Friday, May 4, 2012

VroniPlag Case 23 hits the Danish papers

VroniPlag Case 23, a computer science professor in Denmark, has broken in the press in Denmark. Weekendavisen has a long article on the case behind their paywall - or in print. Other articles:

  • fyens.dk: (May 3, 2012) Mistanke: Har SDU-forsker fusket med afhandling?"Forsker på Syddansk Universitet er mistænkt for fusk. Han påstår selv, at han er udsat for et komplot." (Researcher at the Southern Denmark University is suspected of cheating. He insists that he has been the victim of a conspiracy)
  • jv.dk: SDU opfordrer til hurtigt afgørelse i plagiatsag  (Af) "Syddansk Universitet opfordrer Aalborg Universitet til en hurtigt afgørelse i sagen om terrorforskeren Nasrullah Memon, der er mistænkt for plagiering og videnskabelig uredelighed."  (University of Southern Denmark requests that the the Aalborg University quickly bring to an end the investigation of terror researcher Nasrulla Memon, who is suspected of plagiarisim and scientific misconduct)
  • Ekstra Bladet: Forsker mistænkt for fusk med afhandling   (Ritzau /Nyhede) "Forsker på Syddansk Universitet er mistænkt for fusk. Han påstår selv, at han er udsat for et komplot. [...] Når det ikke ser sådan ud, skyldes det ifølge ham, at den version af afhandlingen, som både den tyske plagieringsgruppe og tilsyneladende også institutlederen på hans gamle institut i Esbjerg har set, er et falsum, og at han er udsat for et komplot." (Researcher at the University of Southern Denmark is suspected of cheating. He insists that he has been the victim of a conspiracy [...] The reason it does not look like that is that the version of his dissertation that is being used by both the German plagiarism group and apparently also the administration at his old institute in Esbjerg is not the correct one, he is the victim of a conspiracy. 
  • Radio24syv: Datolinjen 03-05-2012 "I have learned a lot from contributing to Vroniplag"  [Interview with one of the VroniPlag researchers, Fiesh, about this case starting at 31:13]
It boils down to Memon insisting that the thesis that is being investigated is not his thesis. Strangely, the libraries do not have an official copy of the thesis. And the wording in the supposedly wrong thesis is very similar to many other publications from Memon. It also turned out that the University of Aalborg has been investigating for over 2 years. Since most of the sources can be found on the Internet, I find it strange that it should take so long. It will be interesting to see what comes of this.

1 comment:

  1. Thanks for all the good and hard work you have done. It is outrageous that with all the evidence that you have gathered regarding the "thesis" of this "professor", he still insists that there is a "complot" against him. He is cynic, specially when some other papers of the same author have been reported to contain also plagiarized material. Making this case public is nothing personal against Nasrrulah Memon, but it is good that these cases are known to the public not only for the good of science but also for the good of society. Many of these "scientists" try to become "stars" not only by cheating with their thesis but also by convincing other people that may not know about their subject of their "authority" on the topic by the number of "papers" they are capable of producing in a short period of time using basically "copy and paste" and writing versions of papers that are minor modifications i.e. autoplagiarism. This seems to be the case of Nasrrulah Memon. However, it is naive to assume that nobody will notice such big amount of cheating specially when the author has so many papers published. These papers show that he plagiarized much of his "thesis". He can not deny the plagiarism contained in these papers and say that "somebody" has altered these papers or that there is a "complot". I have searched for his name on Google and it is incredible and very unfortunate that with his "background" he appears as "editor" of a Journal published by Springer. This is the link:

    http://www.sdu.dk/en/Om_SDU/Fakulteterne/Teknik/Nyt_fra_Det_Tekniske_Fakultet/Tidsskriftsredaktoer

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