Adil Najam
One of the earliest posts we did at ATP (27 June, 2006) was about our societal lack of intellectual morality and highlighted the case of some Punjab University Professors at the Centre for High Energy Physics (CHEP) who had been accused of plagiarism and were under investigation.
I have tried to keep an eye on the story and while some details trickle in the movement has been disturbingly slow and some of the new revelations are even more disturbing.
In September we heard that the cheating professors would be served a charge sheet by the University of the Punjab and the professors given 7 days to respond. In October a single line in a news item suggested this had happened. I was more curious, however, to find out what would happen to the professors as a result of this.
I am still not sure what the answer is, but as of August, at least one of them was given a plushy key job by being elevated to the Advance Studies and Research Board (ASRB) of the University!
What message is the university sending to its students and the world by appointing someone convicted of cheating - i.e., academic theft and deception - to something called the ‘Advance Studies and Research Board’? By the way, the job of this Board is to approve all PhD level theses! According to the news report:
According to PU Registrar Dr Naeem Khan, the accusations of plagiarism had nothing to do with the ASRB. He said: “We have inducted him as an experimental physicist in recognition of services rendered to the varsity as former head of the PhD programme.”
I am still wondering what was their ‘punishment’?
They are still listed - some with smiling photographs - on the University website. Does anyone know? Please tell.
Meanwhile, now there is news from the American Institute of Physics (AIP), which does seem to be doing something about this. According to the Daily Times (14 December, 2006):
The American Institute of Physics (AIP) has withdrawn research papers by six Punjab University (PU) teachers from its records after finding the exact details of the plagiarism they were accused of. The AIP had initially doubted chances of plagiarism by the six teachers from the PU Centre for High Energy Physics (CHEP) - Rashid Ahmed, Fazal-e-Aleem, Maqsood Ahmad, Haris Rashid, MA Saeed and Ayub Faridi) whose articles they had added to their records and their website.
The institute has now confirmed plagiarism by the teachers, individually elaborating the scale of plagiarism in each write-up. According to recent developments published on the AIP website, “Upon analysis of the article Computational Methods: Tool for Electronic Structure Analysis of Solids, the vast majority of the text can been attributed to nearly identical blocks of text in three sources that were not cited in the article and to a fourth source that was cited but to which inadequate attribution was given. The publisher, the American Institute of Physics, is thus issuing a retraction of this article.�
Official AIP documents further explain that PU teachers Rashid Ahmed, Maqsood Ahmed, MA Saeed and Fazal-e-Aleem claimed to be the author of the paper. The institute has said that it was 80 percent plagiarised while the details were basically stolen and combined from four other sources, which the institute has also cited in its documents. “Current Status of Exotic Hadrons�, which MA Saeed, Maqsood Ahmed and Fazal-e-Aleem claimed to have written, was stolen from three different sources and was 90 percent plagiarised, according to the AIP. The institute has cited the original sources of the article in their documents. The third article that the AIP has retracted was named “Paths of Elementary Particles on K-Surfaces� claimed by Muhammad Ayub Faridi, Haris Rashid and Fazal-e-Aleem. The institute has also cited the three original sources of the article from where the details were stolen and combined while concluding that 55 percent of the article was plagiarised.
To see the article retractions now on the AIP website go here, here and here.
Surprisingly, this new news report (14 December) ends by saying:
The Punjab University has also formed an investigation committee to probe the matter. The committee has not completed its investigation so far.
When will the investigation end. And how much proof do they need. I realize that some of the younger scholars listed here might just not have known, but the senior ones - especially the Director of the institute - had to; and if he did not, that is itself deplorable.
The irony of having so recently discussed the life, work and indignity inflicted on Dr. Abdus Salam and now finding most of the faculty of this center for high energy physics revealed as liars and cheats is not lost on us.
I had ended the original post by saying that “Plagiarism is a serious academic problem all over the world, including in the West. It is becoming particularly serious in Pakistan because:”
- the internet makes stealing easier; although, plagiarists beware, it also makes catching plagiarism earlier;
- newer and higher incentives to steal because the Higher Education Commission (HEC) rewards publication (thankfully, the HEC seems to be aware of this and has a ‘zero tolerance policy.’); and
- in at least some cases researchers may never have been taught how to distinguish right from wrong; the difference between research that builds on other’s ideas (by referencing) and plagiarism that steams from others (by taking credit for other’s ideas).
Even as, elsewhere on this blog, we quibble about whether ‘our’ univeristy was placed high enough in the HEC univeristy rankings or not, I am more worried about the overall state (i.e., lack) of intellectual morality in society.
Despite the excuses we make to ourselves as students or as scholars, there is no ambiguity at all about what plagiarism is. It is clear and simple. Taking someone else’s ideas and presenting them as if they were your own is not just wrong, its illegal. The rules of what is and is not plagiarism are straight-forward and known.
More and more, I also worry - like Darwaish who has been thinking about student cheating - that just like too many of us no longer consider rishwat (bribery) to be ‘real corruption’, too many of us also do not consider cheating and plagiarism to be crimes. Well, I have information for you. They are!
Dear Rana Eijaz
I wish you best in your mission of teaching.
But it is not a quetsion of “supposing” that this is right. National and intenrational committees have looked at the papers and they ARE plagiarized and stolen. There is NO QUESTION about it any longer. Please check the API site mentioned.
And, what does cheating by professors have anything to do with foreign qualified teachers supervising PhDs or not? How is that relevant. Or are you saying that if they do supervise more PhDs then it is OK to steal and cheat!!
