Sunday, December 11, 2011

Dr. S.R. Valluri on "Instant Excellence and Achievement"


An Indian 'experiment' from the 1990s is worth recalling for its resemblance to the shenanigans of a few Saudi universities. It is all the more remarkable since the institution that tried the experiment is now one of the top institutions in India.

The scientist who broke this story is Dr. S.R. Valluri, former director of the National Aerospace Laboratories, Bangalore. In an op-ed in The Hindu (dated 2 November 1995) entitled Whither Ethics in Science, Valluri questioned the ethics of various actions of the Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research (JNCASR), Bangalore. [I can't provide a direct link since The Hindu archives don't go so far back.] The op-ed criticized JNCASR (and its leadership) on several counts, but here are the parts that are relevant to the issue at hand:

Were it not for the serious nature of the implications, one can only observe with amusement the efforts of the Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research (JNCASR) in Bangalore to project an image of instant excellence and achievement. The centre has been attempting to achieve this image of "making rapid strides" by identifying some scientists from other institutions as its honorary faculty, and including in its annual report (January '95) a list of their publications, without mentioning there itself, their places of full time employment and where the work was actually done, thus making them appear as if they are the centre's own achievements.

It is tantamount to a whole scientific institution being less than truthful in matters of science.[...] [T]his practice violates the very ethics and culture of science. ... By this practice the centre's own credentials have come under a cloud.

... One ... wonders how the scientists concerned could have countenanced the omission, in the listings in the centre's report, of their affiliations with their own parent organizations which have been nurturing them. This denial of the credit by the centre is less than fair.

To give them benefit of the doubt, we have to assume that the scientists concerned acquiesced without examining its implications. Such things are happening as the senior scientific community has not cared to give enough thought to evolving and putting into practice a self-regulating code of ethics for the practice, management and administration of science in India.

[Snip, snip, snip]

The JN Centre deserves all the financial support it needs for its full time staff to work inhouse purposefully. But flaunting borrowed finery and basking in reflected glory has unfortunate implications for the cause of science and even for their own image considering the reputation of the scientists who are associated with the centre. [...]

The op-ed goes into some detail about some of the other actions by JNCASR, which, as I said, need not concern us now. It drew a response from the late Prof. Raja Ramanna; since I have not read that letter, I'm not quite sure why he chose to get involved. But Valluri got a chance to reiterate his points in a follow-up letter (published in The Hindu on 28 November 1995). Here's the relevant part of his rebuttal:

... I stand by what I have said in my article. ... The clarifications given by Dr. Ramanna are extraneous to the points I have raised in my article.

I have specifically raised three questions in my article. One is directly concerned with ethics in science. In instances I am personally aware, the honorary faculty [at JNCASR] did mention their places of full time employment and did indicate their honorary association with the JNCASR, and did acknowledge the financial support that they received from it. the JNCASR, however, deleted all reference to the place of full time affiliation of its honorary faculty, while taking credit for their research by listing their publications in its Jan '95 annual report (pages 38 to 56). It could have been considered accidental and not taken seriously if it happened once or twice. But that it was deliberate is indicated by the fact that about 200 listings or more belong to this category. It even took credit for the work of at least one honorary fellow who did not receive any support and who did his work entirely in some other organization. By such a practice, while the JNCASR takes credit for such research, it implicitly denies the same to the parent institutions which have been really nurturing the honorary faculty, while they may have received some financial support from the JNCASR also. In matters of science, such practices are unethical, as credits in progress of science are built on historical records. If everybody indulges in this practice, chaos will result.

In both his original article and in his rebuttal to Ramanna's response, Valluri does not mention the name of the the man at the helm of JNCASR at that time: Prof. C.N.R. Rao. It was clear, however, that Valluri placed the responsibility for the ethical violations on JNCASR's leadership. When Prof. Rao's autobiographical memoirs -- Climbing the Limitless Ladder: A Life in Chemistry -- were published sometime ago, I was curious to see how he dealt with this dark episode in his career as a top scientific administrator. This is what I found on p. 92:

One or two scientists made personal attacks on me at that time ... Another criticism was that in one of the early reports of the Centre, the Academic Coordinator had also included the publications of some of the honorary professors. No one expects a new centre to become famous from papers of others, but the criticism was that the Centre was using the reputation of others to become famous instantaneously. All this was far from the truth. ... Fortunately for me, all my colleagues including Raja Ramanna came to my defence at that time. I also made sure that subsequent reports of the Centre did not list papers of honorary professors even if their research was supported by JNCASR.

I'll just state that Rao appears to have misread Valluri's critique as a "personal attack." Valluri was careful to point to specific acts of "omission and commission" with a view to forcing a course correction. That his criticism was right -- and stingingly so -- is proven beyond doubt by the fact that Rao "made sure that subsequent reports of the Centre did not list papers of honorary professors."

* * *

All in all, this unholy experiment offers an excellent test to check if an institutional policy / action is right. The leader just has to ask, "Would it survive if Dr. Valluri decides to write an op-ed about it?"

10 Comments:

  1. Ankur Kulkarni said...

    Broadly speaking establishing credit for research is a tricky matter because of the slow timescales of research. I think it is best done voluntarily by the author in the paper.

    But in the JNCASR case, the disambiguation is pretty easy. For the scientists that moved, publications fall under three categories - published before, after and in same year the year transfer. It is only the third category that is a grey area. If the first category was also included, that is more of an accounting fraud than academic fraud and can be easily caught. The third category has some fodder for scam, but if both institutions stake claim for those papers, that should be good enough to neutralise the efforts of the latter. If the other institution had shown the same competitiveness that JNCASR showed, it would have solved the problem.

  2. truti said...

