Tuesday, June 10, 2014

Media article "Plagiarism row hits Indian docs"

Plagiarism row hits Indian docs
By Neetu Chandra Sharma in New Delhi
Source: Mail Today, Delhi Edition, 11/6/2014

INDIAN DOCTORS excel the world over in research but few readers of their papers published in journals would perhaps make out that the work of some of them is plagiarised, fabricated or falsified.
A pan- India audit survey by the state-run Lady Hardinge Medical College and Maulana Azad Medical College, published in the latest issue of the Indian Journal of Medical Ethics, has revealed that 53 per cent of doctors who submitted papers to publications indulged in plagiarism. Fifty six per cent resorted to alteration of data while the most commonly observed misconduct was offering ' gift authorship' or giving false credit for research, which was done by 65 per cent of the doctors reviewed.
The audit survey was conducted as authorities felt there was a paucity of data from India on misconduct in the publishing of research work by doctors. At least 300 questionnaires were sent to nine institutions across the country and anonymity was promised to doctors responding to the questions. However, about 100 doctors returned the questionnaires blank.
Interestingly, despite being aware of medical ethics, the survey showed 91 per cent of the respondents didn't follow them.
The problem of offering 'gift authorship', which is the inclusion of an individual among the authors of a paper though he or she doesn't fulfill the requirements for authorship, was also found to be common.
"The most commonly observed misconduct was offering gift authorship, reported by 65 per cent doctors, followed by alteration of data reported by 56 per cent. Plagiarism was observed by 53 per cent, while 33.5 per cent doctors had observed a colleague's name being omitted from a paper to which s/ he had significantly contributed," said the study by Dr Dhulika Dhingra, Assistant Professor of Lady Hardinge Medical College, and Devendra Mishra, Associate Professor of Maulana Azad Medical College.
"Publishing research studies has become an important aspect of career advancement and promotion for the medical fraternity. With this desire to further professional aspirations, misconduct has crept into medical research in different forms," the study said.
The survey covered six medical colleges, of which four were government- run and two were private. One was a non- teaching government hospital and two were corporate hospitals located in northern, central and southern India. The institutions were selected on the basis of availability of a local researcher to coordinate the evaluation, and included four in Delhi, three in southern India and two in central India.
According to experts on medical ethics, research misconduct does not include honest errors or differences of opinion and implies willful acts. Apart from this, misconduct may be manifested in not conforming to the authors' guidelines of a particular journal.
Research misconduct has been defined as fabrication, falsification (manipulating research results), or plagiarism in proposing, performing or reviewing research, or in reporting research results. Other forms of misconduct include ' ghost authorship', which is non- inclusion of individuals as authors who played an effective part in the work and were qualified for authorship, and ' duplication' or publication of the same paper in different journals with little or no change in it. It may also involve ' salami' publishing, where authors slice up their research, carving multiple papers from a single study with the aim of having multiple publications credited to them.

Reported Research:
Dhingra, D., & Mishra, D. (2014). Publication misconduct among medical professionals in India. Indian journal of medical ethics, 11(2), 104-107. http://ijme.in/index.php/ijme/article/view/1936/4206

No comments: