 | |  | |  | |  |
| Session that will be Proposed: Scholar Fraud in Archaeology |
Official website at http://www.ucd.ie/wac-6/index.html
Original idea: Lolita Nikolova
to participate e-mail to lnikolova@iianthropology.org (co-organizers of an eventual session, or co-participants in a group presentation)
Abstract:
The topic is a result of some most recent publications in which obviously purposefully the authors had hidden basic literature, misleading the readers,
misinterpreted scholar works and even published suspicious archaeological information. The occurrence has explanations that go beyond the ethical
rules of WAC and EAA while some of the authors are even members of these organizations. What to do and how to save the professional archaeology
from further scholar fraud? This question will be posed at WAC 7 hoping colleagues and non-archaeologists will help the tendency to be broken and
forgotten following the ethical archaeology only and developing the archaeological community as mutually respected ethical colleagues who
understand their complimentary role in the cultural development of the global world.
Reference to Academic Fraud
It starts from the student bench:
http://www.uottawa.ca/academic/info/regist/fraud_e.html
including misrepresenting an academic evaluation
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academic_dishonesty
Links:
http://iberry.com/cms/Fraud.htm
On this webpage will be gathered data about the topic. In preparations are data about the
following case studies under investigation but with clear signs of scholar fraud:
Bisserka Gaydarska and her book Landscape, Material culture and Society in Prehistoric South
East Bulgaria (BAR International Series 1618, 2007).
I am waiting for the response from Ms Bisserka Gaydarska to answer me the following questions
sent by e-mail on July 21st 2008.
Meanwhile immediate responses (July 23rd 2008) were received by Professor Robin Coningham
(the Head of the Archaeology Department at the University of Durham) and Dr Mark White (Active
Head of Archaeology Department at the University of Durham) who informed me that Ms
Bisserka Gaydarska was on field and would not be back before September when the case could
be researched. In second e-mail Professor Coningham did not answer the posed questions so I
am sending a letter via mail to make the communication more official and to get the answers.
My questions to Ms Bisserka Gaydarska>
1. Who is the responsible editor of her book?
2. Did she use my book "The Balkans in Later Prehistory" (BAR 1999). If so, why was it not cited?
If not - why if it covers her region of investigations and how she made the statement in p. 10:
Bronze Age investigations in Bulgaria suffer a great lack of general studies in comparing to the
preceding periods.
3. How does she understand ethics in archaeology?
4. Did I ever reject her any consultations about Bronze Age in Bulgaria? Did she ask me about
this period?
E-mails were also sent to the Head of the Department of Archaeology, University of Durham for
clarification of the case and for a commission who should compare both books Balkans in Later
Prehistory and Landscape, Material Culture and Society in Prehistoric South East Bulgaria and to
answer if the dissertation, respectively the book by Bisserka Gaydarska is as academic violence
(She e is honorary staff member of the Department of Archaeology that means that she has an
access to students) if the author obviously used the book but had not cited.
While we are waiting for a response from Durham, some points regarding the book that may
explain while the culmination is a scholar fraud:
While waiting for a response from Durham, we will make some points regarding the book of Dr
Bisserka Gaydarska (BAR 1618, 2007):
1. There are missing titles in the books which were either obviously read under the table, or
were not known despite are the most basic for the topic: the study on Balkan Prehistoric
chronology by Y. Boyadzhiev and J. Görsdorf, the big Doctor thesis of Anna Raduncheva on the
prehistoric society from Bulgaria, and most curiously – even my book in collaboration with
Cristian Schuster and Igor Manzura, The Balkans in Later Prehistory. Another comic moment - the
author states that Krassimir Leshtakov has just recently preparing study on Bronze Age while he
has a published comparative study for Southeast Bulgaria which is also on the list of the
obligatory references.
2. There are no correlations between the data from the variety of sources used which is
obligatory for any PhD thesis. The published pages are like pieces cut from different cakes and
put in a box – no homogeneous scholar story with theses, arguments and conclusions.
