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The American Institute of Physics (AIP) has withdrawn research papers by six Punjab University (PU) teachers from its records after finding the exact details of the plagiarism they were accused of.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!
However…
GCU Syndicate fails to probe against plagiarism
Lahore: The Government College University (GCU) Syndicate, held recently, did not start a probe into the case of a plagiarist despite chancellor’s directive in this regard.
In September 2007, Punjab Governor/Chancellor GCU Lt Gen (Retd) Khalid Maqbool took strict notice of plagiarism cases in public sector universities had referred back a case of plagiarism, committed by a senior faculty member of the GCU, to the varsity’s Syndicate.
In early 2007, the GCU Economics department Chairman Prof Dr Qais Aslam was found guilty of committing plagiarism. He had allegedly copied excerpts from the book of an Indian Nobel laureate AK Sen and the publications of the World Bank in one of his articles, which he authored.
You welcome
We had followed this story from the very beginning and as a reader just pointed out elsewhere, it has come to a belated conclusion. At least for now.
http://www.interface.edu.pk/students/Feb-08/PU-GCU -Plagiarism.asp
According to Dawn:
[blockquote]Five PU physicists shown the door: Plagiarism case
Lahore, Feb 23, 2008: Punjab Governor Khalid Maqbool has compulsorily retired the former director and four faculty members of the Centre for High Energy Physics, Punjab University, after a probe body found them guilty in the plagiarism case.
“The director and the four faculty members of CHEP have knowingly indulged in plagiarism”, the two-member inquiry Committee stated in its report to the governor.
The governor had initially constituted a three-member committee headed by Punjab Board of Revenue senior member Safdar Javed Syed which submitted that the case of deciding penalty should be referred back to the PU Syndicate or the governor should constitute another inquiry body headed by a BPS-22 officer.
Sources said the submission did not please the governor as the inquiry committee had just been tasked to rule on the alleged plagiarism. The governor then asked committee’s two members - University of Health Sciences vice-chancellor Prof Dr Malik Husain Mubbashar and PU School of Biological Sciences director Prof Dr Abdul Rauf Shakoori - to give a clear-cut assessment on the case (plagiarism) in question.
The wrongdoing by CHEP’s five faculty members surfaced in 2006 when the then PU faculty of science dean Prof Dr Mujahid Kamran, now PU vice-chancellor, filed a complaint that the CHEP faculty members had plagiarized international research papers.
When two different PU probe bodies confirmed the charges, the university syndicate decided in April last year that CHEP director Prof Dr Fazal-i-Aleem should relinquish the directorship of the centre while two annual increments each of assistant professor Maqsood Ahmad and lecturers Rasheed Ahmad, Sohail Afzal Tahir and M. Alam Saeed be withheld. The syndicate had also censured the accused teachers. Syndicate’s `mild punishment’ had drawn strong reaction from within the university and Higher Education Commission (HEC).
Stating that the punishments were not according to the gravity of the offence, the HEC kept pressing the Punjab University administration (led by VC Arshad Mahmood then) to fire the accused faculty members.
When the PU did not heed the advice, the HEC withheld varsity’s Rs139 million grant and, after sometime, sought governor/chancellor’s intervention for an appropriate decision. Consequently, the governor sought a detailed presentation from the university in May last year. [/blockquote]
This thing is becoming an epidemic. It seems that the incentives HEC had put in seem to have had the opposite effect… more plagiarism and academic fraud. This was in today’s Dawn:
ISLAMABAD, April 17: The Higher Education Commission (HEC) is finding it difficult in dealing with an “unprecedented� increase in the number of complaints, it is receiving against plagiarists, an official told Dawn.
At present, over 10 government-run higher education institutions of the country are in the grip of investigations, initiated by the HEC, against teachers allegedly involved in cheating of research work done by scholars elsewhere in the world.
“With every passing day, the number of e-mails we are receiving about the teachers who have copied other’s research work is on the rise and (this has) created a crisis like situation at the HEC,� the official said.
However, the HEC was actively forwarding these applications to the respective universities.
Given the fact that two universities �the Government College University and the Islamic International University (IIU)� had sacked teachers found guilty of plagiarism, teachers were providing information about their colleagues along with their research work based on cheating, the official said.
In response to a question, the official claimed that the HEC had stepped up its efforts to effectively curb the trend of plagiarism, which in the preceding months had challenged the HEC’s monitoring ability.
The HEC had already set up a separate department to deal with the issue of plagiarism, and increased the number of Quality Enhancement Cells (QECs) from the existing 10 to 30.
The HEC has a zero-tolerance policy towards plagiarism, and recommends the punishment of “removal from service� for those found guilty of plagiarism.
To another question, the official accepted that although it was each varsity’s internal affair, however, under its ordinance, the HEC had the responsibility of maintaining the standard of education throughout the country. The HEC is also a degree- recognizing authority and if satisfied, has the power to cancel a degree in any given case.
Currently, the HEC is in confrontation with the Punjab University because the varsity’s syndicate had recommended only mild punishments for the its five faculty members involved in plagiarism.
