Scientific plagiarism in India
Encyclopedia
Academic plagiarism is rising in India. A lack of oversight and a lack of proper training for scientists have created the rise of plagiarism and research misconduct in India
. India does not have a statutory body to deal with scientific misconduct
in academia, like the Office of Research Integrity in the US
, 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 outcry 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. However, no fixed route has been prescribed to monitor such activities. This has led to calls for establishment of an independent ethics body.
is currently the president of the society while N. Raghuram of GGS Indraprastha University is the secretary.
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. 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 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. 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.
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. 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. 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.
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. 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. 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.
) 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. 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. This led to some heated debate between Indian Scientists with several viewpoints being presented.
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.
In November 2010, after an internal investigation by its ethics committee, the Indian Academy of Sciences
banned Gopal Kundu from participating in their activities for three years.
(SVU) is accused of plagiarizing more than 70 research papers published between 2004 and 2007. University Executive Council has banned him from undertaking examination work and research guidance. He has been debarred from securing further promotions and appointments to administrative positions.
, 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 12, 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, pp. 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 entitled, "Sensorless control of permanent magnet brushless dc motors" in Electrical Review (Volume 14, No 1, January 2007, Pages 10–14), which has been reported to have high similarity 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.
and Indira Gandhi Centre for Atomic Research (IGCAR) publishing an article in the Journal of Materials Science
. The article written by K. Muthukumar, 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 the professor is not capable of scientific activities. And also the Editorial of the journal found Prof Selladurai is the corresponding author because the paper uploaded his (university) computer IP address and the copyright form signed by him, the university found the student as a scapegoat for him (Prof. Selladurai).
. AMS has cautioned universities worldwide regarding this incidence. The papers reported to be plagiarised are 'The connectivity of squares of box graphs', 'On edge-connectivity of inserted graphs' and 'Factors of inserted graphs'. The reviews may be found in MathSciNet. The original work was carried out by T Zamfirescu's in 1970s. An investigation by Calcutta university found these to be true and the university is planning action against the concerned.
Prof. M.R. Adhikari for his part has shifted the entire blame on the research scholar Lakshmikanto Pramanik who had "used his name without consent". A reply to the editor of the South East Asian Bulletin of Mathematics (MR2400443) confirms this.
India
India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...
. India does not have a statutory body to deal with scientific misconduct
Scientific misconduct
Scientific misconduct is the violation of the standard codes of scholarly conduct and ethical behavior in professional scientific research. A Lancet review on Handling of Scientific Misconduct in Scandinavian countries provides the following sample definitions: *Danish definition: "Intention or...
in academia, like the Office of Research Integrity in the US
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
, 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 outcry 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. However, no fixed route has been prescribed to monitor such activities. This has led to calls for establishment of an independent ethics body.
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, KharagpurKharagpur
Kharagpur is an industrial city in India. It is located in the Midnapore West district of the state of West Bengal.Kharagpur was chosen as the location of the first campus of the prestigious Indian Institutes of Technology . The IITs are the premier technical education institutes in India and...
is currently the president of the society while N. Raghuram of GGS Indraprastha University is the secretary.
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. 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 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. 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.
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. However, the site was endorsed by over 40 Indian Physicists. In addition, seven Physicists including Nobel Laureate, S. Chu
Steven Chu
Steven Chu is an American physicist and the 12th United States Secretary of Energy. Chu is known for his research at Bell Labs in cooling and trapping of atoms with laser light, which won him the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1997, along with his scientific colleagues Claude Cohen-Tannoudji and...
, R. Laughlin
Robert B. Laughlin
Robert Betts Laughlin is a professor of Physics and Applied Physics at Stanford University. Along with Horst L. Störmer of Columbia University and Daniel C. Tsui of Princeton University, he was awarded a share of the 1998 Nobel Prize in physics for their explanation of the fractional quantum Hall...
and D. Osheroff
Douglas D. Osheroff
Douglas Dean Osheroff is an American physicist known for his work in experimental condensed matter physics, in particular for his co-discovery of superfluidity in Helium-3. For his contributions he shared the 1996 Nobel Prize in Physics along with David Lee and Robert C...
wrote to the president of India, APJ Abdul Kalam requesting an investigation in this matter. 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.
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. 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
Association of Indian Universities
Association of Indian Universities is an organisation based in Delhi India to evaluate the courses, syllabi, standard and credits of foreign Universities and to equate them in relation to various courses offered by 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. 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.
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 KunduGopal Kundu
Gopal Kundu is an Indian scientist. He obtained his Ph.D. from Bose Institute, Kolkata, India in protein biochemistry and did his post-doctoral research work at the Cleveland Clinic Foundation, University of Colorado, University of Wyoming, and the National Institutes of Health from 1989 to 1998...
) may have misrepresented data in a paper published in Journal of Biological Chemistry
Journal of Biological Chemistry
The Journal of Biological Chemistry is a weekly peer-reviewed scientific journal that was established in 1905. Since 1925 it is published by the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology. It covers research in any area of biochemistry or molecular biology. The editor-in-chief is...
. The allegation was that they had rehashed the same set of data which they had published earlier. 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. This led to some heated debate between Indian Scientists with several viewpoints being presented.
On 23 February 2007, the Journal of Biological Chemistry
Journal of Biological Chemistry
The Journal of Biological Chemistry is a weekly peer-reviewed scientific journal that was established in 1905. Since 1925 it is published by the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology. It covers research in any area of biochemistry or molecular biology. The editor-in-chief is...
withdrew the paper amid allegations of data manipulation. The authors still maintain that the two papers used different set of data though similar experiments.