3. The goals and objectives in the book are not covered by the text and from the beginning they
look impossible to be realized.
4. There is missing a Catalogue in this book, which looks non-academic in light of the increased
request for high quality of the archaeological literature. It is just impossible a regional study
without a Catalogue of the sites.
5. I even could not find any map of the archaeological sites researched in the book. Some maps
include Cyrillic names of sites and cannot be correlated with each other even if you know
Bulgarian.
My first impression from the book by Dr Bisserka Gaydarska based on her PhD thesis:
When I am looking through the bibliography, I am feeling an idiot: a series of cited works from
books I collected, edited, did layout and even sponsored used by Bisserka Gaydarska, who after
all wrote in her book that in my academic products there are no new ideas. What have I been
writing then? And my most significant studies that include the region are missing in the
bibliography.
When I am reading the text, I am feeling even bigger idiot – I cannot find either a logical story or
strong arguments and cannot understand the meaning of so many sentences. Words, Words,
Words in combination with many poison arrows against respectful scholars. Is it really a book of
the 21st century when we need a strong academic knowledge and academic author positions? I
just cannot catch what has been going on in Durham.
Most important - I have to write a review. First I thought I would return the book, then I had got a
wise advice - to write a review, and later I figured out that I did not want to give even a penny for
this book - so I have been writing a review (since 21st July). (Lolita Nikolova)
What I do not consider as big mistakes in this book and will not mention in my review:
1. Small language mistakes since for Dr Bisserka Gaydarska English is a second language.
2. Some spelling of the names - for instance Séfériades instead Séfériadès. BAR accept camera
ready copies and there is no a editor of the text.
3. Some cases in which we can consider the stress as a factor for a mistake. For instance, in the
section of goal and objectives later follows goals instead. It could be not very well cognitive
knowledge on the difference between goals and objectives, but the stress factor may have
blocked some well known and easy for the author scholar statements.
Some draft comments from the pre-review analysis:
One of my conclusions reading the book: Theoretical templates applied meaningless or
ambiguously to some records.
Examples:
1. pp. 170-171 [Social practices where should be discussed the differences between the studied
regions]
p. 171 I could not understand well, but it was written that “…the two graves in MIBC2 have no
grave goods and only one of them has red ochre. But the latter [?] is only one [was this a mound
or what] that has a panoramic view over the Sokolitsa valley and can. Conversely, be seen
widely from there. Therefore, I would suggest that this [is] a symbolic link between the people
buried in the barrow, the people at the funeral and the living who either pass through or live in
the Sokolitsa valley.”
Comment: 1. There is no references to the initial statement “An important additional factor in
the mortuary practice is the landscape position of the mound”.
2. The paragraph cited is in a section “Social practices” and comes after of a series of
eyebrow-raising type statements including “apart for being a personal act of devotion, a burial is
also an important social act, since the community has lost a member” (p.171). There is a lot
written about the prehistoric burial, but such statement I have never read before. This is the
biggest problem in Prehistory on the whole: who buried the decease – the family member, the
household members, the clan, the segment of village or the whole village, or even members of
several villages (especially the people with high social status). Our modern knowledge refers to
the burial as a subject of a segment type of society grouping that could be based on different
criteria. I believe in Prehistory, in particular in Balkan Prehistory, the burial on the cemetery was
a social strategy for reinforcement of the community and in most case the whole village
participated in the last farewell of the deceased. But this is just my guess without strong
arguments. Some other can believe that it was a social strategy for reinforcement of the
household mostly in way in which possibly functioned the settlement burials. The tragedy in
Landscape... case is the author’s general thoughts coming from the contemporaneous world had
been applied to Prehistory in section, in which we finally wanted to have learned something
