|
Mostafa Imam, a researcher recently accused of repeated plagiarism in micropaleontology articles, has reportedly died. A colleague of Imam informed the editor of Revista Española de Micropaleontología earlier this week that the Saudi Arabia-based researcher had suffered a fatal heart attack.
News that Imam had repeatedly used plagiarized photographs in articles he published in micropaleontology journals has sent ripples through the research community and raised questions about the quality of peer review in the field.
Last month, Julio Aguirre, from the University of Granada, alleged in the Spanish journal that for the past 20 years Imam had been publishing papers on various topics related to fossil algae repeatedly using the same plagiarized pictures.
For some, the revelations triggered memories of paleontology's most notorious case of scientific fraud, involving Indian scientist Vishwa Gupta, whose fraudulent enterprise was maintained over 25 years. In 1989, Australian paleontologist John Talent wrote an article in Nature claiming fakery by Gupta in over 300 papers.
Before his death, Imam sent two emails to Isabel Rábano, editor of Revista Española de Micropaleontología, and The Scientist, saying he used other people's photos because he lacked the means to provide good illustrations for his manuscripts.
In an email sent on October 2nd, he said: "I have contacted [Aguirre] after the publication of his report and I told him if there are any mistakes please forgive me as we are young doctors and we wish to benefit from his experience." He added: "I still respect the journal editor and also Aguirre and I want to say him 'show the others the right way' as God said 'but do not destroy them'".
Bruno Granier, a paleontologist at the University of Brest in France, told The Scientist that it is possible Imam's reports on the occurrence of fossils were genuine, but that Imam could not get good pictures and decided to use pictures taken from other papers which illustrate the same species.
Granier says the fact that Imam's misrepresentation hit well-known journals such as The Journal of African Earth Sciences and Neues Jahrbuch für Geologie und Paläontologie suggests the quality of peer review wasn't adequate. "My feeling is that the papers were either not reviewed or were reviewed by peers who are not specialists of these algal groups. The responsible persons are the editors [since] it is not that difficult to find specialists," he said.
Neues Jahrbuch fuer Geologie und Palaeontologie's current editor Guenter Schweigert, started in the job in January 2003. "Since that time, I did not get any manuscripts from Imam," he said in an email copied to The Scientist. "Since I have started as editor, I always tried to find the worldwide best referees for doing reviews of papers of all items of palaeontology."
"I do not know about the reviewing procedure of the former editors with Imam's papers which were accepted some years ago," he said.
Paul Copper, at the Geology Department of Earth Sciences in Laurentian University in Sudbury, Canada, told The Scientist: "I have heard that sometimes Western papers are copied without credit or acknowledgment in journals published in the Third World, where perhaps the perpetrators calculate they will not be caught in a foreign language, nor apprehended and sued for theft of copyright".
"The only thing we can do is to remain vigilant: if we see plagiarism, report it," he said.
References
|
Register for FREE Online Access
Subscribe to the Magazine