AIIMS downplays plagiarism charges against its director

Updated on: Friday, July 15, 2011

All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) today sought to downplay plagiarism charges against its director Dr R C Deka, saying there was an "inadvertent" error in a writeup and a request for correction was forwarded to the journal's editor.

Dr Ramesh Chandra Deka was at the centre of a controversy after a study of AIIMS published last year had reproduced some passages from a 2005 study. The AIIMS Director was the lead author of the writeup.

"Dr Deka has said in his defence there were two paragraphs which were allegedly plagiarised. However, the reference of these paragraphs have been cited in the bibliography but were left inadvertently at the end of the paragraph. Correction to this effect has been requested to the editor in the form of letter to editor," AIIMS spokesperson Dr Y K Gupta said.

In a recent revelation, it was found that two paragraphs of a study published on 'Cochlear Implantation in Waardenburg's Syndrome' in the 2010 Acta Oto-Laryngologica journal was similar to a study published by another author in
the same journal published in 2005.

Dr Lela Migirov from the Department of Otolaryngology/ Head and Neck Surgery, Sheba Medical Center, Tel Hashomer (Israel) is the chief author of the 2005 study on Waardenburg's Syndrome, while th 2010 study on the same topic
was headed by Dr R C Deka.

"The results of this study indicate that children with WS exhibiting normal inner ear anatomy derive significant benefit from cochlear implantation and the results are comparable to those reported for the general population of implanted children. Although we reported on a relatively small cohort, these da ta may be used for counselling the parents of children with WS who are considering cochlear implantation," Page 4 of the study on 'Cochlear Implantation in Waardenburg syndrome: The Indian Scenario, published in 2010, said.

The same appears on page 4 of the Cochlear implantation in Waardenburg's syndrome study published in 2005.

"In conclusion, the results of this study indicated that children with WS exhibiting normal inner ear anatomy derive significant benefit from CI and do so to an extent comparable to that reported for the general population of implanted children. Although we reported on a relatively small cohort these data may be used for counselling the parents of children with WS considering CI," the conclusion read.

The other paragraph that has been reproduced in the 2010 journal was related to the discussion section.

"The findings of this study indicated that they did not differ from other implanted patients in terms of either pre-implantation radiologic and audio-logic data or surgical and speech perception outcome parameters. This information is important for pre-implantation counselling and may be used for the vast majority of children with WS who exhibit normal anatomy of inner ear. These data, however, are not applicable for children with WS with inner ear malformations," both the studies of 2010 and 2005 read.

AIIMS downplays plagiarism charges against its director

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