This may be an urban legend, but it's true as far as I know.
During R. L. Moore's reign at University of Texas, sometimes a grad student would be awarded a PhD for work that was original for the student even if it had been done before.
Moore insisted that students reproduce everything from scratch (though guided with Socratic questions). This produced outstanding students, at first. But it got to be a tragedy by the time Moore was put out to pasture. The gap between what students graduated knowing and the vanguard of research became insurmountable.
This was before my time, but I did speak to someone who said that he recused himself from a PhD committee shortly after coming to UT because he could not sign off on a dissertation whose results he knew were not original.
