Ong: UM should reveal all on academic fraud incident
Universiti Malaya urged to publish the full proceedings of an internal investigation into an academic fraud incident.
As the oldest and most prestigious academic institution in Malaysia, he added, it should take a leading role. “This is particularly true when it comes to upholding standards of academic integrity and intellectual honesty.”
The MP called upon UM to publish the full proceedings of its internal investigation into an academic fraud incident. “It should also recommend changes to existing guidelines so that such cases would not happen again.”
In addition, he stressed, UM should also disclose the exact nature of the punishment meted out to the researchers in question. “This should send a strong signal to other faculties on serious consequences in cases of academic fraud.”
Elsewhere, Ong called upon Minister of Higher Education Idris Jusoh to conduct a comprehensive review of the High Impact Research (HIR) initiative between his Ministry and UM.
On 11 June, 2016, the Faculty of Medicine at UM was alerted on alleged academic misconduct on the part of some faculty members. They were authors/co-authors in a number of scientific publications.
UM quickly convened an investigation.
It found that “there was duplication and/or manipulation of almost all the figures (images and graphs) within the original Scientific Reports”. It also found the same kind of manipulation across three other publications authored by the group of researchers. It called for the authors to retract all four articles.
The articles were subsequently retracted by the journals in question.
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The allegations were first highlighted on Twitter. It was then picked up by blogs such as Microbiome Digest, For Better Science and Science.