Dear Editor,
I write with reference to a featured article by Mr. Irfaan Ali in the Sunday Chronicle dated April 6, 2008. This man is a Member of the Guyanese Parliament and the Education Secretary of the Progressive Youth Organization (PYO). I remember reading elsewhere that he is also a part-time lecturer of the University of Guyana.
I wish to caution the PYO (one of the oldest and most vibrant youth organization in Guyana) and the students at the University of Guyana who this man lectures to, that they are the mercy of what is known among researchers as a literary pirate. I am sure as a student Mr. Ali would have been indoctrinated on the importance of citing one’s source when doing research and when writing.
While reading Mr. Ali’s argument entitled “Rice – An Extraordinary Story”, from the second paragraph I immediately recalled reading an article in the March 28, 2008 online edition of the Financial Times entitled “Jump in rice price fuels fears of unrest”. I was flabbergasted to discover that the second and third paragraphs of Mr. Ali’s argument were taken almost wholesale from the FT article. Some minor alterations included: replacing ‘jumped’ with ‘moved up’; changing tense for example replacing ‘raising fears’ with ‘raised fears’ and ‘removed’ with ‘removal’ and changing the spelling ‘formalise’ to ‘formalize’.
I decided to google-search phrases from the remainder of Mr. Ali’s argument to see how ‘original’ they appeared. Below are my findings:
His fourth and fifth paragraph beginning “Rice is the second largest produced cereal …” was taken almost 100% by the ‘ctrl C – ctrl V’ method from http://finance.indiamart.com/markets/commodity/rice.html. Amoung the minor changes here is replacing ‘tons’ with ‘tonnes’, perhaps due to the word-processor being used by the typist herein?
Mr. Ali should be commended for inserting a direct quotation from the University of Illinois researcher Elizabeth Ainsworth’s findings that “New varieties of rice, bred to tolerate high ozone and increased temperatures are urgently needed.” However, one wonders why he failed to state that the sentence immediately preceding the above quotation was also taken from the Ainsworth review as reported in the March 24, 2008 edition of the Economic Times under the caption “Global warming threatens rice yield in future”.
Moreover, the following was taken ‘as is’ from an article entitled “Global Prices Surge Amid Restricted Exports” appearing on the English version of the Chinese website http://www.china.cn: “European brokers have quoted an indicative price of high quality Thai rice of about $640 PMT (per metric tonne), up from $515 PMT in late February. Within the last three months prices has [have] surged by about 72%”. Other contents of this paragraph were also taken from the same article but were stated with minor changes.
In light of the above, one is tempted to think that Mr. Ali’s preferred method of research and writing is to google the topic in question and cut and paste the contents of articles that show up in the search. I am sure even a high school student would be penalized by his/her teacher for such an approach. Hence, my question to Mr. Ali is what would be his response to his UG student presenting research papers to him utilizing this method. Would he adopt the ‘do as I say and not as I do’ approach? Would he be ‘lenient’ with them for following in his footsteps? Or would be do the honourable thing that any researcher should do and penalize them and instil in their minds the need to cite one’s source when writing and not to practice the ‘theft’ of information? One can only wonder!
My graduate research methods Professor used to say, “Plagiarism is a sin punishable by academic death”.
Yours faithfully,
Vishnu Singh
Lancaster, UK
Editor’s note
We sent a copy of this letter to Mr Irfaan Ali for his comments and received the following response:
“Firstly let me thank you for giving me the opportunity to respond to this erosive conclusion of Mr. Singh. Those who would have read my article would have known that it was part one of a series. This series that I am doing on food prices, particularly rice, is divided into five sections. Parts one (1) and two (2) dealt with the global context and issues surrounding the industry. At the end of part two there is extensive citation of the source of information, although admittedly the notations were inadvertently left out in part one. This observation is cited and corrected in part two. However, my sources in part one are completely different from those googled by Mr. Singh using his method of verification.
The food issue is very topical today and as such there is numerous literature available on the subject all utilizing similar statistics. The research I did on this subject was aided by a research assistant and took days and weeks, Mr. Singh. I can assure you it was not coherent with your google methodology. Among literature reviewed for part one are the Economic Journal, the Economist Food Pricing Index, a BBC Special Edition that is “A Global Debate on Food Prices” and an “Al Jazeera Special Programme” dealing with the end of cheap food and a research paper on Ozone concentration and its effects by Ainsworth.
I wish to assure Mr. Singh that I am a subscriber to monthly editions of the Economist, Financial Times, and an ardent reader on global issues. I am sure you would agree that access to most material these days is cheaper and more easily available using the internet.
In part three and four of this series I dealt with the impact of global projection on our local industry providing research and analytical information from exports in the rice industry.
In part five I provided recommendations and conclusion facing all the circumstances surrounding the rice sector.
I would like to assure Mr. Singh that though the numbering of the notations were inadvertently left out in part one it has been corrected in part two with citation of the source. I would send him a copy of the entire series should he be willing to share with me his email and/or address in the UK.
Finally, I would ask Mr. Singh to await the publication of the entire series of articles which comes out of a research paper I did on the subject, and at that point he would be in a better position to criticize or draw the conclusion he alluded to”.