about the social practices in the three studied in the book micro-regions. The non-historical
technical term “commonly agreed standard” replaces the correct anthropological term
“tradition”. I believe the communities from the Balkans as elsewhere in Prehistory did not
practice standards in the burials like that of wake up, eaten and working, but they followed long
traditions in the burial practices. This tradition could be not within the understanding of every
person and not at all “commonly agreed standard”, but it was followed because was a cultural
tradition that required normative activities. My understanding is that when we do social
archaeology as specialists we need anthropological correct terms and concepts which often
differ from the archaeological terms and concepts. The so-called specific (personal) contribution
is in fact a element of traditions that can be traced but only if we study vaster region. In this case
a subject of interpretation is the burials related to the Pit Grave Culture burial tradition – any of
the mentioned elements are not unknown from other region (gold pendants, stone pebbles and
ash). But for any regional study the scholar needs a huge amount of mezzo- and macro-regional
knowledge in depth. Obviously Dr Bisserka Gaydarska either did not open or had no ability to
have read professionally even the cited in her monograph book of I Panayotov “The Pit Grave
Culture in Bulgaria” in Bulgarian)
3. After the above theoretical eyebrow-raising theoretical statement, followed the paragraph
already cited above. I put it ahead since its place is there. Is it some new? No, as application of
this common statement is very creepy. I really did not understand what has "only a panoramic
view over Sokolitsa", but such paragraph can be written by person, who did not work with
Tumulus burial mounds in depth. First of all, the tumulus is a landscape marker. It has been
erected to have been seen despite where it was located – on a river terrace, on a hill, over a
natural mound, or in a forest. Then, by definition the mound connects the buried, the ones who
erected the mound and the ones who would see the mound. Why should we suggest a symbolic
link if it in the definition of the mound. If it was a grave under the earth, it would be different.
In this paragraph we would want to see something different – who left these mounds in the
researched region – are they connected with a settlement or belonged to a mobile community?
The written is beyond the opportunity to be understood. “Barrow four and Kurdova mogila… are
in a special spatial location, which is equally accessible from the two valleys. This is he first time
in which equal accessibility from the Sokolitsa and the Ovcharitsa is attested, after a period when
the microregion was a zone dominated mainly by barrow”. Unfortunately, non-understandable
even for me but no chronology & no culture strategy of writing (because of obvious absence of
even average knowledge) create words, words, words and meaningless statements. Which was
the period before, which was the period of the talking about and after that?
What I know regarding the Early Bronze Age mounds is that they started widely in the second
half of the fourth millennium cal BCE in the region. They continued as a tradition which gradually
decreased in the Early Bronze III (later third millennium cal BCE). In the mounds there are many
secondary graves that can be dated up to Late Bronze Age. Since the author had been using
different sources with different periodization systems, she obviously forgot that in her book Dr
Bisserka Gaydarska cited the scheme of Y Boyadzhiev (p.3) in which we have Middle Bronze Age
(2550-2100 cal BCE) (my Early Bronze Age III). Why, then, the author compared Late Bronze Age
with Early Bronze and what does it mean on pp. 170-171 - Early Bronze? As the specialists well
know the tradition of the erection mounds decreased in Early Bronze Age III and the Late Bronze
Age follows the tradition of the Early Bronze Age III (a Middle Bronze Age according Y
Boyadzhiev) and presumably of the Middle Bronze Age (unclear what would be for Y Boyadzhiev
since there is a gap in this table. And even having in the researched region the Gulubovo tell (!),
Dr Bisserka Gaydarska was unable to have filled the gap by following other references). This
clarification has very important social applications, because for the social anthropologists it is
very important to know when we have tradition, and when we have innovations.
Vassil Nikolov and Culture and Art in Prehistoric Thrace (Letera, Plovdiv 2006)
Questions were sent to Letera Publishers but no response was received. On the phone on of the
clerks told me that the book by Vassil Nikolov was sponsored by Letera. We have been still
waiting for answer.
