Seven more retractions for Danish computer scientist

Back in 2012, the German plagiarism documentation platform VroniPlag Wiki published a documentation about extensive plagiarism in a computer science dissertation submitted in 2007 to the Danish University of Aalborg at Esbjerg. This sparked some media attention (and was reported in this blog in May 2012) and eventually an investigation of the Danish national academic integrity body UVVU (Danish Committees on Scientific Dishonesty) was initiated. That body ruled on December 2, 2014: (English translation)

The Committee finds that the Defendant has acted in a scientifically dishonest
manner in the form of plagiarism [...]

I managed to obtain many of the documents produced by means of a freedom of information act inquiry. The UVVU mounted an exhaustive inquiry, and also informed the university currently employing the author as a professor of their decision. Interestingly, he is still listed at the university as of today, and has current publications listed.

The thesis borrowed heavily from journal articles and conference papers published either alone or in collaboration with others that turned out to include much text overlap with publications of other researchers. And after the thesis was defended, many more papers were published, again with others, that again contained extensive text overlap both with papers by other authors and with text from the dissertation. The true sources were about identifying criminal networks, the copied papers were on the topic of identifying terrorist networks.

The source is on the right, the edited copy on the left

VroniPlag Wiki lists more than 20 papers to date that are affected by substantial text similarities. The publisher at Springer and IEEE were informed, and this blog discussed some of the papers in June 2012.  In January 2013 eight papers were retracted by the IEEE.

Springer published 10 of these papers, but was quite indecisive as to how to deal with the situation. In a journal, a retraction can be published in the next available issue. However for conference proceedings, there is often no "next" volume in which to note the retraction. Of course, since the papers are all online, they can at least be retracted there. In January 2014 I found that Springer had published a retraction of one of the papers, but then retracted the retraction just a few days later, publishing an erratum instead.

During an idle search in April 2016, one of the VroniPlag Wiki researchers was surprised to see that Springer had quietly retracted seven of the ten papers. Of course, Springer wants the general public to invest $ 30 to read the retractions:

I was able to obtain four of the seven retractions because they were published in proceedings that my library has access to. The notices read as follows:

The publisher regrets to announce that the following chapter entitled [...] has been retracted. This chapter contains a large amount of reused and uncited material that was not published within quotation marks.

Looks to me as if Springer has come up with a new euphemism for that nasty P-word.

I find it troubling that Springer needed so many years to act on the information given to them about the problematic publications. And even though Springer is a member of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE),  they did not follow the advice given in the COPE flowcharts for dealing with such situations. This includes as a final step "inform the person who originally raised the concern."

New Approaches to Academic Misconduct in Denmark and Sweden?

There have been a number of high-profile cases of academic misconduct in the past few years, both in Denmark and in Sweden. The Swedish government has just issued a directive requesting that an independent examiner look at the necessity of changing the rules for investigating cases of academic misconduct in research. They request that a proposition be made for a timely and legally secure process for dealing with accusations of academic misconduct. ("En särskild utredare ska undersöka behovet av en ny hantering av ärenden som rör utredning av oredlighet i forskning och lämna förslag som säkerställer en tydlig och rättssäker hantering av misstänkt oredlighet.").

This comes on the heels of news (Retraction Watch reports) about a Swedish researcher who has been dismissed from the Karolinska Institut on multiple charges of academic misconduct

Denmark is a bit further along in the same process. They have had quite a number of scandals, so the UVVU (the Danish organization that looks at accusations of academic misconduct) has already prepared their own suggestions. They have a page with a number of links, and a relative thorough collection of the current practices in seventeen countries:Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Croatia, Finland, Germany, Great Britain, Ireland, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Switzerland,  Sweden,  USA. Unfortunately, the report appears to only be in Danish. 

ScienceNordic has a nice overview of the the major scandals in Denmark and Sweden, including many links, in English.

The problems arise when lawyers are called into scientific disputes and judges decide what is and what is not good science. I think we need a sort of "Godwin's law" in science. If you involve a lawyer, you lose the argument. We need to focus more on peers discussing the science, although there do need to be sanctions for those found to have committed academic misconduct.

The Danish report lists the wide spectrum of possible sanctions found in the various countries (p. 20-21):

• Issuing a correction
• Reprimand
• Supervision of future research
• Suspension from scientific work
• Retractions
• Disciplinary sanctions such as being put on probation for future academic work
• Rescinding of academic titles
• Rescinding of the right to advise PhD students 
• Withdrawal of internal resources
• Repayment of research funding
• No permission to apply for research funding, usually for a set number of years. 

