Mansoor-siamak
Joined 4 March 2014
Latest comment: 10 years ago by Mansoor-siamak in topic Bullying
Welcome!
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Bullying
editI do know what it is like to be the target of bullying and harassment, and mine cost me a lot more that Dr. Arabnia's trouble will cost him. And mine came from inside a university. That letter you posted got to me because it reminds me of the kind of academic bullshit I have had to deal with in the past. They go on about how much information they obtained and how seriously they took it, but in the end really don't say very much, except for an ambiguous conclusion about "these allegations." Which allegations? The ones about Arabnia being a fraud and an academic criminal, or that some WORLDCOMP tracks have questionable review practices? They are not the same allegations. There is no debate that WORLDCOMP has published some plagiarized papers without realizing it. That may not be the crime of the century but at the same time, it's the job of the organizers to see that it doesn't happen.
WORLDCOMP has long had a reputation for questionable review practices, at least in some of the tracks. You may have been involved with one of the better tracks. But WORLDCOMP was one of the original "spamferences" that invited contributions via mass unsolicited email. Here are a couple of sites to check out: [[1]] [[2]]. Note the dates. Also note the links referenced have been taken down. I read them both when they were still up, and they were not flattering toward Dr. Arabnia. My point is that criticism of WORLDCOMP has not all come from this one individual you describe, although you may be right that most of it does come from his actions. In all fairness, though, WORLDCOMP is not the only conference that has come under attack for dubious reviewing. Again I think it is admirable you are so tenacious in your defense of Dr. Arabnia. 73.42.140.60 (talk) 12:04, 21 September 2014 (UTC)
- I am very sorry to hear that you were also a victim of harassment and cyber bullying. I know of two people that have been the victims of such unethical acts and one of them is Dr. Arabnia. In an interview (done by Red & Black newspaper), Dr. Arabnia said (paraphrasing), it is like being punched and kicked by an invisible person (at the time of the interview, he had not yet identified the individual who was sending the harassing emails and was creating web sites with factual fallacies); in the same interview, Dr. Arabnia said that eventually, I will be a bigger man when this sick person is identified. My heart goes to you and I am sure you are a bigger man/woman because of it. As a person who has been a victim, out of all people, you should understand about this whole ordeal (I thought). In any case, you mentioned and referred to mathforum listserv posting whose owner in 2007 had stated his list was spammed. I do not think that you can find any journal or conference that has not been accused on the web of spamming (eg. search for "ieee spam conferences"). In fact, today, I received three emails from computer.org inviting me to become IEEE member (one of the emails was sent to an email address that is hardly used). Science and research conferences, journals, and book publishers do send mass emails out inviting people to submit papers. Since year 2009, the associations that send such announcements, provide a link to unsubscribe. I receive about 30 conference announcements and journal special issue announcements daily - I have the option of unsubscribing but I prefer to receive them. In 2007 and before, not all mailers allowed seemless unsubscribing features - they all have that now. Having said the above: you are not going to find any conference, journal, association, science publisher that has not been accused of spam. in your message, you are also referring to anti-plagiarism-org; I am not sure how much credibility you can possibly give to such web sites. As I said in my earlier postings, an important part of cyber harassment and bullying includes postings to un-moderated listservs and blogs. This is an important part of pyramidal scheme to defame the character of people (posts by anonymous). The same blog is having a number of blanket statements accusing IEEE conferences to be fake. If you search for "fake IEEE", "fake acm", "fake IEEE Transactions", "fake XXX", you will find 1000's of such web sites popping up. In fact, if anything, worldcomp can claim that they are among the elite. My anonymous friend: you should not believe anything posted on such web sites (these web sites are created to either, bring down their competition, or defame the character of people). Their listservs and blogs post solely "unfounded accusations, half-truths, miss-truths, and down-right untruths" (I got this quote from someone whose name I have forgotten).
- In your post you refer to plagiarized papers being published. IEEE xplore (an important science indexing) removes/re-tracks about 120 papers a year from its database (according to various publications); Springer does the same every year as well as ACM and Elsevier (note that these are the most reputable and highly regarded science publishers in the view of CS and CE communities). As a computer practitioner and researcher, I do not wish to see any of the above associations or publishers to fade out because of plagiarism. A conference publishing a paper that was later found to be plagiarized says nothing about the quality of the conference (all publishers have published plagiarized papers). In fact, even one of the best plagiarism detection software is not usable in most cases (because of too many false positives) - I have used the software iThenticate (one of the best plagiarism detection software) for some years. In most cases, it is useless. It works reasonably well if the document is one/two pages long without elaborate graphics. In fact, in reference to the two plagiarized papers published in the proceedings, see the comments below (we received these comments from the steering committee but they were authored by Dr. Arabnia - I believe that all listed conference referees received this message; I received this in 2012):
- As far as the two papers that were found to contain plagiarism, I (as the main conference coordinator contacted the specific track's chair that handled the two plagiarized papers. These two papers were handled by a renowned British scientist (Full Professor in a reputable British institution who provided a letter) which states in relevant parts:
- Thank you for your email requesting me to investigate the 2 cases of plagiarism related to Worldcomp 2010. [M]y initial informal finding is as follows:
- The ICAI paper below:
- ICA2956:
- Knowledge Attribution To Intelligent Agents: An Approach Based on Logical Consequences by Syed Nabeel Al-Ghari and Mustafa Al-Saawi was submitted to our session web site. The paper was evaluated by two referees. The referees have recommended the acceptance of the paper with some (minor/friendly suggestions). The paper that was submitted for evaluation is in fact different from the paper that was uploaded to the publication web site at UCMSS for publication; hence the paper was accepted in good faith.
