The decision to mediate is taken immediately. The usual excesses in terms of: a) morality (threats), b) ethics (the addition of guest authors), c) ethics (the cover-up of plagiarism), d) responsibility (the non-response of university authorities). And one finds there the actors of our world: Doctoral school, referents Integrity, publications?
Dear Mrs. Bergadaà,
I am writing to you because I was very recently the victim of plagiarism of parts of my doctoral thesis.
While reading on the internet, I read with assiduity your site and your recommendations.
So I will quickly summarize my situation.
I did a thesis in medical physics at the university Paris xxx/Paris xxx in a laboratory of the XXX between 2014 and 2017.
During this period I worked on several projects. One in particular led me to train and supervise a new PhD student, for almost 2 years, whose project was the exclusive thesis subject.
My thesis went very well, I defended in October 201x and my thesis was published on the national digital databases in early 201x.
I then went to study medicine in the provinces and I am pursuing a punctual academic research activity with another lab.
I have always remained on very good terms with the researchers in my thesis lab.
The PhD student I trained recently published an article with his results. The results were obtained in large part thanks to my technical developments in my thesis. Without them he would not have had any results, because what I did allowed him to acquire the data and to perform the preliminary processing for the analysis.
The paper was reviewed and required some corrections before acceptance for publication.
At the time of its acceptance the thesis director who was my supervisor asked all the co-authors to be able to add 3 people to the paper.
People I did not know about in the project or the contribution and that he did not explain. My position on the paper was 3rd author.
At the time of this situation, I wondered about the fact of adding like that a little at the last minute people on the paper. In the same way, I wondered about the part of my work in relation to my position.
Indeed, without my technical work to acquire the data and reconstruct them, there would never have been any results and therefore no paper.
So I asked the thesis supervisor if it was possible for me to be a co-author, which is common in many scientific communities and would have helped me in my career.
He refused with his arguments, which were orthogonal to mine. However, I tried to discuss it by e-mail without success.
That’s when I wanted to check a technical point in the recently defended thesis of the doctoral student I had trained and who was writing the paper.
After reading his manuscript, I first noticed that many illustrations came from my manuscript. Some of them I had made by drawing inspiration from literature, others, totally exclusive, and finally some of the results of my work.
These images had no link or reference to my thesis manuscript or any mention of my work to obtain them.
The text also appeared somewhat familiar to me, so I undertook a thorough reading which showed me that about 300 lines of 2 of the chapters of his thesis were copy-pasted to the nearest word of my manuscript.
Similarly, I noticed that more than 150 references in his bibliography came from mine, were not related to his thesis topic, but to mine, and were at no time cited in the body of his manuscript.
Illustrations are given in the attached letter, otherwise I have the files with my findings.
I therefore deduced that he had somehow had access to my sources of writing (text, images and bibliography) and had used them as he saw fit without any citation or reference.
As an additional problem, his thesis supervisor co-supervised mine and had proofread and corrected my manuscript. So he had both digital sources and a paper version and I think it unlikely that he ignored these facts.
So I immediately notified his thesis supervisor by copying my thesis frame and hoping to get his help. The context of the time meant that I had not yet accepted the addition of the 3 authors on the paper.
I found his reaction very violent, because : he did not recognize the plagiarism and just told me that he had warned the doctoral school and the university xxx and that he would meet them quickly to make “corrections”.
This behaviour seemed very serious to me, because he excluded me from the outset, even though I was the first one concerned, and he told me that he would meet with them quickly to make “corrections”.
This behaviour seemed very serious to me, because he excluded me from the outset, even though I was the first one concerned, and he announced that he was going to make “corrections” alone, which for me is akin to covering up the evidence of plagiarism.
It was on this occasion that he threatened to exclude me from the project if I did not accept the addition of the 3 other authors and confirmed that my position would not be changed.
Since this e-mail more than a month ago I have not been contacted by the doctoral school, by the universities concerned, or by him to keep me informed of the situation. This also worries me.
My thesis co-supervisor, whose help and support I was hoping to get, co-signs her email and hasn’t contacted me either.
I have therefore, following your recommendations and those of a university friend, contacted the Paris xxx office which deals with university ethics issues.
Again, it has been almost a month since I contacted them and I have had no answer.
Other academics I have contacted have urged me to go as far as filing a complaint in the face of this situation, which they find extremely serious.
I don’t necessarily want to go that far, but I feel that the situation compels me to do so.
Having never wished for this situation of course, I found myself caught off guard because I did not know what to do. Clearly what I want is for plagiarism to be recognised and mentioned other than by a small poster in a dark corridor.
The moral damage associated with all this is great, but not as great as the disappointment I feel about the situation.
I would like to thank you all for the recommendations you have published and which I have tried as far as possible to implement.
I am addressing my case to you, because it seems to me that you have a great interest in documenting these situations.
Please do not hesitate to contact me if you need any information.
AC, medical student and researcher, CHU de xxx, France
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