The report makes it clear that there does need to be a system for appealing such a judgement and in particular the whistleblowers need to be protected.  It will be interesting to see what the Danish government decides to do and whether the Swedish report will be much different from the Danish one.

Update: fixed Goodwin -> Godwin

Springer Finally Retracts Conference Paper

As reported here, VroniPlag Wiki determined in the course of investigating the doctoral thesis of Nasrullah Memon, awarded by the Aalborg University in Denmark in 2007, that very many papers in which he was co-author were also plagiarized. Denmark is still deciding what to do with the thesis, the last time I wrote to the authorities (August 2013) they were still deliberating, although I have heard that one of the co-authors of many of the papers has been cleared of charges of scientific misconduct. This I do not understand. If you are a co-author and the paper is plagiarized, you are a plagiarist as well in my opinion, or else you just put your name on a paper you didn't write, which is just as bad.

IEEE finally retracted some of the papers in January 2013, while Springer continued to sell the plagiarized papers for a hefty fee. Both the researcher at VroniPlag Wiki and I have written to Springer asking what is happening here. It seems they were unsure what to do in this case, although IEEE does have a policy that might be able to be adapted.

While surfing over Christmas the VroniPlag Wiki researcher stumbled over this:

Retracted: How Investigative Data Mining Can Help Intelligence Agencies to Discover Dependence of Nodes in Terrorist Networks
Nasrullah Memon,
David L. Hicks,
Henrik Legind Larsen

Okay, progress is being made! We wanted to look at the retraction notice, as most journals do give some sort of an explanation of why the article was retracted. RetractionWatch even collects wordy euphemisms for "plagiarism". But Springer wanted $30 from us to see the retracted paper. Hmm. Not even my university database would let me see the retracted paper for free, and we used to subscribe to exactly this series online.

If you click on "Look inside" you get to see the first page:

Well, I guess a watermark is a start. But it is still listed in the ACM Digital Library, ResearchGate, Google Books (only the first page, p. 430, was removed there), dplp, etc.
It has also been quoted 17 times, according to Google Scholar, 6 of which are papers for which Memon is not co-author, although some have published in the past together with him.

Memons's official publication list at the University of Southern Denmark only has the "newest" publications (including one for 2014 already), so many of the retracted ones have disappeared. But one of the IEEE retracted ones is still listed there:

It's bad enough that the publishers who earn good money for these publications are dragging their feet in deciding what to do. But how do we get retracted papers out of the body of science? That's the big problem and one of the reasons why plagiarism is so bad.

Suggestion to Springer: Please get going on the other papers, five of which are quite substantial, and print the reason for the retraction(s), free of charge.

 

The Responsible Conduct of Research

I just spent two days at the University of Aarhus helping them in drafting their policy on the Responsible Conduct of Research (RCR). I was very fortunate to be able to meet with some of the top people world-wide who are working in this area.

• Niels Axelsen from Statens Serum Institut, Copenhagen, Denmark, who has written many articles, among them this one in Nature 
• Melissa Anderson from the University of Minnesota who asked scientists how much they had committed scientific misconduct in the past and coauthored the "Scientists behaving badly" article in Nature.  
• Philip Langlais from Old Dominion University, former vice-provost and consultant on setting up RCR policies 
• Nick Steeneck from the University of Michigan, who is the Director of the Research Ethics and Integrity Program of the Michigan Institute for Clinical and Health Research
• Brigitte Jockusch from the University of Braunschweig and a member of the German research funding organization DFGs "Ombud" committee for good scientific practice
• Charlotte Haug, editor of the Norwegian Medical Journal and vice-chair of COPE, the international Committee on Publication Ethics.

After a day of talks we met with members of the Danish government and a number of people from the university to go through their proposed document. I have been suggesting for some time that all universities need such a document. It turns out to be surprisingly difficult to do, in particular because research is different between life sciences (who also have human and animal experiments), business, humanities, engineering, and the natural sciences.

It would seem to be useful for a university to have one short, global policy and then have each faculty or department work out the specific details for their own field.