    CNR Rao is being polite. Although he doesn't say it is clear that the attack is motivated by personal reasons. It does not need charity to conclude that it was a matter of oversight on the part of JNCASR. I would ask, "what else has CNR or JNCASR been accused of?" and "What else have they achieved?" If there are other grounds to suspect their science as it happens in the case of typical cases of misconduct in academic research, or if the Jncasr's scientists (the few that were primarily affiliated at the time of Valluri's letter to TH) had nothing to show in comparison with the secondarily affiliated scientists whose research Jncasr claimed for itself, Valluri's questions would have to be taken seriously. That nothing has emerged since Valluri's letter in the '90s is evidence enough that charges of ethical lapses on Jncasr's part cannot stand scrutiny.

  3. cipher said...

    Did no one else notice the missing n in the title, or is that misspelled on purpose?

  4. Abi said...

    @cipher: Thanks for pointing out the error. It's fixed now.

    @Ankur: The authors whose papers were the subject of Valluri's op-ed were only 'honorary' faculty at JNCASR which, IIRC, didn't have a fully functioning campus at the time of Valluri's op-ed; their full time positions were with other institutions. Further, their papers also clearly mentioned their parent institutions as their affiliation. It was only in JNCASR's Academic Report that their papers were listed without the additional info about their real, full-time affiliation -- thereby giving the impression that those papers came out of JNCASR. This is what Valluri criticized in his op-ed.

    @truti: You said, "CNR Rao is being polite. Although he doesn't say it is clear that the attack is motivated by personal reasons." If it is so clear, perhaps you could say some more about those 'personal reasons'?

    That JNCASR is now a top institution is acknowledged right at the top of my post, thank you. While its achievements after Valluri's op-ed are great and awesome, aren't they -- kind-of-sort-of, just may be -- irrelevant to a discussion of specific choices made by JNCASR before the op-ed?

  5. truti said...

    TAB,
    The listing of the publications of its secondary faculty by Jncasr played no role in the institution's rise. It has not deterred scholars or other institutions from associating with Jncasr. Have CNR or any of his collaborators at Jncasr ever been caught adding publications to their portfolio? Did Jncasr do nothing else than pad its publication portfolio, before Valluri's OpEd? You cant possibly be saying that Jncasr padded its publications before Valluri's OpEd and then stung by it, decided to go clean and hired topnotch faculty and pursued an independent line of research. Jncasr and CNR cant have come all the way here, if they began with such a petty vision. To find Jncasr in violation of ethics, requires some guess of intent. Since this practice did not persist thanks to possibly thanks to CNR's personal intervention, it is reasonable to grant Jncasr the benefit of doubt. So that leaves personal issues as the only reason for such an OpEd. I would ask you to imagine what must have passed on among the members of Bangalore's scientific community at this time. Valluri and CNR weren't on such bitter terms that they could not have talked about this. Let's leave aside the matter of Jncasr setting up its own applied mechanics/aerodynamics group instead of deferring to NAL, which Valluri nurtured. This is the point where the fault lines among India'sscientific community begin to emerge. But that's for another day.

  6. Ankur Kulkarni said...

    @Abi Ok, I wasn't precise in pointing out what my objection was to. I was objecting to Valluri's analysis. He says

    "Such things are happening as the senior scientific community has not cared to give enough thought to evolving and putting into practice a self-regulating code of ethics for the practice, management and administration of science in India. [...]

    By such a practice, while the JNCASR takes credit for such research, it implicitly denies the same to the parent institutions which have been really nurturing the honorary faculty, while they may have received some financial support from the JNCASR also. In matters of science, such practices are unethical, as credits in progress of science are built on historical records. If everybody indulges in this practice, chaos will result."

    My point is a code, while good to have, may not be all that necessary. Secondly, why is the other institution mutely watching while JNCASR does this even while it is being "implicitly denie[d]" the credit for "really nurturing the honorary faculty"? JNCASR is stealing fruits from his neighbour's garden, but it is doing so and dares to do so, not because there is no policeman, but because the neighbour doesn't seem to care. A bit of aggression on the part of parent institutions and other institutions in guarding faculty and their achievements would have been a good deterrent for JNCASR.

  7. S said...

    > I also made sure that subsequent reports of the Centre did not list papers of honorary professors even if their research was supported by JNCASR.

    The last part of the above sentence is telling. Apparently, C.N.Rao still felt that he had a moral case for including the papers of honorary professors in his institution's reports, since "their research was supported by JNCASR", even though they had a different home institution.

    This whole practice of honorary faculty stinks.

  8. Abi said...

    @truti: You said, " ... You cant possibly be saying that Jncasr padded its publications before Valluri's OpEd and then stung by it, decided to go clean and hired topnotch faculty and pursued an independent line of research. [...]"

    That's very perceptive. Do ask around; you might be surprised by what you hear ...

    You also said, "To find Jncasr in violation of ethics, requires some guess of intent."

    You may be stuck up on intent, but proof of an ethical violation doesn't require any proof of intent.

    @Ankur: An aggressive stance by the parent institutions might be useful, but I don't see how that matters here. A daylight robbery doesn't stop being one just because no one raises hell.

    As for Valluri's point about a self-regulating code of ethics, I think his lament was about reputed scientists doing shady stuff (or, going along with shady stuff) without thinking through the ethical implications of their actions. At another point in the op-ed, Valluri says, ".. Bad precedents that may be set by them even inadvertently form worse guidelines for others to follow."

    @S: As a friend once pointed out, there are honorary faculty, and then there are honorary faculty with benefits!

  9. truti said...

    Dr.Abinandanan,
    This is your blog. I disagree though with you. But you shall have the last word.

  10. gaddeswarup said...

    Just a doubt. Is this one of those institutes that have come up to accommodate retired and/or retiring scientists? I have this impression, which may be wrong, about some institutes that came up later.