defence would not be reviewed.

LRT.lt confirmed that the flagged passages in Sinkevičius’ work match those found in foreign researchers’ studies, with some sentences slightly altered rather than copied verbatim.