It seems that there were more questions at the end of the session than at the beginning. Especially, the following seemed to be central:

• Everyone agrees that education is important. But who will educate the students? The faculty? When will the instruction be? It seems important to instruct people on why the responsible conduct of science is important, but will people listen and learn?
• The question of whistleblowing takes an enormous amount of thought. Can there be anonymous whistleblowers? Many may have a personal axe to grind with the accused, but there are also many correct accusations. Should it depend on the identity of the whistleblower being known? Melissa Anderson explained the interesting system that they have at her university. The university pays an outside company to run a hot-line and web-based reporting system.  People can register with any name they like, and come back and add additional information if they wish. The person evaluating the tip is then someone who is not from the university, and refers cases to the appropriate institutions. This would be a great thing to have nationally - professors willing to evaluate cases, and the possibility of submitting anonymous reports and still being able to discover what action is being taken on the case. As can be seen in the recent cases in Heidelberg and Mannheim, often the universities have been dragging their feet in responding to the accusation. This, however, is not responsible conduct. Investigations need to be swift. 
• This leads to the question of resources. Brigitte Jockusch reports on the workload at the Ombud für die Wissenschaft - since zu Guttenberg the number of reported cases has been rapidly growing, the organization is only staffed by three professors who are still active researchers and teachers and one full-time employee. That is most certainly not enough.
• Procedures - there was much debate on whether the investigation should start first, or the accused be informed first. There is, of course, a chance that evidence may be destroyed. The University of Aarhus is proposing an RCR Guidance counselor who does not inform the RCR board of cases, but only acts to inform potential whistleblowers of their rights and to discuss with them whether the case at hand could be considered unethical conduct. And does the RCR board only get active when there is a whistleblower? What if they learn of scientific misconduct through other channels, i.e. press reports?
• How proactive should the RCR board be? How easy should it be to find the board? There is concern that in universities that do have such a board that the link to the web page is buried somewhere deep in the site. This has often been my experience.
• What sanctions are possible? Who decides? Who is responsible for executing the sanctions? What is done in cases in which the accusation is in bad faith?

The university now has a lot more work to do, but it is encouraging to see them determined to set up a good policy.  In a few weeks there will be a world conference in Montreal on this topic with many of these people attending. I'm not able to attend - if any of my readers do, I'd love to extend guest blogging rights for reporting on the conference. Contact me, and I'll set you up as a co-author here!

Multiple Retractions of Articles by Computer Science Professor

VroniPlag Wiki case #23 was the dissertation in computer science of Nasrullah Memon, who is currently a professor at the University of South Denmark. The dissertation was submitted to the Danish University of Aalborg in 2007. VroniPlag Wiki documented extensive plagiarism not only in the dissertation (64 % of the pages), but also in many publications involving Memon. The publishers IEEE and Springer were informed of the problems.

IEEE has now retracted eight papers involving Memon, seven of them on the basis of the VroniPlag Wiki documentation:

