Note to users. If you're seeing this message, it means that your browser cannot find this page's style/presentation instructions -- or possibly that you are using a browser that does not support current Web standards. Find out more about why this message is appearing, and what you can do to make your experience of our site the best it can be.

Science 4 October 2002:
Vol. 298. no. 5591, p. 33
DOI: 10.1126/science.298.5591.33b
Prev | Table of Contents | Next

ScienceScope

Indian physicists are demanding an inquiry into a case of plagiarism involving a paper co- authored by the vice chancellor of a prominent regional university. Balwant Singh Rajput, a particle physicist and vice chancellor of Kumaun University in the Himalayan state of Uttaranchal, has acknowledged that he failed to properly oversee a student--S. C. Joshi--who has admitted that he plagiarized a 6-year-old paper (www.geocities.com/physics_plagiarism). Joshi's tainted paper was published in the March 2002 issue of Europhysics Letters; it borrowed extensively from an article on the properties of black holes published in Physical Review D by Renata Kallosh of Stanford University.

Rajput says that Joshi never told him about the paper and that he has asked the journal editor to delete his name from it. An apologetic Joshi admits to having erred but says that it is the university's "usual practice" to credit superiors as co-authors.

The Society for Scientific Values, an independent think tank in New Delhi that monitors scientific misconduct, is asking authorities to investigate. Indira Nath, an immunologist and past secretary of the group, says Rajput's response "is too flimsy."

To Advertise     Find Products

Science. ISSN 0036-8075 (print), 1095-9203 (online)