EYE ON PROFS IN RESEARCH ‘SCAM’
State officials are investigating whether CUNY professors improperly scored tenure and promotions by publishing research papers with the help of shady, pay-to-play companies, The Post has learned.
About a dozen educators at Queensborough Community College — including two department heads — are subjects of the probe by state Inspector General Catherine Leahy Scott, sources familiar with the matter said.
The investigation is also focused on “open-access” publishers, including the World Academy of Science, Engineering and Technology, sources said.
WASET hosts scores of events around the world each year, and is planning one in March in Miami, where it is charging academics close to $600 apiece to present papers for publication in a “Proceedings Volume.”
Participants can present additional papers for a fee of about $120.
WASET has been labeled a “scam” by the University of Toronto, which has warned faculty and students about the group’s conference there in 2015, and called a “known predatory publisher” by Science magazine.
One CUNY insider called the situation “extremely troubling,” noting that it’s “the same professors who are repeatedly doing it.”
“These are not one-offs that could possibly be chalked up to naive mistakes,” the source said.
The investigation is expected to widen and involve more professors at other CUNY schools, a source said.
A spokesman for the state IG’s Office confirmed it was investigating “academic integrity” at CUNY, and a spokesman for the university system said it was “cooperating fully.”
“CUNY faculty are awarded major research grants and prestigious honors year after year for the groundbreaking work they do. It is paramount that we ensure the integrity of that work,” said CUNY spokesman Frank Sobrino.
According to WASET’s Web site, David Lieberman, chairman of the Queensborough Physics Department, co-authored five papers that it published between 2008 and 2015.
The chairwoman of Queensborough’s Biological Science and Geology Department, Nidhi Gadura, co-authored three of those papers, and also authored or coauthored three others.
Almost all of the studies were partly paid for with taxpayerfunded CUNY grants. Lieberman was paid $188,839 and Gadura received $167,242 in salary and other payments during fiscal 2017, records show.
Both have tenure and are full professors, with Gadura promoted from associate professor this past spring, a source said.
One of Gadura’s WASET papers is titled “Different Roles for Mentors and Mentees in an e-Learning Environment” and in- cludes a chart that shows students overwhelmingly prefer doing their homework online rather than on paper.
Lieberman co-authored a study, published last year by a different organization, titled “Engineering Parameters of Musical Singing Aesthetics and Application to Affective Computing.”
That four-page paper claims to have analyzed a fragment of “the ‘Do Re Me’ song in ‘ The Sound of Music’ movie . . . to measure the musical singing aesthetics when the diva parametric values are taken as the gold standard.”
The WASET site does not reveal where it is based or who is in charge, but the site’s domain is registered to an address in Dubai and Science magazine has said it was founded and run by a former science teacher in Turkey.
Lieberman did not respond to messages sent by e-mail and left at his Northport, LI, home and on his wife’s cellphone.
A young man who answered the door at Gadura’s home in Hollis, Queens, said she would not comment.
The possible scandal is the latest at the CUNY system, which The Post revealed Sunday is under investigation by the IRS for providing free housing for Chancellor James Milliken and several college presidents.
CUNY has also come under fire for a series of controversial hires, including adjunct instructor Michael Isaacson, who was put on paid leave in September for tweeting that he considered it “a privilege to teach future dead cops” at John Jay College.