Article removed from academic journal in response
Shahid Azam, professor at the University of Regina, has been accused of plagiarizing a former student.
Arjun Paul, the student in question, has suggested that Azam plagiarized his master’s thesis in his recently published article in the academic journal Environmental Geotechnics. The journal investigated the allegation and withdrew the paper, concluding that Azam “ had not fully credited Arjun Paul’s thesis.”
Azam refutes these claims, but does acknowledge a mistake in the referencing of Paul’s work. Azam defends his error by suggesting his close training of Paul and their past work together is what led to the similarity in the articles. This suggestion implies that Paul’s thesis is really a reflection of their joint ideas.
Paul is taken aback by the dismissal of the claim and Azam’s questions of his academic ability. He continues to assert that the work was not done with Azam, but independently. “He said I am not technically sound. I am saying, if I am not technically sound, how can I do all of the course work, the project work, the presentation, and pass the final exam?”
This is not the first plagiarism incident to suggest problems in the academic world. In 2012 University of Waterloo professor, Dongqing Li, along with PhD student Yasaman Daghighi, retracted a report from the journal Microfluidics and Nanofluidics, after discovering that “unaltered text was taken from a pre-published version of … Induced-charge elecktrokinetic phenomena.”
The author of the original unaltered text, Martin Bazent, professor at MIT, noted the incident as blatant plagiarism and “a cut-and-paste job.”
The University of Waterloo remained silent throughout the incident.
Allegations of professors participating in academic dishonesty continue to be of widespread concern for university communities, and students have noticed.
Undergrads are lectured on the perils of the greatest of academic sins as professors persistently go unpunished.
Philip Baker, the former dean of the University of Alberta’s medical school, became one of those professors after he infamously plagiarized from The New Yorker magazine. Though Baker lost his administrative position, he was able to keep his job as a professor at the university with minor repercussions.
Unfortunately, a common response from universities, in regards to professors’ academic crimes, is silence. There is a strong desire to maintain good reputations, and, therefore, university administration pushes allegations under the rug.
With students facing incredibly harsh consequences for academic fraud, the lack of equal punishment for professors is unacceptable and unfair. The lack of equality in reprimanding guilty professors is, and will continue to be, detrimental to the learning community.