Anti-plagiarism group finds Russian pro-war singer Shaman copied large portions of doctoral thesis from Wikipedia

The popular Russian pro-war singer Yaroslav Dronov, who performs under the stage name Shaman, copied large portions of his final thesis at Gnessin Academy of Music from Wikipedia, according to the anti-plagiarism project Dissernet.

Dronov defended his thesis, titled “Key Features of Successful Promotion of a Musical Composition and Its Impact on the Performance Process of a Pop-Jazz Singer,” in 2016, receiving the equivalent of a Ph.D in Art History. According to Dissernet’s analysis, at least 19 of the 35 pages of the paper contain plagiarized material.

Three of the pages contain text lifted from the article for “Popular Music” on Wikipedia, while two pages include material from the article “Pop Music,” and one page uses material from the article “Sound Engineer.”

The thesis also contains uncited materials from academic articles and from the website “My Lectures.”