Chinmaya IAS Academy – Current Affairs Chinmaya IAS Academy – Current Affairs
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The world has long recognised India as a major player in intellectual pursuits including scientific research.
Bose-Einstein statistics, the Raman effect, the Ramachandran plot, and the Raychaudhuri equations are all examples of path-breaking work in India in the 20th century.
More recently, with a new National Education Policy and India’s presidency of the G20, calls have been made for the country to “step up” and take its position on the global stage.
Obstacle holding the nation back
This is the reality of unethical academic practice, which is still widely tolerated.
While this is a global phenomenon, institutions in many countries have kept this practice significantly in check through systematic preventive and punitive action.
When research is not ethically grounded, there is no value in its outcome. We cannot trust a medicine or a nuclear reactor whose efficacy has been “proved” by manipulating data.
Every academic should feel compelled to weed out ethical malpractices from the system, but this is not happening in India.
Absence of an ethical code
The websites of almost all academic institutions in India reveal the absence of an ethical code and a robust investigation procedure to deal with misconduct allegations. (The guidelines of the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research and some bio-ethics codes are welcome exceptions).
Suggestions to run ethical training modules for students and faculty are met with no response.
Academic bodies which are alerted to data manipulation and even sexual misconduct by their members make vague promises, but take no action.
A few institutions have taken a strong principled stand, but their actions seem to have little impact on the community at large.
Several years ago, the Principal Scientific Advisor circulated a draft National Policy on Academic Ethics, but it has not been formally approved.
Two of the biggest problems are data manipulation and plagiarism. Both these unethical actions are increasingly easy to carry out using software, even as journals push back with more stringent checks.
Even when challenged, perpetrators tend to shrug off responsibility.
Some even argue that everyone in their institute is engaging in such practices.
They also blame their students, who may be at fault too, but are not the responsible authority.
Another class of issues comes from the authoritarian behaviour of those in power.
Recently, the President of Stanford University resigned following investigation of his old papers in a student magazine.
In India, the magazine editor would likely have faced trouble instead.
Bullying by guides is also a documented issue in India. One guide threatened and collected thousands of rupees in fines from PhD students for minor infractions such as coming five minutes late to a lab meeting.
A student who complained about this had to face a counter-complaint by the guide. Shattered by the experience, she left the institute to go abroad.
When faced with alleged misconduct in their community, academics tend to ask ‘who are we to judge’ instead of encouraging impartial investigation.
They also tend to defend the accused members of their own institutes, violating conflict-of-interest guidelines..
A poor image
The scenario is no better among students. Even in privileged institutions, cheating in exams is common.
Brighter students believe that they are “helping” their friends, while honest students are reluctant to call out cheating for fear of being “disloyal”.
This highlights the role of culture: a Japanese professor told me that if a student in his university tried to cheat, the students would immediately put a stop to it. Sadly, but perhaps with some justification, our academic culture is globally perceived as dishonest, harming the chance of our students to compete globally.
Ultimately, it comes down to the quality of leadership.
In developed countries, an academic leader is seen as one among equals who has taken on an administrative responsibility, but in India the position is seen primarily as a source of power and control.
The reluctance of leaders to act on ethical issues may stem from the fear that control will pass from them to some more objective criteria, and they too may be found culpable of misconduct.
There are documented cases of vice chancellors turning out to be plagiarists. Not all of them have been appropriately punished.
To redress the ethics problem
India needs a different type of behaviour from its academic leaders, which is in the national interest.
Institutions must take ethics seriously and not tolerate deliberate misconduct.
There must be clear communication of, and training in, the expected ethical standards.
Disturbingly, the same institutional heads who are complacent about ethical misconduct are often quick on the draw if there is any perceived challenge to themselves or their bosses.
Indian faculty have faced charge-sheets for simply expressing their opinions, which is a violation of constitutional rights.
This has a crippling effect on academic research as the space for independent thinking shrinks.
When leaders tolerate academic fraud but become hypersensitive to perceived slights to power, it is a sign that ethical and academic foundations have gone astray.
Without a sea change in the attitude of academic leadership, there is little chance of talented young researchers choosing India over greener pastures abroad that are both more ethical and freer.
Ultimately India’s future as a research powerhouse will be compromised, tragically just at the time that the country is being seen as an emerging power.
