Why is it that Sethuraman Panchanathan became director of the National Science Foundation (NSF) after republishing work and passing it off as novel? And why did Victor McCrary become chair of the National Science Board (NSB)—NSF’s oversight provider—after he did the same thing?
Moreover, previous NSF Director Kelvin Droegemeier took credit for students’ work, and the paper of former Director France Córdova was retracted because it had already been published and copyrighted.
The list keeps going.
I reviewed the publication record of Diane Souvaine, who formerly served as the chair of the NSB. Souvaine’s papers have been flagged on PubPeer for exhibiting unethical practices. For example, most of her SIAM paper was copied from an earlier ACM-copyrighted paper. ACM supposedly requires that “copyright notice and the title of the publication and its date appear, and notice is given that copying is by permission of the Association for Computing Machinery.” Souvaine’s paper didn’t do that.
In another instance, Souvaine co-authored a Taylor & Francis (T&F) article that copied approximately half of the content from her previously published, sole-authored paper by the American Statistical Association. According to T&F, self-plagiarism is a type of plagiarism. T&F instructs authors to clearly mark copied text with quotation marks and to indicate the source within the text and in the “references” section. However, T&F permitted Souvaine’s paper to depart from this requirement.
She republished the content of her Springer-copyrighted paper on “Reconfiguration of connected graph partitions” as an Elsevier paper—without quotation marks, without including the original version in the list of references, and without indicating permission of the copyright holder. The Elsevier version made false and misleading representations that novel results were being presented “in this paper” when they had already been published earlier.
The Elsevier paper is even published on NSF’s own website.
[RELATED: MIT Prof Slammed for HHS Report on Gender Care—But Science May Be on His Side]
Souvaine’s paper on “Staged Self-assembly” was republished in its entirety under the same title without quotation marks and without citing the source. Publisher Springer requires submitted work to be original and instructs authors to avoid “self-plagiarism.” Springer tells authors to use quotation marks for verbatim copying of material and to secure permission for copyrighted material. This particular duplication earned two separate entries on page 10 of Souvaine’s curriculum vitae (CV).
Even an “erratum” received its own separate entry in her list. More errors apparently mean more publications.
Most of Souvaine’s paper on “Tri-Edge-Connectivity” was copied in her later article on “Augmenting the Edge Connectivity,” but without quotation marks or citation. The journal requests submissions of work that has not been previously published. Quotation marks and a citation would have tipped off reviewers that the work had been published before, so maybe that’s why she omitted them. Reviewers would not recommend acceptance of a manuscript comprised of obviously quoted text.
Souvaine republished her 2008 paper “Compatible Geometric Matchings” under the same title in 2009, without quotation marks and without including the original 2008 version among its list of references. The paper’s publisher instructs authors to write “entirely original works,” to cite their sources, and not to submit a paper that has been published previously. But different rules were applied to Souvaine.
Souvaine’s work was funded by NSF, which doesn’t permit plagiarism or falsification of novelty. Yet, nobody at NSF can realistically enforce these prohibitions, because NSF and NSB leadership accept the practices.
The Washington Post article “You Just Love That Film? Buy It Again!” describes this duplicative activity when selling reissued DVDs. The Post called it “the world of DVD double-dipping” and compares it to “platinum edition” republications of best-selling books.
NSF administrative specialist Faith Hixson is currently processing nominations for the next set of NSB members. I asked Hixson what plagiarism-detection software is used to check the publication record of nominees, but received no answer.
I also reached out to Sarah Kaczmarek, a spokesperson for the Government Accountability Office (GAO). Kaczmarek knows very well how to quote and cite a block of text properly. She did so herself in her 2011 paper about “the long arm of the law.” She placed shorter quotes in quotation marks, followed by a citation to the source as shown below.
Kaczmarek properly used block quotes for longer verbatim copying, followed by a citation, again, as shown below.
The GAO issued a 2024 report (GAO-24-106757) on “Actions Needed to Adopt Collaboration Practices to Address Research Duplication,” so they are fully aware that problems exist. In its report, the GAO identified two “disadvantages” of duplication: (1) it might not advance the research fields; and (2) it might not be an optimal use of funding. But the GAO did not contemplate any disadvantage resulting from misrepresenting old work as novel, violating federal copyright law, artificially inflating your publication count, falsifying credentials, or using public funds for these practices. The GAO report did not even suggest using plagiarism-detection software or searching on PubPeer to find evidence of publicly funded research misconduct.
Although Kaczmarek did not reply to my email, GAO director of media relations Brody Garner did, saying that “the scope of GAO’s work on research duplication did not involve examining research misconduct” and “GAO does not have a position on the issues raised in the article.”
[RELATED: Top NSF Officials Used Duplicate Research to Boost Their Careers]
Former NSB chair Souvaine lists several more “platinum edition” double-dips in her CV:
Reconfiguration of connected graph partitions via recombination;
The flip diameter of rectangulations and convex subdivisions;
Isoperimetric enclosures;
Bichromatic compatible matchings;
Disjoint compatible geometric matchings;
Bounded-degree polyhedronization of point sets;
Coverage with k-transmitters in the presence of obstacles;
A tight bound for connecting sites across barriers;
Planar minimally rigid graphs and pseudo-triangulations;
Depth explorer—a software tool for the analysis of depth measures.
Each of these titles appears in two different places in her CV. You don’t need any fancy software to spot them—just your own eyes.
Either the NSB members didn’t bother to look before voting for their chair, or they were perfectly happy seeing all the duplicates in Souvaine’s CV. In either case, it’s easy to see why the NSB doesn’t object to NSF officials who inflate their credentials by republishing work. The GAO doesn’t object either. And neither do the publishers, or the universities where these top science officials teach a new generation how to republish old copyrighted work as if it’s new.
Visit our Minding the Science column for in-depth analysis on topics ranging from wokeism in STEM, scientific ethics, and research funding to climate science, scientific organizations, and much more.
Image by Bayu on Adobe Stock; Asset ID#: 529337749
