As the debate on the recent charges of plagiarism levelled against eminent scientist CNR Rao rages on, the scientific community is speaking up on the issue.
As the debate on the recent charges of plagiarism levelled against eminent scientist CNR Rao rages on, the scientific community is speaking up on the issue.
The scandal emerged when it was reported by a section of the media that Rao, who had co-authored a paper along with chairman, Materials Research Centre, Indian Institute of Science (IISc), SB Krupanidhi, and students Basant Chitara (IISc) and LS Panchakarla (Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research), had apologised to the leading scientific journal Advanced Materials for having published a paper that reproduced text from another published paper. It was later revealed by Krupanidhi that the text in question was lifted by a student who had drafted a part of the introduction.
The scientific fraternity has been quick to come to the defence of the scientist. “Deliberate plagiarism is contemptible, but sometimes that is just not the case. Although the supervisor is responsible for the paper overall, it is not possible to go through every line and know if a student has extracted lines from another paper. Normally, we trust our students,” said DP Sen Gupta, retired professor, IISc.
“We should not be blowing this issue out of proportion here as it is a matter of huge embarrassment to any supervisor,” he said. However, he added that tools are available on internet that can tell if a write-up contains published text.
YB Srinivas from the Institute of Wood Science and Technology said there are different kinds of plagiarism. “There is one kind where data gets plagiarised and that’s a high scale of plagiarism. From what I have read about Prof CNR Rao’s case, the lines in question are in the introduction. It is possible for senior scientists to inadvertently be party to this. As long as the core results and the methodology are right, I don’t think we can call this plagiarism,” he said. J Gururaja, executive president, Renewable Energy Action Forum (REAF), said scientists should keep themselves abreast of all developments in their respective fields.
“If the scientists are aware of their field, then they can easily figure out if a passage has been lifted. You also realise what a student is capable of by interacting with him and you should inculcate those values. There will be bad apples in any field but we need to ensure that the integrity is maintained,” he added.
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