Submitting a scientific paper with plagiarized content can lead to some nasty consequences.
Thursday, June 07, 2007
Wednesday, June 06, 2007
Hefty price of outing scientific fraud
Janet Stemwedel has an excellent post about the huge price paid by graduate students have had to pay for outing their advisor's scientific fraud. The report underlying her post, unfortunately, is behind the paywalls of Science, but Janet's excerpts from the report, together with her commentary, make a gripping story -- though the ending is depressingly tragic.
[Sometime ago, the NYTimes did an extended story about a US researcher who was eventually convicted in a court of law and sent to jail; he was turned in by an undergraduate student researcher in his lab.]
* * *
Janet's post sent me in search of info on the biggest scandal to rock Indian science: the fraud perpetrated by the Punjab University paleontologist Vishwajit Gupta. The details of his case are recounted here and here. Though his fraud was proved beyond anyone's doubt, he managed to retain his professorship until he retired in 2004. The person who exposed Gupta's fraud is John Talent, an Australian. You can read his version of the events in the transcript of an ABC program (you will have to scroll down a bit). Here are some excerpts:
Robyn Williams: The accused is Dr V J Gupta, Professor of Geology at Punjab University. He is India’s most celebrated fossil scientist, for 25 years stunning the geological world with intriguing fossil finds that turned the accepted picture of the Himalayas on its head.
In 1989, writing in the British journal Nature, Talent accused Gupta of fraud. Talent’s claim is that Gupta’s fossils are spurious: either bought, stolen or received as gifts.
Sharon Carleton: Vishwa Jit Gupta was a shiny round-faced man with a penchant for big cigars and flamboyant coats with ermine collars. He travelled the world sharing the knowledge of his unique discoveries. It wasn’t until 1987, when Professor John Talent went to Paris, that he concluded that Gupta’s fraud was not just one or two papers – it was vast. With a few hours to kill before his flight back to Sydney, Professor Talent stopped by a local rock shop. There he found some interesting fossils from Morocco. He bought a handful and caught his flight.
Professor Talent remembered having seen photographs of these exact same fossils in a Gupta paper - except Gupta’s identical specimens were supposedly from the Himalayas, not Morocco. It was proof positive of fraud. Should the Australian out this Indian impostor? Professor John Talent.
John Talent: I wanted my Indian colleagues to do it. I’d started on a major project with colleagues at the Siberian branch of the Academy of Science in Novosibirsk, Siberia, looking at biogeography for a 100 million year time slice back in the deep past but we had this spurious data from Gupta. So I finally decided in the beginning of 1987 that something had to be put into print, preferably obscurely. I targeted a conference that was being held in Calgary and prepared a presentation there, which included material from Morocco and material that was in one of the plates in a paper by Gupta. And I was able to show these simultaneously on the screen, so the fossils in the two presentations looked exactly the same, and Gupta was in the front row. One of my colleagues jumped up and said: Well, how do you explain having exactly the same fossils in two localities 600 kilometres apart? Now if that isn’t a miracle I don’t know what is.
Gupta stormed out of the room and he came back waving his fists and obviously wanted to punch me up but the crowd, there were about 250 there, just closed in and he couldn’t get near me. He did this three times and then he demanded from the organisers a list of everyone that was at the meeting and he wanted a copy of my manuscript, but fortunately the director of the Senckenberg Museum in Frankfurt said, Do you want me to publish it? And I said, Yes. And somehow Nature got onto it and they commissioned a three-page paper from me commenting on the significance of this massive exercise in academic fraud. When I say massive, it was seven books and a total of 458 publications.
Some commentaries on Gupta's fraud may be found here and here.
* * *
A more recent case involved B.S. Rajput who was accused of plagiarism in 2002; at that time, he was the Vice-Chancellor of Kumaun University, Nainital. This time, Indian scientists were much better prepared; take a look at this archive! Their intense pressure forced Rajput to step down. The entire affair took about six months. During this time, Rajput even tried to punish Dr. Kavita Pandey, the then Head of the Physics Department at Kumaun, who played a key role in exposing this fraud. [It's not clear if her suspension was revoked by the later leadership at Kumaun; I couldn't find any news reports].
Need for a caste-based census
Gail Omvedt in the Hindustan Times several weeks ago:
There is possibly little change since the 1931 census, which gave extensive information about caste. However, there is need for investigation: have some OBCs really become ‘affluent’? Aside from a few of their members, this is doubtful. The very fact that these are mostly rural-based groups, and the rural economy is in recognised crisis, should indicate that the average has improved. There is no point, however, in endlessly arguing. We need the data.
How does one handle a caste-based census? There has been, again, a lot of talk about the complications of the matter. The solution is simple: let everyone self-identify his or her caste. Those who want can say ‘no caste’ (in fact, this itself would be an important data from the census). Those who are out of mixed marriages or confused about their caste in anyway can also say this. A panel of experts at the State level can then make broad classifications out of the responses. There is, in other words, no great dilemma about how to do it. It only takes social will.
