Dear Ms Broeksteeg,

I have just read your article in The Voice. The overall tenor of the article is wrong. The article is unfair since there has never been any cover-up operation.

1. As I have already mentioned to you, we have nothing to hide in this matter. The case was thoroughly and serenely handled by the Commission on Scientific Integrity (CSI), as prescribed by the procedures of the Commission (please see http://www.kuleuven.be/cwi/procedures.pdf). After the CSI reached a conclusion, the report was submitted to the notifying parties and also to the concerned. The report was discussed at the Governing Board which took the necessary measures. Mr. Martin Stone is not a K.U.Leuven staff member any more. K.U.Leuven considers each publication of Mr. Stone, which is affiliated with K.U. Leuven, as problematic. K.U.Leuven also formally withdrew affiliation with K.U.Leuven for all publications which mention Mr. Stone as a K.U.Leuven staff member. The editors or publishers of all these publications were informed in a personally addressed letter. Consequently, all publications of Mr. Stone were removed from Lirias and they are not a part of the scientific output of K.U.Leuven anymore. The whole case was handled discreetly but with due decisiveness. We do not organize any witch hunts here and we do not use public shaming as a punishment.
2. It is absolutely incorrect to claim that we hold professors and students, who have been accused of plagiarism, to different standards. We do not name and shame plagiarizing students either.
3. Mr. Stone ceased to be a K.U.Leuven staff member within 6 weeks after the complaint was received. I do not think that King’s College dealt with this matter more swiftly. The consequences are much more severe for Mr. Stone than for any student ever punished at this Institute.
4. Complaints against professors with regard to plagiarism are handled by the Commission on Scientific Integrity of K.U.Leuven, as described above. The notifying parties are informed of the conclusion the Commission reaches. Mr. Kantola has certainly in the meantime received a letter from the university.
5. Students do not have the right to know everything. We respect also their privacy.
6. I personally made sure that the students who had Mr. Stone as a promoter were assigned a new promoter as soon as possible and after they were consulted. We managed to limit the damage here as much as possible
7. We are not apologizing for mistakes which, as you claim, we allegedly made since we are convinced that we handled this delicate matter with utmost care.
8. The reaction of mine that you published was the reaction to your mention that you would publish something on this matter. It was not the reaction to the content of the article of which I had not been informed.

Best regards,

Toon Vandevelde

Dean HIW