Much of the conversation about plagiarism in academe focuses on professors who steal from their scholarly equals. But growing pressures to publish, particularly in the sciences, can also increase the temptation for professors to defraud their graduate students, some scholars say.
Graduate students and their advisers spend long, intense stretches of time working together on research experiments and publications. But those collaborations sometimes disintegrate into competition over intellectual property, and the resulting disputes can be as murky as the student-adviser relationship itself.
Universities’ research-misconduct processes may not protect vulnerable graduate students from retaliation, but the systems can also be ill-equipped to protect faculty from disgruntled advisees. Since discussions between students and their advisers are often private, it can be hard to judge who originated an idea. And courts and juries often fail to understand the nuances of graduate student-faculty relationships.
John M. Braxton, one of the authors of Professors Behaving Badly (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2011), says advisers have sometimes plagiarized student dissertations and lab notes to support their own articles, grant proposals, and applications for lucrative patents. He has seen cases where professors remove students’ names from research projects when they begin to show innovative results, or publish articles without offering co-authorship to a student who has made substantial conceptual or methodological contributions.
Padmapriya Ashokkumar and Mazdak Taghioskoui are two former graduate students who say that happened to them. And they have both found themselves in precarious positions after accusing their advisers of plagiarizing their research projects. Both are suing their former universities and are hopeful that the courts will help compensate them for how their allegations derailed their academic ambitions, they say.
Ms. Ashokkumar, who studied computer science and is from India, attended the University of Nebraska at Lincoln. Mr. Taghioskoui, who studied electrical engineering and is from Iran, attended George Washington University and got his Ph.D. there.
Ms. Ashokkumar first became concerned about an adviser stealing her work in January of 2007, when she Googled her own name. She wanted to see how many Web sites had picked up two papers she’d written with Scott Henninger, then an associate professor at Nebraska, who had been her adviser. Together, they had developed a tool to help software engineers create user-friendly Web sites for consumers.
As she scrolled down the computer screen, she saw that an article she’d written with Mr. Henninger for a university publication in 2005 had, unbeknownst to her, been presented by him a year later at a conference workshop in Georgia. On the site, she saw that her name had been removed as a co-author. Instead, she was listed in an acknowledgments section. Only a small portion of the original article, she says, had been revised.
Mr. Henninger, she says, had once told her that the co-authored research wasn’t good enough to publish off campus or present at conferences.
“For him to tell me that the work was not good enough, then turn around and submit it without my name, was a stab in the back,” she says.
Ms. Ashokkumar and Mr. Henninger already had a rocky relationship; she had changed advisers before making her Web discovery. After she saw the reference to her research without her name on it, she complained to the graduate chair and then to the department chair, who reviewed the evidence and advised her to file a formal complaint with the university’s research-integrity officer.
Ms. Ashokkumar says that after Mr. Henninger was informed that the university was investigating him for misconduct, he accused her of plagiarizing his work in another paper. He did so, she says, when he discovered that she and her new advisers intended to present that paper for an international software-engineering symposium. According to court documents provided by the university, the paper was based on a research topic that Mr. Henninger and Ms. Ashokkumar had proposed, and that he had previously written about alone.
“My future was under question,” she says. “He told me, ‘I have the power to make sure you are thrown out of the university.’”
The university’s research-misconduct committee finished its investigation in April 2007 and upheld Ms. Ashokkumar’s plagiarism complaint against her former adviser. The committee also dismissed his complaint against her.
In the wake of the dispute, the university proposed calming the turmoil surrounding Ms. Ashokkumar in her department by asking her to allow Mr. Henninger to serve on her dissertation committee. She refused.
The two advisers she had been working with refused to continue with her, she says. She tried to find a new adviser, but no other faculty member agreed to take her on.
“I was seen as somebody who was difficult to work with and created trouble,” she says, “because I stood up for my rights.” When she couldn’t find a new adviser, she says she was told she would have to start a new dissertation project, despite five years of work. In limbo, with no adviser or committee, she was dropped from her program, she says.
A spokeswoman for the university said officials there could not comment on a matter that involved pending litigation.
“The university had an obligation to restore her to the department,” says Gene Summerlin, Ms. Ashokkumar’s lawyer. “Padma got caught in an academic turf war, and the university put the professor’s interests ahead of the graduate student.”
Ms. Ashokkumar, who now works as a software engineer for a company in Austin, Tex., is seeking $150,000 in damages, which she says represents the difference in pay she would have received with a Ph.D. and what she now earns without one. She also wants the university to provide her with an adviser and committee so she can return to her program and earn a doctorate.
Mr. Henninger, who resigned from his position in July 2008, according to court documents, could not be reached for comment. The university has argued in briefs it filed in the case that Ms. Ashokkumar’s allegations of retaliation contain false and defamatory statements against Mr. Henninger, and that he was “denied fundamental due-process rights by not being fully informed of the charges and evidence against him in order to be able to identify and effectively present rebutting evidence.”
‘Known to Break Legs’
When graduate students say an adviser stole their work, it can be hard for universities to decipher right from wrong, says Barbara A. Lee, a labor-relations professor at Rutgers University.