The HEC had stopped all kinds of funding to the PU, and in reaction, the varsity had approached the Council of Common Interest (CCI) against the freeze on its funding.
Hi,
I am student of MSc in UMT and want to express my opinion too.
I dont know, who r u people and what is ur objects. I just went through all the postings and found some surprising facts which are listed below;
1) Adil Najam wrote with reference to Hoodbhoy, on Dec 16th, 2006 at 11:43 am that five teachers of PU copied a article of some CERN Prof. I read the article and there were 4 authors of this article (it is a popular article not (as posed by so called Prof. Adil) a research discovery, and Prof. Aleem is not author of this article.
2) On the charges of plagiarism, a GC head of economics department was removed from chairmanship. U people and other called it a big penalty and in the case of PU, bigger than this penalty u people called nothing.
3) I want to ask prof. Adil, why he is only interested in PU case. Why u r keeping eye on this issue only? There are many other such issue (discussed in this web page and in newspapers too), but u concentrate on this only. I thing this is a clear case of deformation and u r taking revenge of some personal rivalry.
4) It is mentioned by some one that a lot of books has been copied by different big people of Pakistan but u r not keeping eye on such cases. Although, these people got financial benifits by writing these books.
5) Last but not least, u took the pictures of 3 teachers from CHEP, PU web page. This is copy right material. U stolen their pictures and comitted the same crime.
I am not sure that u will post my message but still I am giving my opinion.
—-Ahmed Raza
This just keeps getting more depressing… from Dawn today:
Plagiarism in academia HEC hesitant about acting against PU
ISLAMABAD, April 14: The Higher Education Commission (HEC) on Saturday reiterated that it would punish plagiarist teachers and the university which tolerates them but hesitated to do so in the case of Punjab University (PU).
A statement issued by the HEC after discussing the weak action taken by the PU against three plagiarists identified in its faculty said the Chancellor of PU, that is the Governor of Punjab, would be approached to take suo motu action.
Members of the HEC were called to discuss a response to the PU’s complaint to the Council of Common Interest that the HEC had frozen its funding to the university, the country’s oldest, over the plagiarism issue.
An official of the HEC told Dawn that instead of firing them the PU Syndicate let off the pla giarists lightly.
Prof Fazal-i-Aleem was removed as Director, Centre of High Energy Physics (CHEP) but was kept on the faculty, and lecturers Maqsood Ahmad, Rasheed Ahmad, Sohail Afzal Tahir and Alam Saeed were merely issued warnings.
Prof Aleem’s tenure as CHEP director had ended in October last year, but he was asked to carry on until further order.
In its statement, the HEC said that teachers served as a role model to the student community, but due to lax practices followed in the past, cheating and use of unfair means had acquired a foothold in academia. Immediate steps should be taken to address this, it said.
“Plagiarism is the death knell of academia. Cheating by teachers must be considered an academic crime of the highest order that deserves the strictest pun ishment,� the statement said.
The commission approved the acquisition of anti-plagiarism software that would check publications and research reports emanating from institutions of higher learning.
It declared zero tolerance towards plagiarism and resolved that wherever the charge of plagiarism was proved, the university authorities must act swiftly and take action leading to the dismissal of students or faculty members involved.
It was also decided that a blacklist would be created on the HEC website to provide the names and designations as well as other information about proven cases of plagiarisms.
Use of unethical means by a small minority of researchers will not be allowed to tarnish the excellent work of a majority of hard working researchers in Pakistan, it said.
I found an interesting justifications by “Cheating Professors” they have given this justification to American Institute of Physics which publish many important journals of physics. It should be noted that this “error” was pointed out by the publishers and NOT by the authors!
Another important point is that this is another paper. Other than the one publish in “Science in Africa” which we were disscusing here.
This theft was discovered by the American Institute of Physics itself. Rest can be seen in this linl….
http://scitation.aip.org/getpdf/servlet/GetPDFServ let?filetype=pdf&id=APCPCS0007480000010000E1000001 &idtype=cvips&prog=normal
Regards
DAWN (April 11)
“The Punjab University on Wednesday notified the penalties imposed by the Syndicate on its faculty members serving in the Centre for High Energy Physics(CHEP) for indulging in plagiarism.
The Syndicate, in its special meeting held here to discuss the inquiry report on plagiarism casees on April 2, had decided to ask CHEP Director Prof Dr. Fazal-i-Aleem to relinquish his charge.
It had also decided to issue warning/censure along with stoppage of two annual increments of four other plagiarists-Maqsood Ahmad, Rasheed Ahmad, Sohail Afzal Tahir and Alam Saeed.
It is learnt that CHEP director had also submitted his resignation from the post.
The PU administration meanwhile, appointed CHEP’s Prof. Dr. Haris Rasheed as the new Director.Later, he assumed the charge.”
Apparently all involved continue to serve in PU with Fazl-i-Aleem elevated as Director General School of Physical Sciences.A fine future awaits our younger generation being educated in this institute of learning