New Delhi: A U.S. based consultant found that Indian scientists were more likely to cheat when reporting scientific results than scientists from other countries.
The Journal of Medical Ethics published that out of 50 academic papers related to the life sciences, 17 were withdrew, over the past 10 years. 34 percent of the papers were rejected as there was some kind of fraud or fake information in the papers. The papers had copy findings of other scientists, some papers had faked or made up theories and some were fudged from many findings.
The Society for Scientific Values tracks such cases, which is run by volunteers.
Independent scientists such as Bob O’Hara confirmed the result. He found that Indian scientists’ papers were five times more likely to be retracted for fraud than those by scientists of other countries.
Dinesh Abrol, a senior scientist at the National Institute of Science, Technology and Development Studies in New Delhi said that it was not a new thing and that many of the senior scientists had been involved in such frauds. Earlier this year, leaders of the nation’s top science organizations, or academies, had to apologize when a high-level inter-academy report on genetically modified crops was found to contain lifted text.
Indian Scientists are lucky as there are no nationally framed rules for punishing research fraud. But Institutions stand responsible for their own scientists and their actions.