Alena Buyx: Habilitation not found. Nor morality.

There's a particular quality of irony that only real life can produce. No satire editor in the world could have dreamed this up: The woman who, during the Corona years, lectured the German population on responsibility, scientific fidelity, and moral integrity—whose own scientific foundations are now being tested for their very existence. Alena Buyx. Former chair of the German Ethics Council. The nation's public conscience during the pandemic. Under her moral watch, the unvaccinated were socially sorted, critics were denigrated, and Joshua Kimmich was publicly vilified. The message was always the same: Those who doubt are irresponsible. Those who ask questions endanger others. Those who don't go along have a problem with their understanding. Now Buyx has a problem with her understanding. A very concrete one.

The vanished championship title
The dissertation is suspected of plagiarism – that alone would be a story. But the real bombshell is the habilitation, the academic qualification that makes a professorship possible in the first place. Professor Homburg has documented it: The university hasn't found this habilitation thesis. Not misplaced. Not filed incorrectly. Not found. Buyx solved the problem in a way that seems straight out of a novel: She produced a copy from her private collection. Private collection!

The work that established her academic qualification as a professor apparently doesn't exist anywhere institutionally. No archiving. No publication. No record. Just a copy on her home shelf, pulled out like a receipt from a jacket pocket—and with that, the implicit message goes, the matter is settled. Professor Homburg puts it with the precision the case demands: Dissertations and habilitation theses that are worth anything are published. Junk is at least archived. In the cases of Buyx and—note the society—Drosten, the works vanished without a trace. And Lauterbach? There, too, let's say, are some irregularities in this regard. The list of academic ghost works by the corona expert caste is apparently longer than their publication list.

The comparison of master craftsmen
Let's imagine – purely hypothetically – an electrician is applying for a major contract. He presents himself as an authority, lectures colleagues about shoddy workmanship, explains to the public who can and cannot be trusted, and demands that everyone follow his instructions – for their own safety. Then someone asks: Can you show me your master electrician's certificate?

Answer a: The documents are currently unavailable.
Answer b: The master's examination thesis is not archived anywhere and has not been published.
Answer c: Finally, a loose copy is pulled from the private shelf and it is explained that this should now clarify everything.

No reasonable person would allow this electrician to work on the electrical grid. For a structural engineer who calculates bridges, the same answer would lead to an immediate professional ban. With a tile setter, one would at least raise some eyebrows. But apparently, different standards apply to the chairwoman of the national ethics council, who influences the lives of millions.

The expert caste and their evidence
Buyx is not an isolated case – it is a symptom. The Corona years have produced and celebrated a caste of experts whose relationship to their own expertise was at least as flexible as their pronouncements on the effectiveness of measures.

There's the colleague who declared in 2020 that masks had either no or almost no evidence in the literature – and later proclaimed the exact opposite without so much as flinching. The same one who seriously argued that anyone who wants to train their immune system through infection must, logically, also believe they can train their digestion by eating a steak. A statement so absurd that any commentary only weakens it.

Or the virologist whose most famous contributions to the public debate included statements about aerosols spreading from toilets to upper floors. And politicians who spoke of 360-degree turns and pipes shooting into the air. This was the expert class, whom one had to trust unconditionally. Anyone who doubted was a conspiracy theorist. Anyone who asked questions was endangered.

The grotesque fall from grace
What elevates this case beyond normal academic irregularities is the dimension of self-promotion. Buyx did not work quietly in the background. She sought the stage, found the camera, and held the microphone – to explain to others who is honest and who is not, who takes responsibility and who shirks it, who respects science and who abuses it.

The fact that this particular person now has to explain why their foundational scientific works lack institutional recognition is of a quality for which German has no single word. English has the term "poetic justice." It hardly suffices.

The real problem isn't Buyx. The real problem is the system that produces such figures, elevates them, gives them airtime, and bestows them with authority – without ever questioning their mastery… until someone does.