Desai - an Example to Us All

"It is now also claimed that the PhD was not only plagiarised but that some people at the LSE knew that it was so. As one of the two external examiners of the thesis, I can only say that we were never informed of this by his supervisors or anyone else. " Lord Desai

There is a line by line demonstration of plagiarism in this dissertation. Any sane academic has been looking, never mind the academic who accepted to be an external examiner for this 'work' when so closely associated with both the research centre and the university of its provenance.

All PhDs are examined by those who, at least apparently, are equipped. Academics working in a particular field exchange papers, published and unpublished, attend conferences together, comment on each others' work, are trusted partners in exchanges of ideas and exploratory work-in-progress. They meet socially, their conversations often turn on the work that absorbs them - otherwise they would not be colleagues; and nor would they ever become senior enough and distinguished enough to be invited to examine a thesis. It may be an unpaid burden, but it is a bounden duty and an honour, to review the best work of younger scholars.

Desai bares himself in this disgraceful attempt to deny culpability:  either he is a fake who knows nothing and is wholly unconnected to the ongoing work in his field, expecting the candidate's supervisor or unspecified 'others' to draw plagiarism to his attention; or he failed in his duty as an examiner and was unfit for such a position.  As for the candidate's supervisor, all of this applies to him too, except that he should have been the first in line to stop plagiarism and question the candidate's suitability for continuance.  At least the Director of the London School of Economics had the decency to resign.  Pity the Council didn't follow his example.  As for Desai - it's another yuk.