Via Proses Anonymitus and Gautam's comment on Rahul's post, we get this IANS news item at Yahoo! News (it was carried by Sify News too).
Here's how the Anna University has handled this case:
'I am extremely sad that my faculty is involved in this sordid affair,' P.K. Palanisamy, head of physics department at Anna University, told IANS, adding that it was the first time such an incident had happened in his university.
He said that after an internal inquiry, the university has barred Selladurai from guiding any more doctoral students.
This action has been taken even though Selladurai (the corresponding author) tried to wiggle out of the paper:
In email interviews, Mathews and Selladurai told IANS their names were added 'without their knowledge or concurrence' by K. Muthukkumar, the paper's first author and a PhD student of Selladurai.
The student, Muthukkumaran, is clear about what's happening:
He says he committed the 'mistake' of sending to JMS the manuscript written by a ghost writer without realising that the writer had simply copied the PNAS paper. But he believes he was made a scapegoat in the entire affair and added that his mouth was sealed because he was a student. [Bold emphasis added]
4 Comments:
MHRD = Ministry for Human Resources Destruction, isn't it?
oops. please delete the above comment. was meant for the blog above.
-- same anon
what is the role of a ghost writer? I have heard that in countries like china and japan they hire ghost wziters since they have a problem with the english language. These ghost writers may or may not be authors in the paper. That said, why should Muthukumaran hire a ghost writer?
If you look up the 4th author on Web of Knowledge, he has 5 papers! his first is the aforementioned robbed paper! his second and 4th are identical and submitted to the same journal! He is obviously a chancer!
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