Indian Scientists popular for faking results

By siliconindia   |   Monday, 29 November 2010, 14:54 IST
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Indian Scientists popular for faking results
New Delhi: A U.S. based study found that Indian scientists were more likely to cheat when reporting scientific results than scientists from other countries. Over the past ten years, 50 academic papers were submitted. Out of which 17 were withdrawn. All the papers were related to life sciences. 34 percent of the papers were rejected as there was some kind of fraud or fake information. The papers were found to have copy findings of other scientists, 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 scientists and their actions.