S. Nagesh Kumar in the Hindu yesterday:
Although the idea may not suit the political considerations of several parties, a caste-wise census could go a long way in streamlining OBC reservation. In Andhra Pradesh, representations are pending from at least 17 castes, apart from Muslims, for inclusion in the list of OBCs. Representations seeking removal of three castes from the list as they are no longer backward are also pending disposal. The Andhra Pradesh Backward Classes Commission is wary of touching these issues without current, accurate, and reliable data on their socio-economic-educational profiles.
Nagesh Kumar discusses the case of Andhra Pradesh at length. His article is worth a read just for all the interesting details he reports. For example, the state's Backward Classes Commission ordered the "Socio-Educational Economic Survey of Castes & Communities of Andhra Pradesh (SEESCCAP)" in 1994; Nagesh Kumar reports:
While carefully sidestepping the temptation of drawing conclusions from the wealth of statistics he collected, Hanurav observed in the epilogue to his report: "There is definitely a case for changing the backwardness status of some of the castes, upwards in some cases and downwards in some."
In Contemporary India: A Sociological View (excerpted here), Satish Deshpande had this to say about the missed opportunity in 2001:
... [I]nfluential [Indian] sociologists have tended to run with the hare and hunt with the hounds on this issue. They have been the first to criticize the methods used and the macro-data produced to track caste inequality ... However, they have also been in the forefront of opposition to initiatives for the systematic collection of macro-level data on caste, even though they have not, by and large, shown any eagerness to suggest alternative methodologies for data collection.
In the early 1990s, for example, mauling the Mandal Commission's report for its weak database and questionable methodology had become something of a professional pastime for sociologists. But rarely were critics willing to specify what available datasets the Commission had failed to utilize, precisely how it could have improved upon its methodology, and, more generally, how it could have done a better job within the given constraints. And yet, a few years later, when the collection of caste data in the 2001 census was being mooted, the same voices were heard denouncing this proposal as not just impractical but pernicious. [...]
Tuesday, June 05, 2007
Vivek asks a good question
He asks a good question: In what way is JEE toppers being offered huge sums of money to appear in ads for coaching centres (which they didn't attend) different from Big Sports Stars's appearance in ads for products such as Boost? In a comment, he says:
I am quite sure that Boost wasn't the real secret behind the energy levels of Kapil and Sachin. Should they not advertise for Boost *after* achieving success (with high energy levels, of course) by whichever way (probably just balanced diet etc.) they did?
This is a good question. I'm not able to figure out the implications here, except to say that we should never trust a hospital or an educational institution that advertises [Batra clinic and IIPM come to mind immediately]. But coaching centres are not 'educational' institutions! Or, is it that while we all realize the corrupting influence of ads, there is still something icky about their playing with the minds of adolescents (and almost adults!)?
Clearly, food and food supplements are more basic and more important even than education. If we are willing to live with (possible) lies in ads for them [Sachin Tendulkar peddling Boost, Viswanathan Anand peddling "Memory Plus"], why should we complain about lies in ads for coaching centres?Monday, June 04, 2007
Links ...
Just some quick links.
- Zuska: Women don't ask. But they really, really need to.
- Ponderer: A novel method of ranking physics departments in the US. Check it out, it's pretty interesting.
- Assar Lindbeck: Sweden has had three models of economic development. There's some interesting economic history in there. [Link via Mark Thoma].
- Kerim Friedman: Corporal punishment in Taiwan.
- Finally, George Borjas: An economics lesson in a song by Billy Joel.
End Campus Casteism
There's a new blog called the War Against Casteist Oppression in Academics [Hat tip: Bhaskar]. It's more than an awareness-raising effort, it's a protest blog with an appropriately aggressive tone -- in the fine tradition of several others that I know of: Blank Noise Project, Stop Ragging and Atrocity News.
While its two posts (so far) mention AIIMS, the people behind the blog -- who identify themselves only as a group of students and professionals -- have clearly stated that it is meant for casteism in all Indian institutions.
If you are wondering if such an effort is needed, take a look at this and this.
Sunday, June 03, 2007
Sex and its analogues
This is from Robert Kaplan:
While I have to admit that I derive a certain amount of satisfaction from cataloging a book (or books, as is frequently the case), there is nevertheless something a little depressing about it as well. It is, perhaps, a little like sex: once it’s done, while one (hopefully) feels satisfied, it’s also tinged with a little sadness, as if one were sorry it was over.
I found this quote from Guru's post about A passion for books by Harold Rabinowitz and Rob Kaplan.
My previous post on sex and its analogues is here.
IISc Global Conference at Santa Clara, California
It's scheduled for 22-24 June 2007 (less than three weeks from now!). The Conference website is here. Here's the press release:
... Preparations have been underway for a number of months and the enthusiasm and anticipation amongst alumni is building with each passing day for this first ever event of its kind. This conference will be a platform for interactions between the Institute, alumni, industry and academia, in India and the US, to build long term partnerships that will take on the global challenges at hand in the 21st century. Participants will get to hear a video address by the President of India His Excellency Dr Abdul Kalam, Nobel Laureate and Venture Capitalist Arno Penzias, Applied Materials’ Chairman of the Board Mr James Morgan, CEO of TCS Mr S Ramadorai, Vice Chairman at Cognizant Technology Solutions Mr Lakshmi Narayanan, the Chancellor of the University of Berkeley Prof. Robert Birgeneau, and top officials from IISc itself such as the Director Prof Balaram and many senior faculty members.
US public universities build huge endowments
This news item (Hat tip: Pradeepkumar) is about the University of Illinois, which is in the middle of a campaign to raise $2.25 billion :
There are currently more than two dozen universities in the midst of campaigns of at least $1 billion, including the University of Chicago, which expects to conclude its $2 billion campaign by June 2008, a year later than originally anticipated. The University of Notre Dame recently announced a $1.5 billion effort.
Only four other public universities -- Michigan, UCLA, Virginia and Washington -- have completed or are in the middle of campaigns of more than $2 billion.
Across the Atlantic, the University of Cambridge has set itself an ambitious goal of raising £1 billion (about $2 billion) through "the Cambridge 800th Anniversary Campaign".
As I have noted earlier, the corpus funds of our universities are subject to a cap of Rs.50 crores (about 12 million dollars); for places like the IITs and IISc, the cap is Rs.100 crores (about 25 million dollars).
Corrupting young minds: Part II
It consumes its first institutional victim: The Super 30 institution in Bihar and its founders -- mathematician Anand Kumar, and IPS officer and physicist Abhayanand -- say that they are thinking about terminating this experiment.
In an emotional outburst on Saturday evening ... Kumar and Abhayanand announced the closure of the scheme.
They were upset over competing coaching institutes hijacking three of their successful students and introducing them as their own to the chief minister, Nitish Kumar, who felicitated the students here today.
This is sad. I hope the founders will reconsider their view and revive the Super 30.
Gujarat farmers: "Napsters of Biotechnology"
But it's what has happened after the ban on Navbharat151 that is really intriguing. As farmers are wont to do, they saved their seeds, and discovered that the second generation was also resistant to bollworm depredation. Some even experimented with interbreeding the Navbharat151 genetic line with other strains of cotton particularly suited to Gujarat conditions, and came up with new strains that proved effective. Local seed companies sprang up to commercialize the descendant breeds. And even though Mayhco-Monsanto has since been allowed to sell its own cotton seeds, the local bootlegged versions have proved more popular. And why not? According to reports, they're much cheaper, and, from the point of view of local farmers, perform as well or better than the "official" alternatives.
From this Andrew Leonard piece. Thanks to Swarup for the pointer.
Phrase of the day: Personal offshoring
When David San Filippo decided to create a tribute video in honor of his sister's wedding, he could have gotten a recommendation from a friend or looked up video editors in the phone book. Instead, he did what big corporations have been doing for more than a decade: sent the work offshore.
On the Internet, Mr. San Filippo located a graphic artist in Romania who agreed to do the whole thing for $59. The result was a splashy two-minute video with a space theme and "Star Wars" soundtrack. It won raves at the wedding.
From this fascinating article by Ellen Gamerman in WSJ. It's early days, but it points to some interesting entrepreneurial possibilities.
Here's an earlier post about a different kind of personal outsourcing.
Saturday, June 02, 2007
Blackberry for Bangalore's traffic cops!
Here's a nice pic from the Hindu's report:
A couple of interesting developments
A pan-South Asian university is to be located in Delhi. Akshaya Mukul of the ET reports that classes will start in 2009.
The HIndu quotes Prime Minister Manmohan Singh as saying that "every State will have a Central university and every district a degree college":
At present, there were 20 Central universities. While 16 States did not have a single Central university, some such as Delhi had four. In the 350 districts, where enrolment was below national average, it would be brought up to the national average. The degree colleges would have to be set up by the States, but the Centre would assist them through the UGC.
According to Dr. Singh, each central university should become a symbol of excellence, a model of efficiency and an example in terms of academic standards and university governance worthy of emulation by State universities.
All I would ask for is that these institutions be "Real Universities", that combine undergraduate and graduate teaching with research in multiple disciplines that include humanities, social and natural sciences.
Corrupting young minds with cash
Now, JEE toppers are getting offers of money to say they studied in this or that coaching institution. Can you guess how much is being offered? Prepare yourself for a big surprise!