1. "Detecting New Trends in Terrorist Networks," by Uffe Kock Wiil, Nasrullah Memon, and Panagiotis Karampelas in the Proceedings of the 2010 International Conference on Advances in Social Networks Analysis and Mining (ASONAM), August 2010, pp. 435-440 is a plagiarism of "Social Network Analysis and Information Fusion for AntiTerrorism" by Pontus Svenson, Per Svensson, and Hugo Tullberg in the Proceedings of the 2006 Conference on Civil and Military Readiness (CIMI), May 2006 and Data Mining: Concepts and Techniques (second edition),
   by Jiawei Han and Micheline Kamber, Morgan Kaufmann, Elsevier, 2006. The lead author, Nasrullah Memon, was found to be solely responsible for the violation.
2. "Detecting High-Value Individuals in Covert Networks: 7/7 London Bombing Case Study," by Nasrullah Memon, N. Harkiolakis, and David L. Hicks in the Proceedings of the IEEE/ACS International Conference on Computer Systems and Applications, 2008, pp. 206-215.
3. "Detecting Key Players in 11-M Terrorist Network: A Case Study," by Nasrullah Memon and David L. Hicks in the Proceedings of the Third International Conference on Availability, Reliability and Security, 2008, pp. 1254-1259.
4. "Practical Algorithms and Mathematical Models for Destabilizing Terrorist Networks," by Nasrullah Memon, David L. Hicks, Dil Muhammad Akbar Hussain, and Hendrik Legind Larsen, in Military Communications Conference, MILCOM 2007  is a plagiarism of "Untangling Criminal Networks: A Case Study" by Jennifer Xu, Hsinchun Chen in Proceedings of the First NSF/NIJ Symposium Intelligence and Security Informatics, ISI, June 2003 and "The Exploratory Construction of Database Views"  by M. N. Smith, P. J. H. King, Research Report BBKCS, School of Computer Science and Information Systems, Birbeck College, University of London, 2002. The lead author, Nasrullah Memon, was found to be solely responsible for the violation.
5. "Harvesting Terrorists Information from Web," by Nasrullah Memon, David L. Hicks, and Hendrik Legind Larsen, in the Proceedings of the 11th International Conference Information Visualization (IV'07), 2007, pp. 664 - 671 
6. "Detecting Critical Regions in Covert Networks: A Case Study of 9/11 Terrorists Network," Nasrullah Memon, K. C. Kristoffersen, David L. Hicks, and Hendrik Legind Larsen, in the Proceedings of the Second International Conference on  Availability, Reliability and Security, (ARES 2007), 2007, pp. 861-870 is a plagiarism of "Clique Relaxations in Social Network Analysis: The Maximum k-plex Problem" by B. Balasundaram, S. Butenko, I. V. Hicks, S. Sachdeva
   Posted online, January 2006 and "Network Analysis of Knowledge Construction in Asynchronous Learning Networks" by Aviv, Reuven; Erlich, Zippy; Ravid, Gilad; Geva, Aviva in the Journal of Asynchronous Learning Networks, Vol 7, No 3, 2003
7. "Practical Approaches for Analysis, Visualization and Destabilizing Terrorist Networks," by Nasrullah Memon and Hendrik Legind Larsen in the Proceedings of the First International Conference on Availability, Reliability and Security (ARES’06), 2006, pp. 8xx - 913 is a plagiarism of the same sources as number 4.
8. "Novel Algorithms for Subgroup Detection in Terrorist Networks," by Nasrullah Memon, A. R. Qureshi,  Uffe Kock Wiil,  and David L. Hicks in the Proceedings of the International Conference on Availability, Reliability and Security (ARES '09), 2009,  pp. 572-577 is a plagiarism of "Balancing Systematic and Flexible Exploration of Social Networks" by Adam Perer, Ben Shneiderman in the IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics, Vol. 12, No. 5 Sept/Oct 2006, pp. 693-700 and "Mining for Offender Group Detection and Story of a Police Operation" by Fatih Ozgul, Julian Bondy, Hakan Aksoy in the Proceedings of the Sixth Australasian Data Mining Conference (AusDM 2007), Gold Coast, Australia. Conferences in Research and Practice in Information Technology (CRPIT), Vol. 70, December 2007, pp. 185-189 and Smith and King from number 4 above.

Searching the IEEE database there are, however, 133 papers by Memon, and of course many more involving the co-authors, some of whom are prestigious Danish professors. The VroniPlag Wiki documentation also lists papers published by Springer, as well as dubious conferences and/or publishers such as WSEAS, Inderscience, or Worldcomp. Springer says that they are still investigating.

When interviewed by the Danish weekly newspaper Weekendavisen in May 2012, Memon had insinuated that dark powers had manipulated his thesis in order to discredit him. However in the face of the documented plagiarism in many other papers, it seems that a more detailed investigation into his publications needs to be mounted. The problem is, who will take action? Who has the time? It took over six months for IEEE to withdraw the publications after the plagiarism was clearly documented on VroniPlag Wiki. At least IEEE has a procedure for dealing with allegations, but it seems to take far too long, in particular because these papers have been cited, and not only in self-citations.

When will the University of Aalborg take action? Hicks, Wiil, and Larson are professors there. Hendrik Legind Larsen and Hsinchun Chen (the author of a work that was plagiarized in number 4) were members of Memon's doctoral thesis committee.When will the University of South Denmark look into the situation? Memon is advising doctoral students there, organized a conference on counterterrorism in Odense, and is a journal editor. Do the retractions have any consequences at his university?

According the the IEEE policy on good scientific practice,  a level 1 violation means that > 50 % of the paper is plagiarized, resulting in a retraction notice being printed and the authors banned for 3-5 years from publishing in any IEEE publication. It seems that more than one of the papers retracted are level 1 violations. Will the publication ban be consecutive? That is, if there are 3 level 1 violations, will Memon be banned from publishing for 15 years?

I am glad that IEEE has finally taken action (and there are over 500 notices of retraction in the IEEE database). But there are so many questions raised that I fear will not be answered.

Danish eLearning Unit on Avoiding Plagiarism

Three Danish universities, the University of Southern Denmark, Aarhus University, and Copenhagen University cooperated in 2010 to produce an eLearning unit on avoiding plagiarism. There is a version in Danish and in English.

Danish Neuroscientist found guilty of misconduct

It has been a long and complicated story. The newspaper for the University of Copenhagen published "Penkowa for Dummies" in the spring of 2011, which gives a good background to the skirmishes of the past year.