“It can be very difficult for an institution to determine whether the faculty member had the idea and the student developed it, or the student developed the idea and shared it with the faculty member and the faculty member improved it,” Ms. Lee says.
Allegations of retaliation can also be hard to sort out. There may be good reasons, she adds, why a student who has had a problem with an adviser can’t find a new one.
“Sometimes a student can’t find a new adviser because there really is no one else in the department who has the expertise to serve on their committee,” she says. Or “faculty may be concerned that the student would make the same claim against her or him if the student has tangled with another faculty member.”
In Mr. Taghioskoui’s case, he says that his adviser, Akbar Montaser, a chemistry professor, stole his work and caused him so much mental distress that he became suicidal. Mr. Taghioskoui, who enrolled in the Ph.D. program at George Washington in 2007, is suing the university for $1-million in damages.
Problems began, he said, when Mr. Montaser started harshly criticizing him in early morning and weekend phone calls, and sending him e-mails that called him names and accused him of stealing his work. In one e-mail, the professor wrote, “I swear ... I will not allow your graduation here, elsewhere, irrespective of the corner of the globe.” In another e-mail, chastising Mr. Taghioskoui over credit, he wrote, “I am known to break legs if anyone crosses the fundamental principles in life or in profession.”
Mr. Taghioskoui complained to administrators that Mr. Montaser had plagiarized his work on three occasions between February 2010 and January 2012, court documents show. He says Mr. Montaser filed patent applications for devices he invented, including a cigarette designed to protect the lungs from harmful smoke. Mr. Taghioskoui also says he discovered that Mr. Montaser, who had been placed on administrative leave for another incident, had presented some of Mr. Taghioskoui’s research as his own at a conference on plasma spectrochemistry this year.
When Mr. Taghioskoui tried to switch advisers, he was told by Mr. Montaser to drop out. The student’s lawyer says the university failed to provide Mr. Taghioskoui with support to finish his degree; he did so only by revamping his dissertation committee.
“Our client went through all the right steps, and nothing was done to investigate his concerns,” says the lawyer, Jason Ehrenberg.
A university spokeswoman denies wrongdoing and says that Mr. Taghioskoui failed to provide proof that his adviser acted out of a retaliatory motive. Mr. Montaser has retired from the university and relocated. An administrator in his former department did not have forwarding contact information for him, and he could not be reached for comment.
The Burden of Proof
Not all graduate students who believe their advisers have stolen their work file complaints; fear often keeps them from coming forward.
“The burden of proof is on you,” Mr. Ehrenberg says. “Most graduate students are reluctant to stir up trouble, so they end up falling victim to whatever is going on.”
James M. Pivarnik, a research integrity officer at Michigan State University, says he asks graduate students at large meetings about whether they have experienced misconduct and retaliation. “Sometimes 50 out of 300 students will raise their hands,” he said. “Only two come to my office after. It’s very possible that students say, ‘It’s not worth it. I’ll never win.”
Campuses generally have procedures and policies in place that require anyone who suspects research misconduct to report it, and that say there must be no retaliation for raising allegations.
Michigan State is devising a new system that will allow graduate students to report abuses anonymously, online. University officials say they decided to create the anonymous outlet because some students would not come forward for fear of retaliation.
Ada Meloy, general counsel for the American Council on Education, doubts that the problem of faculty’s stealing graduate students’ research is widespread. “Given the number of institutions and graduate students out there, I don’t see an overwhelming trend of faculty members’” misbehaving, she says.
But when there are problems, Ms. Meloy and others say that these cases are better settled on campus than in the courts.
“Unless there is a failure in the institutional grievance process or actual evidence of illegal conduct, it ultimately does not serve either the student or institution well to have these matters go before a jury,” Ms. Meloy says. “Juries may have an innate bias that the graduate student is likely to be taken advantage of, or an inherent bias that an institution simply wouldn’t do anything so unethical as to take advantage of a student.”
Academics are closely watching a court case that may have implications for graduate students who sue for intellectual-property theft. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit last month ruled that a former Ph.D. student at the University of Oregon can sue her former adviser, whom she claims quit as chair of her dissertation committee after she complained to officials about sex discrimination in her program.
The university said her adviser stepped down because the student failed to follow his advice on improving her dissertation. After the student complained, more than a dozen faculty members in her department refused to advise her. She says she was forced out of her program, and she is now suing for retaliation. Some faculty, administrators, and higher-education lawyers are worried that a victory for the plaintiff would give students too much leverage to sue professors who make academic decisions they dislike. But it could also bolster students’ recourse against misbehaving professors and feckless administrators.
Before turning to the legal system, though, a graduate student who believes his or her work has been stolen should talk directly with the research-integrity officer on campus, says Karen L. Klomparens, a dean of the graduate school at Michigan State.
“It can be awkward, yes. It can be scary,” she says. “And it might be the end of the relationship whether misconduct is found or not.”
Correction (11/14/12, 7:40 p.m.): A quote from a Michigan State University official who said he had asked graduate students whether they had experienced misconduct and retaliation was mistakenly attributed to Robert Caldwell, ombudsman. It was James M. Pivarnik, a research integrity officer at the university, who said that. The article has been updated to reflect that.
