Scientific plagiarism in India

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India does not have a statutory body to deal with scientific misconduct in academia, like the Office of Research Integrity in the USA and hence cases of plagiarism are often dealt in ad-hoc fashion with different routes being followed in different cases. In most cases, a public and media cry leads to an investigation either by institutional authorities or by independent enquiry committees. The authors responsible for plagiarism have been at the receiving end of some severe punishments including suspension, removal and demotion.[1] However, no fixed route has been prescribed to monitor such activities. This has led to calls for establishment of an independant ethics body.[2]

Contents

[edit] Society for Scientific Values

The Society for Scientific Values is an independent body of scientists with the goal of upholding ethics in the Indian Scientific community. In absence of a statutory body to investigate academic misconduct, the society has been acting as an independent watchdog over the years. The society has been active in recent past over several cases involving plagiarism. Prof. K.L. Chopra, ex-director of Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur is currently the president of the society while N. Raghuram of GGS Indraprastha University is the secretary.[3]

[edit] Some instances

[edit] Prof. B.S. Rajput controversy

The most high profile and widely publicised controversy in India has been that of Prof. B. S. Rajput and colleagues in the field of Theoretical Physics.

Prof. B.S. Rajput was the vice-chancellor of Kumaon University, India in 2002 when various physicists in India started a website alleging that some of his papers claimed authorship of work, reported earlier by other researchers[4]. The principal allegation was that a paper published by S.C. Joshi and B.S. Rajput entitled "Axion-dilaton black holes with SL(2,Z) symmetry through APT-FGP model" in the Europhysics Letters, Vol. 57 No. 5, was entirely copied from a six year old paper by Renata Kallosh of Stanford in Physical Review D, Vol 54, No. 8 [5]. However, the campaign very soon included three other papers by Prof. Rajput and colleagues as plagiarised papers. One of these papers "BPS Spectra of Dyons in Four-Dimensional N = 2 Supersymmetric Theories" was later recalled by the journal, Progress in Theoretical Physics[6].

On publication of the site, Prof. Rajput threatened to take legal action against the website, maintaining that the paper was written by Mr. Joshi, one of his student without prior approval from him[7]. However, the site was endorsed by over 40 Indian Physicists. In addition, seven Physicists including Nobel Laureate, S. Chu, R. Laughlin and D. Osheroff wrote to the president of India, APJ Abdul Kalam requesting an investigation in this matter.[8]. The situation became murkier when Prof Kavita Pandey, head of the Physics department at Kumaon University claimed that she was suspended by the university as she brought this issue to the public[9].

In midst of all this blame game, the president of India asked the Governor of Uttaranchal who was also the chancellor of the Kumaon University to institute an enquiry to investigate the case[10]. The committee led by a retired judge of Allahabad high court Justice S.R. Singh consisted of Prof K.B. Powar, former chief of the Association of Indian Universities, New Delhi, Prof Indira Nath, former secretary of the Society of Scientific Values and AIIMS faculty member and physicist Prof R. Rajaraman of JNU. The committee presented its report in February 2003 upholding the plagiarism charges[11]. Prof. Rajput maintained that he has personally done no harm and it was his students fault. However, he resigned from Vice-chancellorship immediately after the report. [12]

[edit] Gopal Kundu controversy

A controversy erupted in National Centre for Cell Science (NCCS), Pune in 2006 when an anonymous mail alleged that the authors (H. Rangaswami and Colleagues from the group of Dr. Gopal Kundu) may have misrepresented data in a paper published in Journal of Biological Chemistry. The allegation was that they had rehashed the same set of data which they had published earlier[13][14]. An internal committee of the NCCS advised the authors to take back their paper, however an independent committee led by G. Padmanabhan, a former director of Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, concluded that there was no manipulation in the data[15]. This led to some heated debate between Indian Scientists with several viewpoints being presented[16] [17]. On 23 February 2007, the Journal of Biological Chemistry withdrew the paper amid allegations of data manipulation. The authors still maintain that the two papers used different set of data though similar experiments. [18]

[edit] Prof. K. Kumar controversy

In yet another high profile case involving a vice-chancellor of an Indian technical university, a web campaign, similar to the campaign started by physicists in India, reported plagiarism in papers published by Prof. Kalyan Kumar and colleagues at North Eastern Regional Institute of Science and Technology, NERIST, India. Three papers have been reported to have similarity to works reported earlier. Two of these, "Improved PID controller using fuzzy precompensated algorithm for PMBLDC motor drive" (AMSE Advances in Modelling and Analysis C, Volume 61, number 1-2, January 2006, Page (s) 1-15) and "Optimum PI controller for Permanent Magnet Brushless DC Motor" (Electrical Review, Volume XII, No 6, June 2005, Pages 16 -23) have been shown to be very similar to earlier papers by Bhim Singh, AHN Reddy and SS Murthy of Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi. The papers of Singh, Reddy and Murthy, viz "Hybrid fuzzy logic proportional plus conventional integral-derivative controller for permanent magnet brushless DC motor" (IEEE International Conference on Industrial Technology 2000 Volume 2, 19-22 January 2000 Page(s): 185 - 191) and "Gain Scheduling Control of Permanent Magnet Brushless dc Motor" (Journal of Institution of Engineers : India EL, Vol 84, September 2003 ) predate the papers of Kumar and Singh by five years.