Martin Hristov and his publication in Archaeology about Dubene-Balinov Gorun
The story is very popular and well known from Corruption in Society.
to participate e-mail to lnikolova@iianthropology.org (co-organizers of an eventual session, or co-participants in a group presentation)
Abstract:
The topic is a result of some most recent publications in which obviously purposefully the authors had hidden basic literature, misleading the readers,
misinterpreted scholar works and even published suspicious archaeological information. The occurrence has explanations that go beyond the ethical
rules of WAC and EAA while some of the authors are even members of these organizations. What to do and how to save the professional archaeology
from further scholar fraud? This question will be posed at WAC 7 hoping colleagues and non-archaeologists will help the tendency to be broken and
forgotten following the ethical archaeology only and developing the archaeological community as mutually respected ethical colleagues who
understand their complimentary role in the cultural development of the global world.
Reference to Academic Fraud
It starts from the student bench:
http://www.uottawa.ca/academic/info/regist/fraud_e.html
including misrepresenting an academic evaluation
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academic_dishonesty
Links:
http://iberry.com/cms/Fraud.htm
On this webpage will be gathered data about the topic. In preparations are data about the
following case studies under investigation but with clear signs of scholar fraud:
Bisserka Gaydarska and her book Landscape, Material culture and Society in Prehistoric South
East Bulgaria (BAR International Series 1618, 2007).
I am waiting for the response from Ms Bisserka Gaydarska to answer me the following questions
sent by e-mail on July 21st 2008.
Meanwhile immediate responses (July 23rd 2008) were received by Professor Robin Coningham
(the Head of the Archaeology Department at the University of Durham) and Dr Mark White (Active
Head of Archaeology Department at the University of Durham) who informed me that Ms
Bisserka Gaydarska was on field and would not be back before September when the case could
be researched. In second e-mail Professor Coningham did not answer the posed questions so I
am sending a letter via mail to make the communication more official and to get the answers.
My questions to Ms Bisserka Gaydarska>
1. Who is the responsible editor of her book?
2. Did she use my book "The Balkans in Later Prehistory" (BAR 1999). If so, why was it not cited?
If not - why if it covers her region of investigations and how she made the statement in p. 10:
Bronze Age investigations in Bulgaria suffer a great lack of general studies in comparing to the
preceding periods.
3. How does she understand ethics in archaeology?
4. Did I ever reject her any consultations about Bronze Age in Bulgaria? Did she ask me about
this period?
E-mails were also sent to the Head of the Department of Archaeology, University of Durham for
clarification of the case and for a commission who should compare both books Balkans in Later
Prehistory and Landscape, Material Culture and Society in Prehistoric South East Bulgaria and to
answer if the dissertation, respectively the book by Bisserka Gaydarska is as academic violence
(She e is honorary staff member of the Department of Archaeology that means that she has an
access to students) if the author obviously used the book but had not cited.
While we are waiting for a response from Durham, some points regarding the book that may
explain while the culmination is a scholar fraud:
While waiting for a response from Durham, we will make some points regarding the book of Dr
Bisserka Gaydarska (BAR 1618, 2007):
1. There are missing titles in the books which were either obviously read under the table, or
were not known despite are the most basic for the topic: the study on Balkan Prehistoric
chronology by Y. Boyadzhiev and J. Görsdorf, the big Doctor thesis of Anna Raduncheva on the
prehistoric society from Bulgaria, and most curiously – even my book in collaboration with
Cristian Schuster and Igor Manzura, The Balkans in Later Prehistory. Another comic moment - the
author states that Krassimir Leshtakov has just recently preparing study on Bronze Age while he
has a published comparative study for Southeast Bulgaria which is also on the list of the
obligatory references.
2. There are no correlations between the data from the variety of sources used which is
obligatory for any PhD thesis. The published pages are like pieces cut from different cakes and
put in a box – no homogeneous scholar story with theses, arguments and conclusions.
3. The goals and objectives in the book are not covered by the text and from the beginning they
look impossible to be realized.
4. There is missing a Catalogue in this book, which looks non-academic in light of the increased
request for high quality of the archaeological literature. It is just impossible a regional study
without a Catalogue of the sites.
