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A leading scientific journal in India has advised its readers to ignore
all the research papers it has published over the past 21 years by a leading
Indian palaeontologist. The work by Viswa Jit Gupta from Panjab University
in Chandigarh has been used by researchers around the world as the basis
for dating geological formations in the Himalayas.

The controversial move by the Journal of the Geological Society of India
is the latest chapter in a scandal that has rocked Indian science over the
past two years (see This Week, 29 April 1989). Two years ago John Talent,
from Macquarie University in Sydney, accused Gupta of misidentifying geological
formations in the Himalayas by deliberately using fossils that had been
found in other parts of the world. He said Gupta had created ‘a quagmire
of palaeontoligical disinformation’. In some cases, the specimens came from
shops selling rocks.

More recently, Talent has accused Gupta of ‘plagiarism’ by using drawings
and photographs of fossils from other scientists’ work in his papers on
the Himalayas. According to Talent, the illustrations are of fossils found
in Burma and Canada, not the Himalayas.

Gupta, who says the allegations are ‘baseless and mischievous’, has
threatened to take legal action against Talent.

At least three investigations into the Gupta affair are now under way.
The Geological Survey of India has asked its members to supply it with information
about the localities in the Himalayas where Gupta claims to have found his
fossils. The survey has also sent an expedition to several of the sites
to check the localities against Gupta’s descriptions. The Indian National
Science Academy has also investigated a site.

‘It is common knowledge in the Indian scientific community that the
localities are spurious,’ Talent said this week. The director-general of
the geological survey, D A Ray, said that it would be some months before
the survey will release a report on its investigations. ‘It is a very, very
sensitive issue,’ Ray said. ‘The professional integrity of some eminent
scientists is involved.’

With the help of stratigraphers and palaeontologists familiar with the
geology of the Himalayas, the journal examined 24 papers and nine conference
and book reviews by Gupta published between 1969 and 1988. In its January
issue, the journal said that this ‘detailed scrutiny’ lent support to the
accusations levelled against Gupta.

The ‘most glaring deficiency’, the journal said, was the absence of
precise information on the sites where the fossils were found. Checks in
the field by officers of the Geological Survey of India and some of Gupta’s
own colleagues have failed to reveal not only the fossils, but also the
rock formations be says are present.

‘It is obvious from the volume of evidence that has now been collected
that the fossil finds of V J Gupta are not reliable,’ says the journal.
Gupta, it says, had been ‘evasive’ and had not replied to requests to make
his fossil collections available for independent examination.

The society had no alternative but to recommend that ‘the incomplete
and doubtful’ fossil record as published be ignored until there was independent
proof of the existence of the fossils at the places stated by Gupta.

According to Talent, Gupta has at least 409 publications, including
five books. Most contain suspect data and interpretation of the fossil record,
says Talent. When Gupta started as a postgraduate student, according to
Talent, no one had worked in the same field in India for 50 years. ‘There
was no one to challenge him.’

The lesson, said Talent, was for scientists to acknowledge to themselves
when they should not referee a paper but pass it on to someone who was better
qualified. ‘A little modesty would help.’

Talent says that it is now up to Panjab University to investigate Gupta’s
actions but the university so far has been reluctant to order an inquiry.
The Journal of the Geological Society of India has also called on the University
to act. In the meantime, Talent says, the university’s reputation is suffering.