The Serdang MP said UM must publish the full proceedings of its internal investigation into this matter and recommend changes to existing guidelines so that these kinds of cases do not happen again. — Picture by Choo Choy May

KUALA LUMPUR, July 25 — A DAP lawmaker has urged Putrajaya to review its academic funding policy following alleged academic misconduct with regards to a fraudulent research paper published by some members of Universiti Malaya’s (UM) medical faculty.

Serdang MP Ong Kian Ming said the fact that the fraud was discovered by researchers from other countries posed serious questions about the integrity of local varsities, and should prompt the government to review funding for all projects under the High Impact Research initiative.

“What is disconcerting is that this specific case may be the tip of the iceberg of what is poor academic integrity and honesty in our higher education system.

“I call upon the minister of higher education, Idris Jusoh, to conduct a comprehensive review of the High Impact Research (HIR) initiative between his Ministry and the University of Malaya,” Ong said in a statement.

“Given the large amount of funds dedicated to this initiative and that the fact that two of its research projects were found to be academically fraudulent, it is in the public interest for the funding for all the projects under this initiative to be publicly disclosed and reviewed,” the DAP lawmaker added.

HiR is a UM grant programme aimed at publishing science journals with an emphasis on fundamental research.

Last month, the Faculty of Medicine at UM was alerted to alleged academic misconduct on the part of some of its faculty members who were authors/co-authors of a number of scientific publications.

The university subsequently launched an investigation and found that “there was duplication and/or manipulation of almost all the figures (images and graphs) within the original Scientific Reports paper and across three other publications authored by the group of researchers” and called for the authors to retract all four articles.

The articles were subsequently retracted by the journals in question.

Ong said while the swift action by the university authority was commendable, it was concerning that the fraud was not discovered by an internal probe, but by the scrutiny of foreign academics and researchers.

The allegations were first highlighted on Twitter, and then picked up by blogs such as Microbiome Digest, For Better Science and Science.

The Serdang MP said UM must publish the full proceedings of its internal investigation into this matter and recommend changes to existing guidelines so that these kinds of cases do not happen again.

“In addition, UM should also disclose the exact nature of the punishment meted out to the researchers in question so as to send a strong signal to other faculty of the serious consequences of academic fraud,” he added.