August 15, 2010

Japanese Plagiarism and Misrepresentation Case

Debora Weber-Wulff
A Japanese correspondent has alerted me to the strange case of Serkan Anilir. He is a German-born researcher of Turkish descent who was said to be an Assistant Professor at the Department of Architecture, Graduate School of Engineering, the University of Tokyo.
He has an impressive biography - but depending on which language you are reading (English, Japanese or Turkish) it is different. He claims to be a Turkish astronaut candidate for NASA, but closer inspection will show that this is his head photoshopped onto the body of Richard Hieb.
He has had "guest professorships" all over the world, according to the list is on the Turkish Wikipedia (translated here). It appears that he gave talks at these schools, but not that he had guest professorships. He is not listed in the official researchers lists for projects he supposedly worked on.
His publication list has a number of anomalies: wrong publisher; long article in a journal that only prints short ones; an examination of a given journal issue shows no article with that name; one publication can be found with the same name and co-author, but not with his name on it.
He also claims to be an Olympic gold medalist in skiing. However, there is no record of this.
Asahi Shinbum, a respected Japanese newspaper, picked this up and reported that they checked his reference that was supposed to be from the Turkish Air Force, but they denied that it was from them.
When things got hot in the Japanese press, an investigation into his dissertation was started. Since it turned out to be more than 40% plagiarized (later reports: 59%) the University of Tokyo revoked his doctorate in March of 2010 (press release in Japanese translated by Google) - the first time in the history of the university that they have done such a thing!
In the aftermath, his talk at TEDxTaipei in Taiwan and other places were mysteriously canceled. It is a shame that they were not open about this. He is no longer listed as a professor at the University of Tokyo. And the university has announced a crackdown on plagiarism.
Nice to hear of a success story, even if it did take 10 years!

No comments:

Random Posts


  • Plagiarism: Words and ideas

    Mathieu Bouville Science and Engineering Ethics — doi: 10.1007/s11948-008-9057-6 Plagiarism is a crime against academy. It deceives readers, hurts plagiarized authors, and gets the plagiarist undeserved benefits. However, even though these arguments do show that copying other people’s intellectua... READ MORE>>

  • Plagiarism Accusation About Turkish Physicists

    Dr. Murat CivanerTurkiye Klinikleri J Med Ethics Year: 2008 Volume: 16 Issue:1  LETTER TO THE EDITOR In an article published in Nature dated Sept 6, 2007, it was stated that nearly 70 articles of 15 scientists from 18 Mart, Dicle and Mersin universities have been removed from a popular prepri... READ MORE>>

  • On plagiarism

    Physics in Medicine & Biology Editorial Simon Harris et al 2008 Phys. Med. Biol. 53 doi: 10.1088/0031-9155/53/5/E01>>> It is possible to plagiarize not only the work of others, but also one's own work through re-use of identical or nearly identical portions of manuscripts without ac... READ MORE>>

  • India to propose regulatory body to curb misconduct

    Nature news India is to consider creating a national body to investigate plagiarism and misconduct in science after a string of high-profile frauds. C. N. R. Rao, who heads the national science advisory committee, told Nature that he will discuss the proposal at his next meeting with Prime Minis... READ MORE>>

  • Author guidance on plagiarism and duplicate publication

    Maxine Clarke The Commentary in the current issue of Nature by Mounir Errami and Harold Garner, A tale of two citations (Nature 451, 397-399;2008), has predictably received a lot of attention. In a nutshell, the authors ask whether scientists are publishing more duplicate papers, and by their newl... READ MORE>>

  • Plagiarism and preprints

    Hilary Spencer In the Publishing in the New Millenium forum, Corie Lok asks about a recent paper in Nature by Mounir Errami and Harold Garner. The paper, A tale of two citations, suggests that there is a high level of duplicate papers being published. These papers may illustrate co-submission, pla... READ MORE>>

  • Something rotten in the state of scientific publishing

    By Jonathan M. Gitlin There is an interesting commentary in this week's Nature1 that takes a look at the subject of plagiarism within the scientific literature. It's certainly a contentious subject; from day one as an undergraduate it was drilled into us that there could be no greater sin than pla... READ MORE>>

.

.
.

Popular Posts