Vishwa Jit Gupta, alternatively spelt Viswa Jit Gupta, or Vishwajit Gupta, (1942—2022) was an Indian paleontologist and former professor of geology at Panjab University, Chandigarh. He is reputed for research in the geological settings and fossil records of the Himalayas, publishing five books and 458 articles on the subject between 1966 and 1989. However, many of his fossils were revealed to be fake or manipulated, and he became infamous for large-scale scientific fraud, the case that came to be known as the Himalayan fossil hoax. Once recognised as "India's most celebrated fossil scientist", he has been named as "the greatest" and "most notorious paleontological fraudster" and "Houdini of the Himalayas."
Biography Gupta studied M.Sc. in the Department of Geology (at the time the Centre of Advanced Study in Palaeontology and Himalayan Geology) at Panjab University, Chandigarh. After enrolling in a doctoral programme under the supervision of Mulk Raj Sahni, he investigated on the fossils of the Himalayan region in Kashmir. He and Sahni published the first reports of fossils in 1964, the discovery of graptolites in two papers in Nature, and fossil assemblage in two papers in Current Science, and one in the Journal of the Palaeontological Society of India. In 1966, Panjab University awarded him a Ph.D. on the thesis Palaeontology, Stratigraphy and Structure of the Palaeozoic Rocks of the Area South-East of Srinagar. Gupta soon joined the faculty of geology and produced his first Ph.D. scholar Inder Jeet in 1972. Panjab University awarded him a D.Sc. in 1972 in recognition of his research, and created a separate chair, Director of the Institute of Paleontology, for him. By 1989, he published over 458 research articles and five books on Himalayan geology. Gupta collaborated with 128 eminent scientists around the world, including William B. N. Berry, Director of the University of California, Berkeley's Museum of Paleontology, Gerhard R. Fuchs of the Geological Survey of Austria, Philippe Janvier of the Museum of Natural History at Paris, John Bruce Waterhouse of the University of Queensland, Frank H. T. Rhodes from the University College of Swansea (later president of Cornell University), Michael E. Brookfield of the University of Guelph in Ontario, Makoto Kato of Hokkaido University, Andrzej Gaździcki of the Polish Academy of Sciences, Heinrich Karl Erben of the Institut für Paläontologie in Bonn, and K. J. Budurov of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences. Gary Webster at the Washington State University coauthored nine of Gupta's papers. With Susan Turner of the University of Newcastle upon Tyne, he reported in 1973 the discovery of the oldest (at the time) fish in India that belonged to Devonian. In 1989, Gupta was exposed as a research fraudster by Australian geologist John Talent of Macquarie University. In December 1990, the Panjab University received reports from the Geological Society of India and the Society for Scientific Values bringing out evidence of Gupta's elaborate misconduct. By that time, Gupta was professor of geology as well as director of the Institute of Paleontology of the Panjab University. Vice Chancellor Ram Prakash Bambah issued Gupta's suspension order in February 1991, but reinstated by a new Vice Chancellor T.N. Kapoor in January 1992. The University Grants Commission of India revoked its financial support to Gupta's lab. In 1994, the legal inquiry led M. S. Gujral, a retired judge of the Sikkim High Court, found him guilty of research misconducts, but the university Senate decided to allow him continuation of service. However, the university stayed his becoming a dean in 1994. He was allowed to retire "normally" with superannuation benefits in 2002. After retirement, Gupta focussed on environmental issues and wrote seven books on the subject.
Research misconduct
Gupta's publishing record based on work purportedly made over 20 years consisting of more than 400 research papers came under scrutiny after Talent researched his claims and work for nearly nine years so as to make a clear case of fraud. The discovery of the fraud began when Talent and John Pickett visited a road cut site in Nepal where Gupta had reported prolific numbers of Devonian conodont fossils. They found no fossils at nearly all the twenty sites he had mentioned but they found one site which yielded a fossil of a Silurian age. They subsequently chanced on his use of the same image in two papers and initially considered the possibility of an error through the addition of a wrong photograph. A more detailed examination showed that Gupta had used illustrations of fossils that were similar to specimens collected near New York by George Jennings Hinde in 1879. They interviewed coauthors, talked to Gupta on several occasions and made a detailed case after nine years of research accusing Gupta of willful and large scale fraud. Gupta attempted to respond to the claims with arguments from authority, noting the credentials of his co-workers. The case unravelled with several co-workers realizing that they had been misled and who had assumed good faith, overlooked obvious contradictions and paradoxical results which would arise from the claims made, particularly in assuming that Gupta had collected the fossils where he claimed they had been found. A range of other malpractices were also reported including the reuse of specimens from disparate locations, the use of a specimen that was found missing elsewhere, and plagiarism of images. John Talent received death threats from Gupta. In an interview to ABC he went on record to note that a technician in Gupta's department who threatened to reveal details of the fraud was reportedly killed in hit-and-run accident. Talent claimed that Gupta had offered money to hitmen to inflict injury on his enemies. The aged mother of one of the Indian co-authors of the report by Talent published by the Senckenberg Museum was hit and seriously injured in a road accident.
References
External links Thesis published under M.R. Sahni (1966)