Milena Penkowa, since resigned from her position as professor at the University of Copenhagen, had been the shooting star in research in Denmark. Sure, there had been some dark mutterings about her dissertation, as Nature reported in January 2011 on the basis of a report in Weekendavisen by Poul Pilgaard Johnsen. The thesis was first rejected, then accepted on a second review.

Then some of her research had to be retracted, as it was not replicable. Retraction Watch lists 2 papers out of over 100 that were retracted and two letters of concern that have been published in journals. And some research money had been used to pay for lawyers and restaurant visits. The university promised to start a full-fledged investigation.

The investigation was conducted by a group of foreign experts, Weekendavisen reports in its issue from July 20 (they are, unfortunately, not online). Hans Lassmann from the Medical University in Vienna chaired the committee that examined the 102 publications by Penkowa. 23 of the papers were deemed to be unnecessary to examine more closely. In 26 of the remaining 79 papers the committee determined scientific irregularities. Out of these 26 papers, 16 were determined to be scientific misconduct.

The misconduct has involved, among other things, mismatches between the number of lab animals in the papers and in the animal registers, problems with quantitative data, and problems with pictures (for example just turning the pictures as evidence of new work). The data archives were chaotic and filled with errors.

Berlingske, another Danish paper, reported July 15 by Claes Lautrup on the results of the investigation. Not only Penkowa, but also the University of Copenhagen were found to be guilty of misconduct. Penkowa still claims innocence, but notes that her career is ruined already, there is nothing left for her to give up. The university has refused to comment. By law, the report must be made public and is scheduled for August 7.

The university has started a new program for PhD students that includes mandatory courses in research ethics, good scientific practice, record keeping, and documentation, according to Weekendavisen.

The university must now decide what to do with the 16 articles, whether to contact the journals for retraction. They have already taken Penkowa to court on a case of defrauding university funds, which she blamed on a student. She lost the case and has been fined. She currently is running a company for advising patients with neurological problems and writing a book about dog psychology, Weekendavisen writes. 

There is also a political aspect to the drama, involving the rector of the university and the former federal minister of science, but that is just an added layer of complication to an already tangled web.

(If there are any translation errors in my summary, please let me know! -dww)

Serial Plagiarist

The Danish weekly newspaper Weekendavisen published an article entitled "The Serial Plagiarist" on June 1, 2012 about Nasrullah Memon, the VroniPlag dissertation case 23. Some of the VroniPlag people have been researching other publications of Memon, and documented the following list of 13 publications involling Memon that include plagiarism:

• Memon, Hicks, Larsen (2007): How Investigative Data Mining Can Help Intelligence Agencies to Discover Dependence of Nodes in Terrorist Networks in: R. Alhajj et al. (Eds.): ADMA 2007, LNAI 4632, pp. 430–441, 2007. Springer Berlin Heidelberg: http://www.springerlink.com/content/p6w523g8481n2427/
  This paper is to a large degree a collage of many other publications, many of which are nowhere mentioned in the paper, as an example: p.432, 31-40; p.433, 1-2 in the paper is a literal copy of p.213, 41-44, p.214, 1-8 in a publication from 2003 that is nowhere mentioned in the paper:  http://www.utdallas.edu/~jxr061100/paper-for-website/%5B18%5DMining-Terrorism-NGDM04.pdf
• Memon, Larsen (2006): Structural Analysis and Mathematical Methods for Destabilizing Terrorist Networks Using Investigative Data Mining in X. Li, O.R. Zaiane, and Z. Li (Eds.): ADMA 2006, LNAI 4093, pp. 1037 – 1048, 2006. Springer Berlin Heidelberg: http://www.springerlink.com/content/97qx65771p188845/ 
  This paper contains substantial amount of text copied from other publications without quotation. As an example: p.1040, 13-35 in the paper is an almost literal copy of p.48 (1st column), 47-52, (2nd column) 1-5, 14-26; p.49 (1st column), 14-18 in a publication from 2004 that is nowhere mentioned in the paper: http://www.cs.uiuc.edu/class/fa05/cs591han/kdd04/docs/linkkdd.pdf 
• Memon, Wiil, Qureshi, Karampelas (2011): Exploring the Evolution of Terrorist Networks, U.K. Wiil (ed.), Counterterrorism and Open Source Intelligence, Lecture Notes in Social Networks 2, 413-427, DOI 10.1007/978-3-7091-0388-3 20, Springer-Verlag/Wien 2011:  http://www.springerlink.com/content/r970122m77980211/ 
  NOTE: the editor of the book in which the paper appeared is also co-author of the paper. This paper contains substantial amount of text copied from other publications without quotation. As an example: p.419, 3-20 in the paper is an only slightly adapted copy of p.308, 23-33; p.309, 1-11 in a publication from 2004 that is nowhere mentioned in the paper:  http://www.hks.harvard.edu/davidlazer/files/papers/Lazer_Katz_Small_Group.pdf 
  Note also, that the publication is to a very large degree identical to an earlier publication of the same authors:  http://www.computer.org/portal/web/csdl/doi/10.1109/ASONAM.2010.73  In comparison to this 2010 publication, only the introduction has been extended, a short section at the end of chapter 4 has been added and the section 3.3. has been added. The rest of the publication is a copy of the previous paper with only minor adjustments.
• Memon, Larsen, Hicks, Harkiolakis (2008). Detecting Hidden Hierarchy in Terrorist Networks: Some Case Studies, in C.C. Yang et al. (Eds.): ISI 2008 Workshops, LNCS 5075, pp. 477–489, 2008. Springer Berlin Heidelberg:  http://www.springerlink.com/content/f01u8867306236k1/ 
  This paper contains substantial amount of text copied from other publications without adequate reference. As an example: page 486, 1-12 in the paper is an almost literal copy of p.4, 32-43 in a publication from 2006. A reference to this source is given, but only half a page further up and without any indication that what will follow is taken verbatim from this source:  http://www.hsaj.org/?fullarticle=2.2.8 (PDF download)
• Memon, Qureshi, Hicks, Harkiolakis (2008): Extracting Information from Semi-structured Web Documents: A Framework In: Y. Ishikawa et al. (Eds.): APWeb 2008 Workshops, LNCS 4977, pp. 54–64, 2008. Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg:  http://www.springerlink.com/content/l0202r444m408g37/ 
  This paper contains substantial amount of text copied from other publications without adequate reference. As an example: page 59, 12-31 in the paper is a slightly adapted copy of p.2, (1st column) 40-49, (2nd column) 1-3, 13-30 in a publication from 2006 that is mentioned nowhere in the paper:  http://www.mindswap.org/papers/2006/RelClzPIT.pdf 
• Memon, Hicks, Harkiolakis, Rajput (2008): Small World Terrorist Networks: A Preliminary Investigation in Ellis, Allen, Petridis eds: Applications and Innovations in Intelligent Systems XV, 339-344, Springer London (2008), 978-1-84800-086-5, 10.1007/978-1-84800-086-5_28: http://www.springerlink.com/content/m732505681263247/
  This paper contains substantial amount of text copied from other publications without adequate reference. As an example: page 339, 20-25 in the paper is a slightly adapted copy of p.18, 11-20 in a publication from 2006 that is mentioned nowhere in the paper:  http://www.eecs.harvard.edu/cs199r/readings/popp-sp2006.pdf    
• Memon, Larsen (2006): Practical Approaches for Analysis, Visualization and Destabilizing Terrorist Networks Proceedings of the First International Conference on Availability, Reliability and Security (ARES’06) 0-7695-2567-9/06 IEEE: http://www.computer.org/portal/web/csdl/doi/10.1109/ARES.2006.95
