Scientists of Zoological Survey charged for plagiarism

A US researcher has charged some of the scientists at Zoological Survey of India (ZSI) of plagiarising from a well known text book while writing a book on Indian corals.

The Indian scientists are accused of copying from a book (published in 2000) written by J E N Veron, one of the world's top coral taxonomists while penning down a 152 page title on the corals of Andaman and Nicobar islands that was published in 2010.

“Essentially the entire book was plagiarized. I have been in contact with the authors and the agency in which they work or worked, the Zoological Survey of India. The authors have not publicly admitted anything as far as I know, though I have urged them to do so,” said Douglas Fenner, an internationally known marine biologist, who works as a consultant to the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Fenner became suspicious first when he stumbled upon a scientific paper on Andaman corals by the ZSI scientists. The paper mentioned two coral species that are found in the Caribbean sea and not in Andaman.

Subsequently he read the book published by the same group of scientists. “The book had a long and well written introduction with many references. It looked like whoever wrote it knew a lot about corals. Then it had descriptions and photos of a group of coral species that had not been reported from the Andaman islands before,” he said.

“On a whim, I looked in Veron, 2000 to compare what they said about one species. Lo and behold, the wording was exactly the same, every single word. I checked several other species, every single one was an exact match to the description in Veron, 2000. No quote marks, and no citation at the end of the paragraph to Veron or any other source,” the US scientist said in an email to community of 8,000 marine biologists around the world.

Asked to comment on the plagiarism row, ZSI director Kailash Chandra told DH, “We have formed a committee to investigate the charges and would decide on the future course of action based on the committee's recommendation. Also we are in the process of adopting a policy against plagiarism.”

There are multiple instances of copying without credit in the ZSI document. “The 'key characters' in the (ZSI) book for each species are identical to those in a key to species in the back of Veron, 2000. No quotes, no citation. A search on the first paragraph of the introduction produced the identical wording from a Reefs at Risk document (available on the IUCN website) but again no quotes and no citation,” said Fenner, who now based in American Samoa, working on corals for NOAA.

One of India's oldest scientific institutions, ZSI (established in 1916) comes under the Union Ministry of Environment and Forest and is the national repository of living species found in India. The repository has a collection of 4 million specimens, from amoeba to whales, besides a DNA bar coding facility.

Union Environment Minister Harsh Vardhan had visited ZSI in May.