5. I even could not find any map of the archaeological sites researched in the book. Some maps
include Cyrillic names of sites and cannot be correlated with each other even if you know
Bulgarian.
My first impression from the book by Dr Bisserka Gaydarska based on her PhD thesis:
When I am looking through the bibliography, I am feeling an idiot: a series of cited works from
books I collected, edited, did layout and even sponsored used by Bisserka Gaydarska, who after
all wrote in her book that in my academic products there are no new ideas. What have I been
writing then? And my most significant studies that include the region are missing in the
bibliography.
When I am reading the text, I am feeling even bigger idiot – I cannot find either a logical story or
strong arguments and cannot understand the meaning of so many sentences. Words, Words,
Words in combination with many poison arrows against respectful scholars. Is it really a book of
the 21st century when we need a strong academic knowledge and academic author positions? I
just cannot catch what has been going on in Durham.
Most important - I have to write a review. First I thought I would return the book, then I had got a
wise advice - to write a review, and later I figured out that I did not want to give even a penny for
this book - so I have been writing a review (since 21st July). (Lolita Nikolova)
What I do not consider as big mistakes in this book and will not mention in my review:
1. Small language mistakes since for Dr Bisserka Gaydarska English is a second language.
2. Some spelling of the names - for instance Séfériades instead Séfériadès. BAR accept camera
ready copies and there is no a editor of the text.
3. Some cases in which we can consider the stress as a factor for a mistake. For instance, in the
section of goal and objectives later follows goals instead. It could be not very well cognitive
knowledge on the difference between goals and objectives, but the stress factor may have
blocked some well known and easy for the author scholar statements.
Some draft comments from the pre-review analysis:
One of my conclusions reading the book: Theoretical templates applied meaningless or
ambiguously to some records.
Examples:
1. pp. 170-171 [Social practices where should be discussed the differences between the studied
regions]
p. 171 I could not understand well, but it was written that “…the two graves in MIBC2 have no
grave goods and only one of them has red ochre. But the latter [?] is only one [was this a mound
or what] that has a panoramic view over the Sokolitsa valley and can. Conversely, be seen
widely from there. Therefore, I would suggest that this [is] a symbolic link between the people
buried in the barrow, the people at the funeral and the living who either pass through or live in
the Sokolitsa valley.”
Comment: 1. There is no references to the initial statement “An important additional factor in
the mortuary practice is the landscape position of the mound”.
2. The paragraph cited is in a section “Social practices” and comes after of a series of
eyebrow-raising type statements including “apart for being a personal act of devotion, a burial is
also an important social act, since the community has lost a member” (p.171). There is a lot
written about the prehistoric burial, but such statement I have never read before. This is the
biggest problem in Prehistory on the whole: who buried the decease – the family member, the
household members, the clan, the segment of village or the whole village, or even members of
several villages (especially the people with high social status). Our modern knowledge refers to
the burial as a subject of a segment type of society grouping that could be based on different
criteria. I believe in Prehistory, in particular in Balkan Prehistory, the burial on the cemetery was
a social strategy for reinforcement of the community and in most case the whole village
participated in the last farewell of the deceased. But this is just my guess without strong
arguments. Some other can believe that it was a social strategy for reinforcement of the
household mostly in way in which possibly functioned the settlement burials. The tragedy in
Landscape... case is the author’s general thoughts coming from the contemporaneous world had
been applied to Prehistory in section, in which we finally wanted to have learned something
about the social practices in the three studied in the book micro-regions. The non-historical
technical term “commonly agreed standard” replaces the correct anthropological term
“tradition”. I believe the communities from the Balkans as elsewhere in Prehistory did not
practice standards in the burials like that of wake up, eaten and working, but they followed long
traditions in the burial practices. This tradition could be not within the understanding of every
person and not at all “commonly agreed standard”, but it was followed because was a cultural