  This paper contains substantial amount of text copied from other publications without adequate reference. As an example: section 5.1 in the paper is an only slightly adapted copy of the beginning of section 5.2.3 in a publication from 2002 that is nowhere mentioned in the paper:  http://www.dcs.bbk.ac.uk/TriStarp/pubs/ECoDV2002.pdf 
• Memon, Hicks, Larsen (2007): Harvesting Terrorists Information from Web 11th International Conference Information Visualization (IV'07), 0-7695-2900-3/07 2007 IEEE: http://www.computer.org/portal/web/csdl/doi/10.1109/IV.2007.60.  This paper contains substantial amount of text copied from other publications without adequate reference. As an example: the section "Weaknesses of Open Source Knowledge bases" in chapter 6 of the paper is an only slightly adapted copy of the beginning of section 4.2 (p.410, 411) in a publication from 2006 that is nowhere mentioned in the paper:  http://www.springerlink.com/content/g26p24152m696wx9/ 
• Memon, Kristoffersen, Hicks, Larsen (2007): Detecting Critical Regions in Covert Networks: A Case Study of 9/11 Terrorists Network in Second International Conference on Availability, Reliability and Security (ARES'07) 0-7695-2775-2/07, IEEE Computer Society: http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/articleDetails.jsp?arnumber=4159885 
  This paper contains substantial amount of text copied from mainly one other publication from 2006 that is not mentioned in the paper at all. As an example: the beginning of the introduction of the paper (p.1, 1st column: 19-28; 2nd column: 1-21) is an only slightly adapted copy of the beginning of the introduction (p.1: 17-27; p.2: 1-12) in: http://www.caam.rice.edu/~ivhicks/kplex.general.pdf It is also worth noting that part of the findings of this paper have been published before (figures 1, 2; tables 1, 2): http://www.springerlink.com/content/97qx65771p188845/ 
• Memon, Hicks, Hussain, Larsen (2007): Practical Algorithms and Mathematical models for destabilizing terrorist networks in Military Communications Conference, 1-7. MILCOM 2007. IEEE: http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/articleDetails.jsp?arnumber=4455057 
  This paper contains substantial amount of text copied from other publications without adequate reference. As an example: p.2, 1st column: 3-17 is an almost literal copy of p.18, 2nd column: 18-32; p.19, 1st column: 1-6 in a publication from 2006 that is mentioned in the publication, but in the paragraph above the copied text without relation to it:  http://www.eecs.harvard.edu/cs199r/readings/popp-sp2006.pdf 
• Memon, Harkiolakis, Hicks (2008): Detecting High-Value Individuals in Covert Networks: 7/7 London Bombing Case Study aiccsa, pp.206-215, 2008 IEEE/ACS International Conference on Computer Systems and Applications, 2008: http://www.computer.org/portal/web/csdl/doi/10.1109/AICCSA.2008.4493536 
  This paper contains substantial amount of text copied from other publications without adequate reference. As an example:the section "TERRORISM NETWORK ANALYSIS" (page 209, 210) of the paper is a literal copy of the beginning of section 4.2 (p.410, 411) in a publication from 2006 that is nowhere mentioned in the paper: http://www.investigativeproject.org/documents/testimony/50.pdf 
• Memon, Hicks (2008): Detecting Key Players in 11-M Terrorist Network: A Case Study ares, pp.1254-1259, 2008 Third International Conference on Availability, Reliability and Security, 2008, 0-7695-3102-4/08 IEEE Computer Society DOI 10.1109/ARES.2008.173: http://www.computer.org/portal/web/csdl/doi/10.1109/ARES.2008.173 
  Note that this publication is very similar to the publication ( http://www.computer.org/portal/web/csdl/doi/10.1109/AICCSA.2008.4493536 ) In comparison to this publication, some chapters are missing, the chapter "Case Study" is different, and the chapter "conclusions" is somewhat changed. The rest is a literal copy.
  This paper contains substantial amount of text copied from other publications without adequate reference. As an example:the section "TERRORISM NETWORK ANALYSIS" (page 1254, 1255) of the paper is a literal copy of the beginning of section 4.2 (p.410, 411) in a publication from 2006 that is nowhere mentioned in the paper: http://www.investigativeproject.org/documents/testimony/50.pdf 
• Wiil, Memon, Karampelas (2010): Detecting New Trends in Terrorist Networks in: 2010 International Conference on Advances in Social Networks Analysis and Mining, 435-440, 978-0-7695-4138-9/10 IEEE, DOI 10.1109/ASONAM.2010.73: http://www.computer.org/portal/web/csdl/doi/10.1109/ASONAM.2010.73 
  This paper contains in the introduction text that has been copied from other publications without adequate reference. As an example: p.435, 2nd column, 3-10 of the paper is an only slightly adapted copy of p.3, 1-6 in a publication from 2006 that is mentioned nowhere in the paper: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.64.7470

