I agree. Say nothing but never attempt to get it published and never do anything like that again!

Are we talking here about the intentional act of falsifying data only? Or also about the unintentional plagiarism? Also and in worst case scenario, do you think that the consequences of such acts of mine (both the intentional and the unintentional one) would go as far as revoking my degrees?

You need to read your University's Code of Conduct to find out what the consequences would be.

Both. I know some academics in Germany have had their PhDs revoked for plagiarism as you have described but that is because they are high profile. It doesn't matter for you. Of course, there's always the risk that at some point in the future if you became a high profile academic and someone investigated your work the degrees would be revoked, but this is very unlikely.

If it helps, pretty much all the international PhD students I know weren't aware of the plagiarism rules and thought what you were describing was ok. I'm sure their masters theses were plagiarised in this way too. Plus, on this basis, I expect many students at your university plagiarised, what are they going to do, revoke all their degrees too? And I've seen a recent article saying something about undergraduate plagiarism being very common when it comes to data collection, so I really wouldn't worry too much. Just don't repeat the mistake.

I don't want to dispute this - but how can making up data and copying and pasting someone else's words ever be thought of as OK?!

They told me they were never taught any differently. They were shocked when I told them how they had to write their literature review from scratch. Previously they just cut and pasted whole paragraphs from other papers (references included) with no attempt at modification at all.

Wow, I am shocked... Sounds more like a collage than a piece of academic writing!

In fact, even at primary school we knew we were not allowed to just copy a book word for word!

Yep, it's no wonder so many international students struggle!

Definitely. I am not using this as an excuse though. Yesterday, I checked some old files and lectures of the course which was supposed to teach us the methodology of research. I discovered that, apart from being totally in Arabic, most of the stuff we learned were only meant to be memorized as, except for a small project, we never got to practice them. Yes, they tell us that we have to organize the ideas in a readable way (they probably meant paraphrasing but hey, how could I predict that 5 years ago?), they tell us about secondary vs primary sources, but hey, without practice, how could we differentiate during an actual research? As for that small project, we never got to hear any feedback, it was only delivered, graded, had the exam and that's it.

I think you should go for consultation.

Sorry but I object to the 'international students' labelled as one. The world is a big place, you know?

Is that not the collective name for students from outside of the UK who study in the UK? Would you prefer it if I said "No wonder students from Brazil, Iran, Zambia, Thailand, India and Indonesia struggle", because that's some of the diverse countries I'm talking about?