Canadian academic researcher snagged for plagiarism

from article in the National Post titled Top Canadian scientist and award-winning student caught in ‘blatant plagiarism’ of text

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Dongqing Li, who holds a prestigious Canada research chair at the University of Waterloo, and Yasaman Daghighi, an award-winning student nearing completion of her PhD in engineering, have retracted a report about advances in lab-on-a-chip technology.

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“Plagiarism costs Canadian lab-on-a-chip researcher a paper,” the website says.

In a strange twist, it says that Li and Daghighi appear to have plagiarized the U.S. report before it was even published, then published their paper in a journal Li was editing.

“Daghighi was then his graduate student, and it’s pretty easy to see him assuring her of a plum publication,” Adam Marcus of Retraction Watch writes. “What’s less clear is how either of the authors might have gotten their hands on a pre-publication version of (the U.S.) paper that appeared in a different journal.”

“There are a lot of fishy aspects to the whole thing,” Martin Bazant, associate professor of chemical engineering and mathematics at MIT, said when contacted by Postmedia News.

Bazant, who heads a team that has made headlines for its work on lab-on-a-chip and advanced battery technology, was lead author of the U.S. paper. He says it was “blatantly plagiarized” by the Waterloo researchers.


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