tradition that required normative activities. My understanding is that when we do social
archaeology as specialists we need anthropological correct terms and concepts which often
differ from the archaeological terms and concepts. The so-called specific (personal) contribution
is in fact a element of traditions that can be traced but only if we study vaster region. In this case
a subject of interpretation is the burials related to the Pit Grave Culture burial tradition – any of
the mentioned elements are not unknown from other region (gold pendants, stone pebbles and
ash). But for any regional study the scholar needs a huge amount of mezzo- and macro-regional
knowledge in depth. Obviously Dr Bisserka Gaydarska either did not open or had no ability to
have read professionally even the cited in her monograph book of I Panayotov “The Pit Grave
Culture in Bulgaria” in Bulgarian)
3. After the above theoretical eyebrow-raising theoretical statement, followed the paragraph
already cited above. I put it ahead since its place is there. Is it some new? No, as application of
this common statement is very creepy. I really did not understand what has "only a panoramic
view over Sokolitsa", but such paragraph can be written by person, who did not work with
Tumulus burial mounds in depth. First of all, the tumulus is a landscape marker. It has been
erected to have been seen despite where it was located – on a river terrace, on a hill, over a
natural mound, or in a forest. Then, by definition the mound connects the buried, the ones who
erected the mound and the ones who would see the mound. Why should we suggest a symbolic
link if it in the definition of the mound. If it was a grave under the earth, it would be different.
In this paragraph we would want to see something different – who left these mounds in the
researched region – are they connected with a settlement or belonged to a mobile community?
The written is beyond the opportunity to be understood. “Barrow four and Kurdova mogila… are
in a special spatial location, which is equally accessible from the two valleys. This is he first time
in which equal accessibility from the Sokolitsa and the Ovcharitsa is attested, after a period when
the microregion was a zone dominated mainly by barrow”. Unfortunately, non-understandable
even for me but no chronology & no culture strategy of writing (because of obvious absence of
even average knowledge) create words, words, words and meaningless statements. Which was
the period before, which was the period of the talking about and after that?
What I know regarding the Early Bronze Age mounds is that they started widely in the second
half of the fourth millennium cal BCE in the region. They continued as a tradition which gradually
decreased in the Early Bronze III (later third millennium cal BCE). In the mounds there are many
secondary graves that can be dated up to Late Bronze Age. Since the author had been using
different sources with different periodization systems, she obviously forgot that in her book Dr
Bisserka Gaydarska cited the scheme of Y Boyadzhiev (p.3) in which we have Middle Bronze Age
(2550-2100 cal BCE) (my Early Bronze Age III). Why, then, the author compared Late Bronze Age
with Early Bronze and what does it mean on pp. 170-171 - Early Bronze? As the specialists well
know the tradition of the erection mounds decreased in Early Bronze Age III and the Late Bronze
Age follows the tradition of the Early Bronze Age III (a Middle Bronze Age according Y
Boyadzhiev) and presumably of the Middle Bronze Age (unclear what would be for Y Boyadzhiev
since there is a gap in this table. And even having in the researched region the Gulubovo tell (!),
Dr Bisserka Gaydarska was unable to have filled the gap by following other references). This
clarification has very important social applications, because for the social anthropologists it is
very important to know when we have tradition, and when we have innovations.
Vassil Nikolov and Culture and Art in Prehistoric Thrace (Letera, Plovdiv 2006)
Questions were sent to Letera Publishers but no response was received. On the phone on of the
clerks told me that the book by Vassil Nikolov was sponsored by Letera. We have been still
waiting for answer.
Martin Hristov and his publication in Archaeology about Dubene-Balinov Gorun
The story is very popular and well known from Corruption in Society.
| The Seventh World Archaeological Congress 2012 |
To become a member of the World Archaeological
Congress go to the home page at
http://www.worldarchaeologicalcongress.org/site/hom
e.php
The friends of archaeology can help by donations
at
http://www.worldarchaeologicalcongress.org/site/don
ations.php
Congress go to the home page at
http://www.worldarchaeologicalcongress.org/site/hom
e.php
The friends of archaeology can help by donations
at
http://www.worldarchaeologicalcongress.org/site/don
ations.php
|