What’s been going on in the World of plagiarism for the past two weeks? Here’s the round up… funny how these round ups are always full of tales of plagiarising professors and people that should know better, rather than students, isn’t it? Maybe it’s because students use our plagiarism checker! Read on for the news…
June 23rd – The University of Rajasthan, in a bid to improve quality standards of research work, has issued directions to deposit an electronic version of all PhD “synopsis’ at the time of registration and “thesis’ on completion of the PhD. Academicians believe that such decision will prevent plagiarism in the research work done in the universities (Source: DNA).
June 23th – Over in New Delhi, The All India Institute of Medical Sciences (Aiims) has ordered an inquiry into plagiarism charges against a senior doctor at the department of laboratory medicine. The review article, “Genetic Diversity in Hepatitis C Virus (HCV)’, published in Reviews in Medical Virology in 2009 by additional professor Muhammad Irshad had to be withdrawn from the web journal in December 2009 because there were at least “20 overlaps” (Source: Hindustan Times).
June 18th – Over in the States, Dr. Philip Baker resigned as the University of Alberta’s dean of medicine Friday over plagiarism allegations. Baker resigned in the wake of accusations he copied significant portions of a speech he gave to graduating medical students last week. He will continue in his job as a professor in the department of obstetrics and gynecology, and will return in the fall after a four-month leave of absence (Source: Edmonton Journal).
June 18th – Islamabad – The Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (KP) governor’s office has asked the Higher Education Commission (HEC) to constitute a committee under its supervision to probe into the alleged involvement of University of Peshawar Vice Chancellor (VC) Dr. Azmat Hayat Khan in plagiarism. Dr. Khan, a former director of the Area Study Centre, has been accused by a university teacher, Muhammad Zubair, of including in his book titled “The Durand Land: Its Geo-Strategic Importance’ published in 2000 by the Area Study Centre, University of Peshawar, and Hanns Seidel Foundation, some passages from the book “Pak-Afghan Relations’, written by Dr. Kulwant Kaur of the Jammu University, Jammu, and published by Deep and Deep publications in 1985 (Source: Right Vision News).
June 16th – Over in New York, The Press-Republican report that Jonathan Fine, a chef with an extensive culinary background at well-known restaurants, plagiarised in a column for their weekly food page – taking more than inspiration from a food column written by a Damon Lee Fowler and published in May. Further investigation showed that Fine had “borrowed” segments of his previous columns from writers in small publications around the United States.
June 15th – In Berlin, a European Parliament member became the latest public figure in Germany to be stripped of her doctorate for plagiarism after the defence minister was forced to quit earlier this year. Heidelberg University in western Germany said it had withdrawn Silvana Koch-Mehrin’s academic title after an enquiry found that “substantial parts” of her 2000 doctoral thesis were copied from others (Source: AFP).
June 14th – In South Africa (Cape Town) academic Colin Darch has accused the former Ethiopian ambassador to South Africa, Tesfaye Habisso, of plagiarising an article that Darch presented at a conference in 1976. The Oxford-educated academic is a senior librarian at UCT’s African Studies library (Source: The Mercury).