In November 2010, after an internal investigation by its ethics committee, the Indian Academy of Sciences
Indian Academy of Sciences
The Indian Academy of Sciences, Bangalore was founded by Sir C. V. Raman, and was registered as a Society on 24 April 1934. Inaugurated on 31 July 1934, it began with 65 founding fellows. The first general meeting of Fellows, held on the same day, elected Professor Raman as President, and adopted...
banned Gopal Kundu from participating in their activities for three years.
Prof. P. Chiranjeevi controversy
Chemistry professor of Sri Venkateswara UniversitySri Venkateswara University
Sri Venkateswara University, Tirupati, is a state university, which was established in 1954, in the famous temple city of Tirupati, South India, under the auspices of Late Tanguturi Prakasam Pantulu, the chief minister of Andhra Pradesh, and with support of Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanams...
(SVU) is accused of plagiarizing more than 70 research papers published between 2004 and 2007. University Executive Council has banned him from undertaking examination work and research guidance. He has been debarred from securing further promotions and appointments to administrative positions.
Dr. Ram B. Singh controversy
A private practitioner based in Moradabad, Uttar Pradesh, India is suspected of research fraud.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, NERISTNERIST
North Eastern Regional Institute of Science and Technology is a science- and technology-oriented higher education institute in Nirjuli, Itanagar, in the Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh...
, 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 12, 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, pp. 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 entitled, "Sensorless control of permanent magnet brushless dc motors" in Electrical Review (Volume 14, No 1, January 2007, Pages 10–14), which has been reported to have high similarity 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.
Anna University controversy
In 2007, appeared another controversy, this time surrounding authors from Anna UniversityAnna University
Anna University was a premier technical university in Tamil Nadu, India. Anna University was formed on September 4, 1978, as a unitary university that integrated four technical institutions in the city of Chennai , including the College of Engineering, Guindy, Alagappa College of Technology,...
and Indira Gandhi Centre for Atomic Research (IGCAR) publishing an article in the Journal of Materials Science
Journal of Materials Science
Journal of Materials Science is a peer-reviewed, scientific journal dedicated to materials science. Founded in 1966 by Robert W. Cahn, the journal is published bi-monthly by Springer...
. The article written by K. Muthukumar, 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
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, usually referred to as PNAS, is the official journal of the United States National Academy of Sciences...
(PNAS) by David Andersson and others at the Royal Institute of Technology
Royal Institute of Technology
The Royal Institute of Technology is a university in Stockholm, Sweden. KTH was founded in 1827 as Sweden's first polytechnic and is one of Scandinavia's largest institutions of higher education in technology. KTH accounts for one-third of Sweden’s technical research and engineering education...
, 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 the professor is not capable of scientific activities. And also the Editorial of the journal found Prof Selladurai is the corresponding author because the paper uploaded his (university) computer IP address and the copyright form signed by him, the university found the student as a scapegoat for him (Prof. Selladurai).
Prof Ashok Pandey controversy
Ashok Pandey is a scientist of the National Institute for Interdisciplinary Science and Technology of India's Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR). He is the editor of several well known international journals in Biotechnology. He appears in the list of most cited authors and received the Thomson Scientific Citation Laureate Award 2006. His paper cited as K. Balakrishnan and A. Pandey (1996) Influence of amino acids on the synthesis of cyclosporin A by Tolypocladium inflatum. Appl Microbiol Biotechnol 45: 800-803 which was published as an original article in July 1996, was an extensively plagiarized version of J. Lee and S.N. Agathos (1989) Effect of amino acids on the production of cyclosporin A by Tolypocladium inflatum. Biotechnol Lett 11:77-82. This was pointed out by Agathos in his letter to the Editor of the journal. The Editor-in-Chief of the journal, Alexander Steinbüchel, confronted Ashok Pandey with the evidence and decided that "manuscripts from K. Balakrishnan and A. Pandey will no longer be considered for publication in this journal, and the Editors-in-Chief of other journals covering aspects of microbiology and /or biotechnology will be informed about this matter". Interestingly, Appl Microbiol Biotechnol journal has withdrawn the plagiarised article from its online archives, without posting any retraction notice !. Following the public exposure, CSIR had no option but to investigate Ashok Pandey for plagiarism and he was downgraded by CSIR. In 2004, CSIR quietly reappointed him to a higher position and even made him the editor of CSIR's own journal.Prof M.R. Adhikari and L.K. Pramanik controversy
A retired academic at Calcutta University, Mahimaranjan Adhikari and his Ph.d student L.K.Pramanik, have been found to be indulging in Plagiarism, courtesy the American Mathematical SocietyAmerican Mathematical Society
The American Mathematical Society is an association of professional mathematicians dedicated to the interests of mathematical research and scholarship, which it does with various publications and conferences as well as annual monetary awards and prizes to mathematicians.The society is one of the...
. AMS has cautioned universities worldwide regarding this incidence. The papers reported to be plagiarised are 'The connectivity of squares of box graphs', 'On edge-connectivity of inserted graphs' and 'Factors of inserted graphs'. The reviews may be found in MathSciNet. The original work was carried out by T Zamfirescu's in 1970s. An investigation by Calcutta university found these to be true and the university is planning action against the concerned.
Prof. M.R. Adhikari for his part has shifted the entire blame on the research scholar Lakshmikanto Pramanik who had "used his name without consent". A reply to the editor of the South East Asian Bulletin of Mathematics (MR2400443) confirms this.