Dutch Council of State annuls master's student's thesis fraud sanction, finding an AI tool had garbled his own reference list

The sanction. The student followed a master's thesis course at the University of Groningen. The examiner suspected fraud because the submitted thesis contained a large number of non-existent references. On 25 September 2025 the exam board of the Faculty of Economics and Business declared all work he had made or submitted for the course invalid, excluded him from the course for one year and told him he no longer qualified for a cum laude judgment. The board concluded that the reference list contained non-existent references and that it was part of the thesis.

The appeal within the university. On 31 March 2026 the university's examination appeals board (CBE) dismissed his administrative appeal. It noted that he had admitted including certain non-existent sources in his reference list, held that the main text also cited non-existent sources, and said the error had not arisen at the last moment when he wanted to tidy his reference list with ChatGPT, because two submitted versions both contained non-existent sources.

The student's account. Before the Council of State the student argued that the wrong references were carelessness. He said he had only used an AI tool to categorise sources, with his existing reference list as input, and disputed that the main text cited non-existent sources.

The ruling. The Council of State found that eight of the eleven short references in the main text matched existing sources in an earlier version and a corrected list, and that it could find a matching scholarly article for each of the other three with a simple search. It held that the AI's evident garbling of his own reference list had prevented those references from being traced to the existing sources, that the wrong entries in later versions supported his account that he used AI to perfect his own list, and that he had given a plausible explanation the university bodies had not dealt with adequately. Only carelessness, not fraud, had been shown beyond reasonable doubt; the student himself accepted that he should not have made the error. The court annulled both decisions and ordered the thesis to be assessed again.

The exam board declared all the student's thesis-course work invalid for fraud, excluded him from the course for a year and removed his eligibility for cum laude over references that, according to the Council of State, an AI tool had garbled from his own list; the Council of State annulled the sanction on 12 August 2026.

An AI tool the student used to categorise his existing reference list returned a garbled list with non-existent references, according to the Council of State's findings; the exam board read those references as fraud and invalidated his thesis work, excluded him from the course for a year and removed his cum laude eligibility until the Council of State annulled the sanction.

The Administrative Jurisdiction Division of the Council of State (case 202601424/1/A2, ruling of 12 August 2026, ECLI:NL:RVS:2026:4744) upheld the appeal, annulled the examination appeals board's decision of 31 March 2026 and the exam board's fraud decision of 25 September 2025, ordered the thesis to be assessed again with the examiner left to decide what consequence the carelessness should have, ordered the exam board to reimburse EUR 1,332 in costs for the administrative appeal, and ordered the examination appeals board to reimburse EUR 1,868 in costs and the EUR 54 court fee for the appeal to the Council of State. The ruling was later published with an annotation in AB 2026/254. The thesis's eventual grade is not reported.