Actually good professors anywhere in the world should NOT have too many PhD students. That woudl mean they cannot give them real attention. In Pakistan becasue professors get more money for having mroe PhD students now with HEC so some greedy professors get as many PhD students as they can - much mroe than they can handle - just as money making. This cannot be good for those students.
Well i try to read few of above mentioned write ups regarding plagiarism in pakistani universities. Gentlemen, lets suppose you all are right but the matter of the fact is that why most of the foreign qualified PHds of pakistan origin not ready to transform their knowledge to their students. Tell me how many teachers of Punjab University who were foreign qualified supervised phd theses. You may get very few examples. Dr. Hoodhbhai himself guilty of not supervising phd theses in pakistan. It is always very easy to create problems and make criticism but how many we have among us who are ready to be the part of solution. I am alhamdolillah doing PhD at the QAU Islamabad and alhamdolillah trying my best to transform my research skills to my M.Phil students honestly. I am sorry to say that big names in pakistan criticise too much to the young generation but having no way out for them. But i am with this mission teaching in the Punjab University that i will impart in an honest way and will teach my students all that i know. May Allah bless us all and give us courage to transform our knowledge to others. Ameen.
Okay, I hate to say this…but I know a lot of people writing/reading this blog are themselves either in academia or are gearing up to go into academia. One of the biggest problems is that most of our highly educated people choose not to stay in Pakistan….and that probably contributes to the hiring of cheaters, etc.
Dr. Pervez Hoodbhoy just alerted me to a letter he had written to Dawn on this subject in August. It is worth posting it here:
As someone who has just enrolled in a post graduate program in a private university, I have been shocked to realize how much academic dishonesty exists… including our own professors who plagiarism aside have even published students’ dissertations and thesis under their own names.. What moral worth do these actions have and just how worthy will be doctorate programs that function under the umbrella of such unethical practices? Excellent article at your end!
Professor Adil Najam, you have done a great job and a favor to the cause of education and constructive thinking, by exposing the Punjab University. I opted to go back to Pakistan (from US) in 1978 and joined the Punjab University as a lecturer. Two years back I got an early retirement, where I was the Professor and Chairman of a Department. After serving PU for nearly three decades, I can say that for last 8 years, when a military general became the Vice Chancellor (with no academic qualifications – he is just F.A.) the University has gone from bad to worse.
With the arrival of billions of dollars from international agencies, including the United States, for the improvement of higher education (the world thinks that we are producing more terrorists because we lack scholars with higher degrees), the army generals rushed to occupy positions of authority in the education sector (The Federal Minister of Education is a retired general and so are the heads of many education related institutions – from PU to the administrative staff college in Lahore). These people are there only for elevated perks and huge salaries.
Because of that newly arrived wealth, suddenly there is a great demand to do Ph.Ds and to go for the published material. Let me stress that this is only for monetary benefits, and not for any mission, creativity or commitment. A research culture just does not exist in Punjab University.
The Vice chancellor of the PU has a mindset. He thinks that by producing more Ph.Ds and “research papers� his University (actually his personal status as an administrator) would be elevated. In such an atmosphere, a “great race� began to publish, i.e., not because of the interest or the mission/ commitment. The end result is that through quick fixes, short cuts and what ever measures available; teachers rushed to register in the Ph.D. programs, while others struggled to publish, either through hook or crook. Just wait, it’s not only cheating (plagiarism) at the publication level, it is very much there in the Ph.D./M.Phil, thesis writing as well.
As a Chairman, a number of times, I brought to the attention of the University administration, some glaring cases of plagiarism by the teachers of my department and provided documentary evidence as well. My complaints were ignored and I was in fact told by one of the higher ups that “we desire to be graded higher, through these degrees and publications, no matter by which means.� The present head of the department, who is assistant professor, was able to obtain her Ph.D. degree, through plagiarism. A shocking fact is that she was not even registered in the relevant department. While her colleague (who is registered with her as a Ph.D. candidate) has stolen my synopsize, for her research. In spite of my complaints, written and verbal, she continues to carry on her so called research based on my hard work and creative writing. Soon in the future she will receive her plagiarized Ph.D. and on that basis she will also become a head of the department. This will generate a spiral effect thus producing half educated generations for the future. These future teachers with “fake and phony� Ph.Ds are going to produce sub standard prototypes and so the ball will roll in the wrong direction. A recipe of disaster is already being laid.
Let me be honest with you Professor Sahib, nothing would happen, no matter how hard all of us try to expose these crimes. The whole strata at the national level need to change. The Universities are part of a society and that society is unfortunately polluted by plunder, cheating, shortcuts and lack of commitment.
That does not mean that you should be discouraged to carry on with such good projections. People do read and listen, let us hope that they grow in number.
By the way, one should also acknowledge this is a problem around the world, and not just developing countries. For example,
In India Vice Chancellor of Kamaon Univ was found to be plagiarising and, I think, later resigned. here
In China, it is supposed to be all over here
In USA, students have been discharged from Univeristy, Harvard refused admission to a student whose newspaper columns had plagiarised, and scandals regularly break out about professors and journalists plagiarising. here
This does not mean that because it is everywhere it is OK. It means we have to do something about this and if we don’t do anything then we send wrong signal to our own students and teachers but also to the rest of the world about our national morals.
I agree with Eidee Man that scholarship has to be based on trust, if we have to police everything and everyone then it defeats the goal of education.
The better approach, I think is to make clear what the rule is, let honour code work for professors and students, but be VERY FIRM in implementing the rule. If someone breaks it then they HAVE TO PAY THE PRICE. The sad thing here is that there seems to be no price to pay. That will send signal to professors and students that this is OK to do.