Both Springer Verlag and IEEE have been informed, as well as the university at which Memon obtained his doctorate and his current school.

The article in Weekendavisen noted that there had been anonymous documentations sent to the school at which Memon did his dissertation (University of Aalborg) in 2010 and 2011. The documentations were rather well done, but the university dismissed them. The journalist was able to obtain the documents with a freedom of information request.

I find this serious in two ways: first, of course, it is not acceptable to plagiarize. But second is the problem of the reaction of the institution to (correct) allegations in the past. Why did the university turn a blind eye? Why was nothing undertaken? I hope the bright light of public scrutiny can shed some light on this.

VroniPlag Case 23 hits the Danish papers

VroniPlag Case 23, a computer science professor in Denmark, has broken in the press in Denmark. Weekendavisen has a long article on the case behind their paywall - or in print. Other articles:

• fyens.dk: (May 3, 2012) Mistanke: Har SDU-forsker fusket med afhandling?"Forsker på Syddansk Universitet er mistænkt for fusk. Han påstår selv, at han er udsat for et komplot." (Researcher at the Southern Denmark University is suspected of cheating. He insists that he has been the victim of a conspiracy)
• jv.dk: SDU opfordrer til hurtigt afgørelse i plagiatsag  (Af) "Syddansk Universitet opfordrer Aalborg Universitet til en hurtigt afgørelse i sagen om terrorforskeren Nasrullah Memon, der er mistænkt for plagiering og videnskabelig uredelighed."  (University of Southern Denmark requests that the the Aalborg University quickly bring to an end the investigation of terror researcher Nasrulla Memon, who is suspected of plagiarisim and scientific misconduct)
• Ekstra Bladet: Forsker mistænkt for fusk med afhandling   (Ritzau /Nyhede) "Forsker på Syddansk Universitet er mistænkt for fusk. Han påstår selv, at han er udsat for et komplot. [...] Når det ikke ser sådan ud, skyldes det ifølge ham, at den version af afhandlingen, som både den tyske plagieringsgruppe og tilsyneladende også institutlederen på hans gamle institut i Esbjerg har set, er et falsum, og at han er udsat for et komplot." (Researcher at the University of Southern Denmark is suspected of cheating. He insists that he has been the victim of a conspiracy [...] The reason it does not look like that is that the version of his dissertation that is being used by both the German plagiarism group and apparently also the administration at his old institute in Esbjerg is not the correct one, he is the victim of a conspiracy. 
• Radio24syv: Datolinjen 03-05-2012 "I have learned a lot from contributing to Vroniplag"  [Interview with one of the VroniPlag researchers, Fiesh, about this case starting at 31:13]

It boils down to Memon insisting that the thesis that is being investigated is not his thesis. Strangely, the libraries do not have an official copy of the thesis. And the wording in the supposedly wrong thesis is very similar to many other publications from Memon. It also turned out that the University of Aalborg has been investigating for over 2 years. Since most of the sources can be found on the Internet, I find it strange that it should take so long. It will be interesting to see what comes of this.

Plagiarism Wednesday

Wednesdays are the traditional days at German universities for meetings. Today there are two meetings scheduled at two universities that each have to decide on rescinding doctorates that VroniPlag has documented.

• Margarita Mathiopoulos: The University of Bonn rescinded the doctorate on April 18, 2012. She is said to be taking the university to court, but with over 45% of the pages containing plagiarism, and plagiarism of all kinds, there does not seem to be much of a question. Mathiopoulos' dissertation was already accused of plagiarism over 20 years ago, the university determined then that there was enough "original material" left over. VroniPlag has documented that much of this was also plagiarized. There is an exceptional collection of material about Mathiopoulous and other writings of hers that recycle text at MMDoku (in German). The Universities of Braunschweig and Potsdam, where she holds honorary professorships, have announced that they will be reevaluating their decisions in light of the rescinded doctorate. Mathiopoulos has announced that she will sue the university and the members of the faculty board personally, a rather unscientific manner of discourse. 
• Siegfried Haller: The University of Halle-Wittenberg rescinded the doctorate also on April 18, 2012. In a recent interview he denied doing anything wrong. Since he is responsible for education in Leipzig, it remains to be seen if he will stay on in his position. 
• Case 23 was also put on the home page. This is Prof. Dr. Nasrullah Memon with the dissertation "Investigative Data Mining: Mathematical Models for Analyzing, Visualizing and Destabilizing Terrorist Networks" submitted and accepted by the University of Aalborg, Denmark. This thesis is remarkable in the sweeping amount of word-for-word plagiarism that can be found. Of 39 currently identified plagiarism pages (16% of the thesis), 26 cover more than 75% of the page, often 100%. There are still almost 40 pages that need verification, and new sources, most of them on the Internet, are constantly surfacing. Memon is now a professor at the University of Southern Denmark. 

(Updated 18.4.2012 23:26, second update 20.4.2012 10:50)

Danish Misconduct

There are actually other misconduct cases being reported on beside the German former defense minister''s plagiarism. Nature reports on a Danish neuroscientist, Milena Penkowa, who resigned amidst accusations of research misconduct and misuse of grant money.

The young shooting star, who is said to have already published almost 100 peer-reviewed papers, apparently began with serious questions being raised about the experiments done for her dissertation work when the number of rats examined was apparently quite exaggerated.

Her work is seeming to be irreproducible and the University of Copenhagen had to return a quarter of a million € in grant money.