- The EEE paper below:
- EEE8314:
- Extended XML Query Language by Using Divide and Conditional-Join Queries by Muhammad Ismail Pasha was submitted to our session web site; The paper was evaluated by two referees. The referees have recommended the acceptance of the paper. Once again, the paper that was submitted for evaluation is different from the paper that was uploaded to the publication web site at UCMSS for publication; hence the paper was accepted in good faith.
- The author(s) of the two papers had also uploaded the same papers to the evaluation web sites of other tracks (as you know some authors do that to increase their chances of acceptance). The above was communicated to the conference to prevent duplication of efforts and avoiding duplicated publication. Both papers were in fact acceptable however as it was discovered post-conference; that they were identical copies of other published papers (i.e. plagiarised). As you are well aware, the referees judge papers based on content uploaded to the evaluation sites.
- Like most other conferences, the final camera ready versions of the papers are mainly checked for formatting, style, and examining the abstracts (a brief review process). It is obvious that the perpetrator(s)of such an unethical act submitted different versions of the papers to the publication web site (by using multiple plagiarised content from quality publications by various authors and using fictional author's names). I suspect this was an elaborated and premeditated act to undermine the conference. Clearly the aim of perpetrator(s) was to discredit the process. Unfortunately such a problem can happen to any conference regardless of the review process quality measures.
- There are many examples of such issues in academic conferences. Clearly the perpetrator(s) had a malice intention which I suspect goes beyond plagiarism. The extent of the latter is evident through multiple levels of plagiarism with deliberate intention of sabotaging your good name and plagiarism. The extent of the latter is evident through multiple levels of plagiarism with deliberate intention of sabotaging your good name and the good name of the congress. In such cases it would be very hard (or almost impossible) to detect the malpractice (i.e., submitting plagiarized paper for review with a false name and then submitting alternative paper as the camera ready paper with mix plagiarised content).
- Hence with confidence I can state that the current process of paper submission, evaluation and publication of Worldcomp is in line with academic conferences best practice. Therefore the above 2 anomalies only happen as a result of deliberate act of sabotage.
- I have a copy of the above letter as well as many other documents (affidavits, ...) that provide sufficient evidence showing factual fallacies mentioned about me and WORLDCOMP. In particular, I have documents showing: A copy of my letter to my Dean as well as supportive documents responding to the false allegations. This includes a copy of the Professor who was in charge of evaluating the said two papers (see above).
- As you can see, the papers that were evaluated and accepted were not the same as the ones that were uploaded to the publication web site for press. Whatever is uploaded to the publication web site is very briefly checked for typesetting, margins violations, readability of the abstract. I hope you see the elaborate scheme that was used by the person who has been harassing Dr. Arabnia. Later, it was found that the two papers that were uploaded to the publication web site were uploaded from an IP address which later was found to be the same IP address that the now identified person who has been harassing Dr. Arabnia had been using to create web sites, send emails, and post to blogs and listservs. I should also add that the two good submissions were accepted and their authors were given sponsorship (because they had claimed that they were students - i.e., no financial incentive to the conference, as far as the two papers were concerned.)
- I do sincerely hope that you begin to realize that all this are parts of cyber bullying and harassment. If Dr. Arabnia had felt that there was even a grain of truth in the postings, then he would have never taken the expensive step of hiring a cyber-investigative law-firm to first find the person sending lies about him and then hiring a law-firm in Ohio for having this sick individual's computers go through forensic analysis, and finally hiring a firm to bring the lawsuit against that person. In fact, if you check Dr. Arabnia's CV, you will find that now his research interests include "studying ways to promote legislation that would prevent cyber-stalking, cyber-harassment, and cyber-bullying". I think this is a worthwhile research roadmap.
- Thank you for listening and sorry that my reply ended up being long. Mansoor-siamak (talk) 16:35, 21 September 2014 (UTC)
- It's interesting to hear what you have to say. The truth is about all I know about it is what I've read online and some general rumors floating around. Why do you think all this has not been made more public? 73.42.140.60 (talk) 07:53, 25 September 2014 (UTC)
- Because there is a civil suit against the person who has been caught. There are many documents (100's) that have been and will continue to be used as evidence (in appendices/exhibits/...) in courts. Most documents cannot yet be released. I have been told that all these documents are in favor of Dr. Arabnia's case. What I posted above includes a very small subset of hard evidences. This person who has been harassing Dr. Arabnia by posting lies and factual fallacies about worldcomp had been impersonating a number of reputable scientists (I have even mentioned the names of a couple of them here) - ). You can contact them directly to convince yourself that the posts are nothing other than cyber bullying and harassment. I just found out that on July 14th, 2014, there was a 8 (EIGHT) hour deposition; the deposition was against the person who was posting lies about Arabnia (his family members were also questioned); the complete deposition is recorded/videoed by the court and also an official transcript is generated by the court; I have not seen the video nor the transcript. But my former HOD who has seen the first two hours or so, tells me that the Q&A is funny. The guy who had been posting lies, has already perjured himself multiple times in the deposition. Yes - I am sure that everything will be made public as soon as the court's decision is finalized. This may take a few more months (civil suites take years). Dr. Arabnia is also trying to encourage the law makers to update the laws to cover such unethical acts on the web as Federal Violation; currently, such acts are mostly civil cases. Have a wonderful day. Mansoor-siamak (talk) 11:33, 30 September 2014 (UTC)