Epistles

Abi catches Rahul catching “an Anna University group’s paper (published in the Journal of Materials Science) whose abstract is a near-verbatim copy of that of an earlier paper in PNAS from a Swedish group.” You really must see just how verbatim it really is.

While Abi waits to see what Anna University does, the cynic in me takes a shot :

1. Anna University will set up a “high-powered committee” to “look into the matter” which will submit the “report” to the board of “trustees”.

2. Meanwhile, defendent will claim that he has been “fabricated by the Swedish intelligence” and that this is an attack on the India’s scientific community in particlar and “social fabric” of the country in general.

3. Defendent’s professional rival will point to past indiscretions on the part of the defendent.

4. Sagarika Ghose at IBNLive will have a “Face the nation” where she will talk to a panel of experts about how this might be the sign of “larger (with a rolled ‘r’) problem” – sheer (with rolled ‘r’ again) “lack of integrity” in India’s scientific community. When she is unable to find enough air-time to say what she thinks, she will blog about it.

5. One commenter on the Sagarika’s blog will want to the know the caste of the Mr. Muthukkumaran (One of authors of the paper) and might find a link between this and having/not having enough reservations for backward sections of the society.

6. Another commenter will be able to infer the caste of the above commenter and make more inferences.

Cut to 26 months later.

7. The ‘esteemed’ Board of Trustees at Anna University will conclude that there is not enough evidence to charge Mr. Mutthukumaran and his colleagues and will dismiss all charges.

8. Repeat 4.

9. NDTV will conduct a string sting operation where one of the authors confirm on camera that he threatened his Research Assistant and got it done. If the RA did not do it, he would not get his recommendation letter for PhD/post-doc at an American University.

10. Taking note of recent media developments, Board of Trustees dismiss the discredited author.

11. Dismissed author joins politics.

12. Repeat 4.