The Mashelkar Affair

As an architect of India's knowledge policy, an eminent scientist, chief of India's elite scientific research organisation CSIR, Mashelkar should have known better. Hot on the heels of his own acceptance of plagiarism in his report on Intellectual property rights (about which I blogged a few days ago) Mashelkar has been accused this time by a British IPR expert Dutfield about verbatim copyin of his 1996 paper in Mashelkar's 2004 book "Intellectual Property and Competitive Strategies in the 21st Century" which he co-authored with Shahid Ali Khan. Both the authors deny this. It seems retirement has not started on a happy note for Mashelkar. I am sure we will hear more about this affair.

 

Dutfield on his part is disappointed that Mashelkar himself never bothered to call and acknowledge the violation of his copyright. "I guess, I was not important enough to Mashelkar, or this issue was not deemed important enough for him to apologise to me directly".
Given his own experience, how does he see the controversy surrounding the withdrawal of the latest Mashelkar committee report?
Dutfield said: "I don't want to brand Mashelkar as a plagiarist, at least until there is more evidence than we have. But what I would say is that he is sloppy and irresponsible in the sense of using ghost writers to do his work for him, not checking what is published in his name, and of then blaming these people when it goes wrong".

 

Source:Mashelkar book not all his own?-India-NEWS-The Times of India