Publication: Independent Online Issued: Date: 2007-05-22 Reporter: Amelia Naidoo

New Twist to Chippy Shaik Degree Row

 

Publication 

Independent Online
Date

2007-05-22

Reporter

Amelia Naidoo

Web Link

 www.iol.co.za

 

Top engineering professor Viktor Verijenko resigned from the University of KwaZulu-Natal on Monday, a day after allegations of plagiarism involving Chippy Shaik surfaced.

Verijenko resigned on Monday, but the letter had not yet been processed by the human resources department, said spokesperson Professor Dasarath Chetty. Verijenko had submitted it from Australia, where he is on a sabbatical.

The Sunday Times reported that he had helped to supervise Chippy Shaik's mechanical engineering PhD thesis in 2003. Shaik was a student at the former University of Natal and was alleged to have lifted parts of the degree.

'I want to emphasise that there has been no conclusion on the matter'

"I want to emphasise that there has been no conclusion on the matter. The university has not found that Shaik plagiarised his degree," said Chetty.

Nevertheless, UKZN Vice-Chancellor and Principal William Makgoba said in a statement that an investigation had been launched into the "very serious allegation that compromises the academic integrity of our institution".

"There is a prima facie case that has to be answered. However, the parties involved have not been afforded an opportunity to respond," said Makgoba.

The Mercury was not able to reach Verijenko to comment on his reasons for resigning.

Chetty said Verijenko's resignation would not hinder the disciplinary hearing that the university was undertaking. A panel of experts was being selected by Acting Deputy Vice-Chancellor Professor Isobel Konyn.

'Plagiarism is a growing problem in universities worldwide'

The initial investigations had been conducted by a UKZN professor of engineering and law, Chetty said. The findings had been presented to the head of the university's higher degrees committee, which had decided that a detailed investigation be launched.*1

"Plagiarism is a growing problem in universities worldwide, particularly as access to published work via the Internet increases. UKZN is no exception, and more students are facing disciplinary action now than in previous years," said Konyn.

She reported that a new policy on plagiarism was being drafted at UKZN to raise awareness about academic integrity and to ensure that appropriate action was taken when plagiarism was detected.

A task team was evaluating two of the leading anti-plagiarism software tools, Turnitin and MyDropBox. Most of the testing/evaluation had been completed and the task team would make a recommendation at the end of the week.

Anti-plagiarism software tools allow submitted papers or documents to be scanned for suspicious material and generates a report on content that could be plagiarised.

The technology works by creating a digital fingerprint of a paper and checks its patterns against the Internet, newspaper and encyclopaedia archives, as well as databases of previously submitted student work.

A report is produced that provides an overall score and, where appropriate, highlights matching text passages together with the source of the match.

Long-time adversary Dr Richard Young was the man who dug up Shaik's thesis and spent more than 150 hours and reviewed more than 1 000 pages in an attempt to prove that the document had been plagiarised.

The rivalry began when Shaik, as head of acquisitions for the department of defence, did not recuse himself from a tender process when his brother, Schabir Shaik, had interests in the Thomson Group and African Defence Systems (ADS). Young, who was the chairman of C2I2, a rival company that lost out to Thomson and ADS, threatened to sue the government because he was not awarded certain contracts.

The latest development is not the first trouble the Shaik family has had in academia. In 1990 Schabir Shaik, an electrical engineering student at the time, was caught cheating in an exam at the former M L Sultan Technikon in Durban. He was barred from the institution.

• This article was originally published on page 1 of The Mercury on May 22, 2007

With acknowledgements to Amelia Naidoo and Independent Online.


*1       This is the preliminary investigation by the University, which was sparked by the investigation and findings of an "outside agency".

Can an alumnus be described as an "outside agency"?