In yet another controversy, the same group of authors have claimed to publish a paper entitles, "Sensorless control of permanent magnet brushless dc motors" in Electrical Review (Volume XIV, No 1, January 2007, Pages 10-14), which has been reported to have high similaity to a thirteen year old paper entitled "Sensorless control of permanent magnet AC motors" by K. Rajshekara and A.Kawamura from EPS Anderson and Yokohama University, published in Proceedings of the 20th International Conference on Industrial Electronics, Control and Instrumentation, 1994. IECON'94, Bologna, Italy, Volume 3, September 1994, Page(s): 1589 - 1594.[19] [20]

[edit] Anna University controversy

In 2007, appeared another controversy, this time surrounding authors from Anna University and Indira Gandhi Centre for Atomic Research (IGCAR) publishing an article in the Journal of Materials Science. The article written by K. Muthukkumar, T. Mathews, S. Selladurai and R. Bokalawela was reported to be a reproduction of an article published earlier in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) by David Andersson and others at the Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden. In a correction published online, the journal reported that the article 'does not just plagiarize the results presented in the PNAS paper but actually copies most of it word for word'. The journal had started an investigation and is also working with officials at the two institutions. The three authors other than the first author have distanced themselves from the paper and the first author has accepted his mistake. In the meanwhile, the Anna University had barred Dr. Selladurai from guiding any more doctoral students. And also added each and everyone is suspected Dr.Selladurai putting blame on his student, because he is not capable for scientific activities. Many of them pointing even though he is professor of the Anna University, but his communication in English is very poor.

[edit] Prof Adhikary at Calcutta University

A retired academic at Calcutta University, Mahimaranjan Adhikary, has been found to be indulging in Plagiarism, courtesy the American Mathematical Society. AMS has cautioned universities worldwide regarding this incidence. The papers reported to be plagiaried are 'The connectivity of squares of box graphs', 'On edge-connectivity of inserted graphs' and 'Factors of inserted graphs', published journals like MathSciNet. The original work was carried out by T Zamfirescu's papers in 1970s. An investigation by Calcutta university found these to be true and the university is planning action against the concerned. [21]

[edit] See also

[edit] References

  1. ^ YP GUPTA. INTELLECTUAL FRAUD:Punishment For Plagiarised Research Must Be Severe. The Statesman.
  2. ^ TV Padma (February 27 2007). India 'needs independent ethics body' says watchdog. SciDev.net.
  3. ^ Society For Scientific Values - Homepage
  4. ^ Physics Plagiarism Alert
  5. ^ The physics of plagiarism. The Frontline (November 8 2002).
  6. ^ 843-858
  7. ^ N. Gopal Raj (September 27 2002). Plagiarism scandal brewing. The Hindu.
  8. ^ http://www.stanford.edu/dept/physics/publications/PDFfiles/india.pdf
  9. ^ SMA Kazmi (October 5 2002). Kumaon prof says she blew plagiarism whistle on V-C, so he suspended her. The Indian Express.
  10. ^ Probe into plagiarism charge. The Frontline (November 8 2002).
  11. ^ P. Bagla (February 4 2003). Probe panel upholds plagiarism charges against Kumaon V-C. The Indian Express.
  12. ^ Kumaon University V-C resigns. The Hindu (February 7 2003).
  13. ^ Now, Pune scientists face allegations of plagiarism. Yahoo India (March 10 2007).
  14. ^ Kundu-JBC Case. Society for Scientific Values.
  15. ^ G.S. MUDUR (March 6 2007). Indicted there, acquitted here. The Telegraph, Calcutta.
  16. ^ Investigating Misconduct in Science. Current Science (Vol 92, No.11).
  17. ^ The NCCS Case. Current Science (Vol 92, No.11).
  18. ^ Hema Rangaswami (September 12 2007). ‘Coping with misconduct in Indian science’: a response. The Hindu.
  19. ^ Plagiarism Alert.
  20. ^ AAPSU demands ouster of NERIST Director.
  21. ^ CU maths prof branded plagiarist. Times of India.