Plagiarism is exposed and Kumaon V-C passes buck

The plagiarism was first detected and reported by Physics Plagiarism Alert, a website hosted and backed by a team of physicists from top institutions like the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai; Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore and the Institute of Mathematics, Chennai.

Over 40 Indian physicists have endorsed that huge chunks of a paper—on black holes—published in the October 1996 issue of Physical Review D by Stanford physics professor Renata Kallosh have been lifted word for word, equation for equation by Suresh C. Joshi and Vice-Chancellor B S Rajput and published in the March 2002 edition of Europhysics Letters.

Admitting the mistake, Joshi says he ‘‘apologises to the physics community.’’ However, he absolves Rajput saying that it’s ‘‘usual practice’’ to include the name of the supervisor and that the V-C wasn’t shown the paper.

Rajput, who says he has written 300 research papers and supervised 30 PhDs, claims it was a lack of ‘‘necessary supervision’’ that led to the embarrassment. ‘‘Neither was my consent taken by the student (Joshi) nor was I informed about this particular paper,’’ he said.

Not many scientists are buying this. Says physicist and UGC chairman Nigvekar: ‘‘Both authors are equally responsible since if the senior author can take the credit, he should also shoulder the blame when things go wrong.’’

He added that someone as senior as a Vice Chancellor and supervisor of the PhD student should know better.

‘‘The Chancellor should take immediate action,’’ said Nigvekar, ‘‘as any delay only sends a wrong signal across the entire academic community.’’

When contacted at Stanford, Kallosh, the original author of the paper, said: ‘A group of leading physicists is preparing a letter to the highest authorities in India asking for investigation and justice.’’