2008-02-29


Resolution

The University's Senate on the 27^th February 2008 passed a resolution accepting the recommendations of and reasons given by the Agriculture, Engineering & Science Academic Affairs Board ("AAB") that the PhD degree awarded to Shamim Shaik student number 961129282 be withdrawn.       


Reasons

The reasons for the AAB recommendation which were accepted by the Senate are :        

The Higher Degrees Committee accepts that the material from the 1987 book of Piskunov & Others is incontrovertible evidence proving that Shaik copied from earlier work and presented this as his own.
 
The committee does not accept the possibility that Shaik could have finished the work on chapters 2 and 4 by about June of 1997 during the seven months of being registered as a part time student, nor does it accept the claim that Shaik had finished the work for the thesis by 1998.  There is no evidence to support this claim. 
 
The committee considers the claim highly unlikely that Shaik had worked on this thesis since some unspecified time in 1995, before registration and approval of the topic.  No evidence has been provided to support this claim.
 
Looking at the various papers, related to the thesis and published between 1997 and 2005, in isolation there is no doubt whatsoever, that someone had plagiarised massively.  In the light of all evidence at its disposal, the committee accepts on the balance of probabilities that these papers do not reflect Shaik's own unaided work.

 
The committee concludes that Shaik committed plagiarism in chapters 2 and 4 of his thesis.
 
The evidence in respect of chapter 3 is slightly different.  In his reply to question 3.1 Dr Shaik states that his thesis does not address "...Orthotropic plates and shells under mechanical and thermal loads" thereby effectively excluding chapter 3 from his thesis.  This reinforces the evidence of plagiarism from the 1999 conference paper into section 3.3 of the thesis (see above).
 
The committee considers it unlikely that chapter 3 is Dr Shaik's own unaided work."
           

Due Process  

Your client was given the opportunity to respond to the allegations of plagiarism, which he did, and which were duly considered by the AAB in making its recommendations to Senate.         

Your client will shortly be provided with a copy of the final report prepared by the AAB and the slides from the PowerPoint Presentation made by a representative of the AAB to the Senate.