Publication: Sunday Independent Issued: Date: 2007-05-27 Reporter: Noelene Barbeau

Academic Supervisor Defends Veracity of Shaik's PhD

 

Publication 

Sunday Independent

Date

2007-05-27

Reporter

 Noelene Barbeau

Web Link

www.sundayindependent.co.za

 

Professor Sarp Adali, the senior University of KwaZulu-Natal academic who co-supervised and acted as an internal examiner of Chippy Shaik's doctoral thesis, has stuck to his guns, saying that the degree was above board, and, "if anything, very good" *1.

He was speaking for the first time since allegations emerged that Shaik's 217-page mechanical engineering thesis was fraudulent and littered with errors, including incorrect formulations and poor spelling and referencing *2.

The most shocking claim was that large sections of the dissertation were plagiarised.

Shaik was awarded his degree at the former University of Natal - now the University of KwaZulu-Natal (UKZN) - in 2003. He was the government's former arms -procurement chief, and played a key role in sourcing suppliers for the country's controversial R65 billion arms deal.

Shaik's thesis was supervised by Professor Viktor Verijenko, the head of the school of mechanical engineering, and Adali, a former head of the school of mechanical engineering and now a senior member of staff, who also acted as an internal examiner.

Verijenko, on a year-long sabbatical in Australia, resigned from the university, it emerged this week.

UKZN said this week it was conducting an internal investigation into the allegations and was not prepared to comment at this stage.

A source at the university said both Verijenko and Adali had been sent letters informing them of a pending disciplinary hearing. But Adali said he had received no communication regarding plagiarism from the university and had been keeping abreast by reading the newspapers.

"I haven't received a letter, nor have I been asked to testify, but it could be another week or so before I'm approached," he said.

Adali found the claims of plagiarism "surprising", as he said Shaik co-authored conference and journal papers that formed most of his thesis. *3

"I don't know where these claims come from. I examined the thesis from cover to cover. Each chapter of his thesis had co-authored conference papers. Shaik had various co-authors. I was co-author on some of the papers and Professor Verijenko was co-author on all."

Adali said it was common practice for students to co-author papers with their supervisor. He also did not see a conflict of interest in the case of a supervisor acting as an internal examiner. Since Adali acted in both capacities, a third external examiner was used, instead of the usual two.

Richard Young, who has a doctorate in electrical engineering and is the managing director of an electronic engineering company that lost out on South Africa's arms deal, reportedly probed a library copy of Shaik's thesis. He claimed the thesis contained many errors.

But Adali has dismissed the allegations as exaggerated *4.

"I don't know what he's talking about.*5 There are bound to be spelling errors in a 200-odd page document and flawed calculations *6 can only be determined by an expert in that particular field."

Further intrigue emerged this week when it was alleged that Shaik's thesis was awarded despite three pages being missing from the document.

Adali rejected this allegation.

"This was a mistake… I read the thesis from cover to cover. An examiner's copy is different to that of the final copy *7… When his thesis was sent for binding, three pages were not included. The missing pages are in the examiner's copy."

Adali and Verijenko are also accused, in a separate inquiry, of misconduct in connection with a R2,4 million research project contract awarded to Verijenko by Spoornet in his private capacity.

In July last year, an internal university audit found that in 2003 a close corporation, of which Verijenko is a sole member, represented itself as an agent of the university and entered into the research contract with Spoornet.

"Using various research codes in the school of mechanical engineering, equipment valued at R620 000 was purchased by the school for the project," read the audit report.

Quotes for the equipment were allegedly made using the university's name and were used for reimbursement claims from Spoornet. This amount was included in the R2,4 million.

The report recommended that Professor Malegapuru Makgoba, the UKZN vice-chancellor, should take action against the people involved.

Apparently, none was taken.

With acknowledgements to Noelene Barbeau and Sunday Independent.


*1      If this is the standard of the new UKZN, then whoa.

This thesis as it stands in the UKZN library and microfiche archives is of a very poor quality and both copies in the University's academic repository of knowledge are missing three pages.


*2      The very least that the examiner's could have done if they thought the concept was good was have the 130 clear errors corrected by the candidate before resubmission.


*3      If Adali finds the allegations to be surprising, then he's going to find the disciplinary hearings and degree revokation tribunal even more surprising.


*4      These allegations are not in the slightest bit exaggerated. Apart from the errors of mathematical formulations, 130 clear errors of presentation is a dastardly amount.

A doctoral thesis should be passed for award with no more than a handful, certainly less than five (5). Anymore should be corrected and the thesis resubmitted for examination. Even if there were less than the handful of errors, these should at least be corrected on the library and microfiche copies as they are part of the academic repository of the institution of higher learning.


*5      He knows full well, or should do so, what I'm talking about - 3/4ths of 217 pages copied word-for-word from at least seven journal papers - while claiming that "this is my own unaided work".


*6      No one - so far - has said there are flawed calculations. Only that there are flawed mathematical formulations - which is something different.


*7      Nonsense.

The way it works is something like this :

Once a supervisor advises a candidate that their thesis is ready for examination, the candidate completes, checks and signs the declaration of the original of the thesis as well as formally advises the University of their intention to submit the thesis for examination.

The candidate then makes 7 copies of the thesis and has 5 of these bound. All seven copies are submitted to the Higher Degrees Committee which then issues one each of a bound copy to the supervisor, the three external examiners, internal examiner and the main reference library. The unbound copies are issued to the main reference library and the microfiche library. If the thesis is passed for award, the reference library categorises and places on its shelves its bound copy. The unbound copy is microfiched (and probably sometime later destroyed). Only if a thesis is returned to the candidate for updates are the relevant pages updated and replaced (if the corrected pages are few in number) or the entire thesis replaced if it is effectively rewritten.

The point is that if two of the 7 copies has pages missing, then the chances are that all of the copies have these same pages missing, including those of the internal examiner and external examiners. This is the nature of photocopiers and automatic collators and where each copy is not meticulously checked (been there and done that).

In this case the co-supervisor is also the internal examiner and collaborator on some of the journal and conference papers. One of the external examiners is also a collaborator on some of the journal and conference papers. As such they would know that much of the content has simply copied, if not plagiarised, from other sources. Being too close to the action, it is highly likely that both the missing pages and the numerous presentation errors would simply "escape" their notice.


The bottom line is :

Do the combination of Shaik, Verijenko and Adali think that these highly unflattering allegations would have been made if there was not a deluge of prima facie evidence that :
• large tracts of the thesis (more than 2/3rds) are simply copied from a clutch of journal papers;
• even if certain parts of the copied portions are nor plagiarised, then this content is not the own unaided work of the candidate as attested in the candidate's signed declaration contained within the thesis;
• that the quality of the presentation is far lower than that normally expected of a world-class Top 500 university;
• that there was 100% concurrence with the findings of the outside agency who reported this matter to the Higher Degrees Committee.