particlephysicist, e-mail: partphysdat@googlemail.com
The DESY webpage http://fh.desy.de/projekte/gfitter01/Gfitter01.htm is quite curious.
It is an official webpage of the Helmholtz centre Deutsches Elektornensychrotron DESY on the Gfitter project, but no one of expected links is pointing to it, see e.g. http://fh.desy.de/projekte/ or http://project-gfitter.web.cern.ch/project-gfitter/ or http://gfitter.desy.de/.
- added Aug 11, 2013 -
Search engines like Google do not point to the webpage, after 6 weeks of its existence. This could be intentional.
The webpage is an important document because it brings a momentum into the ZFITTER/Gfitter case. We had no more hope.
We cannot describe here the full history of the ZFITTER/Gfitter case.
In March 2011, ZFITTER authors discovered that substantial essentials of their scientific results (software and texts) have been copy-paste-adapted by Gfitter in 2006 to 2011. Non-authorized and carefully hidden. And used as it were Gfitter's own inventions. In about 30 publications of different importance, including a regular journal article and a diploma thesis (with distinction, Otto-Stern-Preis 2008).
ZFITTER contacted, on 3-8 March 2011, two Gfitter authors - Professor Johannes Haller of Göttingen University (now Professor at Hamburg University) and DESY Leading Scientist Klaus Moenig. These two denied all the observed facts and contacted immediately the DESY director of research Professor Joachim Mnich with a request of support.
According to the DESY regulations, what ZFITTER observed has to be considered a case of plagiarism.
Since then, ZFITTER authors accuse Gfitter of plagiarism and of violation of the ZFITTER authors' copyrights and its licencing, while Gfitter is publicly silent.
Members of the directorate of DESY defend the interests of Gfitter and consider the accusations against Gfitter as being wrongfully. Without taking notice of the evidence presented by ZFITTER to the authorities of DESY in March to May 2011, and later.
One has to recognize failures of
- a DESY ombuds investigation in April 2011 (reporting to the Board of directors: Professor Wilfried Buchmüller);
- an independent ZFITTER/Gfitter moderation in Zeuthen in April to July 2011 (reporting to Professor Helmut Dosch: Professor Thomas Naumann).
In this situation, ZFITTER decided to inform the public about the known details of the case.
Since August 2011, by http://zfitter.com and http://zfitter.com/zfitter-gfitter-03-2013.html.
In September/October 2011, Professor Helmut Dosch initiated a moderated contact of ZFITTER and Gfitter under his personal responsibility - and also failed.
Again the basic facts, now publicly available, were not taken into account.
The ombuds case A-43/2011 of the Ombudsman of German Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft DFG, initiated in November 2011 by the Representative of DESY, Professor Helmut Dosch, failed also, due to the non-cooperative behaviour of the parties and without proving the basic facts by a DFG investigation. (According to the Ombudsman, the rules of DFG do not foresee such an investigation.)
The ZFITTER spokesperson Tord Riemann was informed about this by an official letter on 3 July 2013.
What remains from the DFG Ombuds involvement is the arbitration award by DFG ombudsman Professor Löwer of 3 July 2012, publicly available in an English translation since February 2013 at http://zfitter.com/zfitter-gfitter-03-2013.html.
For what reason ever, the representative of DESY Professor Helmut Dosch decided to fulfill parts of the recommendations of the Löwer award by
- publishing the code of Gfitter01 (dated 21 June 2013);
- linking a list of references relying on Gfitter01;
- reproducing an independent expert's report on the amount of the 'integrations'
That's why there is the Gfitter01 webpage at DESY.
We cannot reproduce here the DESY directorate's decision of 28 March 2013 on the matter because the directorate declared the decision as being confidential on 8 July 2013. The copy of the document was retracted from http://zfitter.com, correspondingly.
The above is our answer on the question: "Why?"
There are also the questions:
- Why is the webpage on Gfitter01 authored by DESY, and not by Gfitter?
- Why did it appear just now?
- What do we learn from the webpage on Gfitter01?
Let us go through the questions and try to answer them.
Why is the webpage on Gfitter01 authored by the Helmholtz centre DESY, and not by Gfitter's authors?
The observation is correct: The webpage on Gfitter01 is authored by the representative of DESY, Professor Helmut Dosch.
We read:
"DESY takes responsibility for the publication of this version and this page."
According to DESY regulations, the content of a DESY webpage is due to the representative of DESY if no other author is named.
Evidently, the Gfitter collaboration was not willing to publish the 2006-2011 Gfitter version or to inform on suspicious details of the project.
Why did the webpage on Gfitter01 appear just now?
The answer is speculative.
The DFG Ombuds activity failed officially on 3 July 2013.
In fact it was earlier that Professor Dosch failed in trying to urge a fulfillment of the DFG Ombuds' award of 3 July 2012. The decision of the Board of DESY directors dated 28 March 2013 demanded a publication of the 2006-2011 version of Gfitter until 1 May 2013.
This publication was finally done by 25 June 2013.
What do we learn from the webpage on Gfitter01?
The following questions have to be answered:
- Who authors Gfitter01? This is left open at the webpage, but is known.
- Is Gfitter01 the questioned "2006-2011 version of Gfitter"? Not truly.
- Is the list of dependent publications complete? No, it is not.
- The DESY directorate's decision demands: "Die unter Verstoß gegen das ordnungsgemäße Zitieren von Zfitter entstandenen Gfitter-Beiträge sind im Netz ausdrücklich zu benennen." [The Gfitter contributions which are created by violating the rules of correct citation of ZFITTER have to be named in the internet.] Has this been done at the Gfitter01 webpage? No, not really and by far not completely.
- ZFITTER questions exclusively the Standard Model library of Gfitter, named Gfitter/gsm. Deviating, the webpage considers the complete Gfitter01 package. Why? We will try an answer.
- How should one estimate the professionality of the "independent expert's" expertise? As being extremely low, if the expertise is authored by an expert.
- Why are the ZFITTER text 'integrations' not considered? No idea. We will speculate on the answer.
- Did the DESY representative Professor Dosch respect ZFITTER's licencing and author's rights when publishing the webpage? No; these legal and ethical issues are known to him, but he did not respect them.
Leaving aside the questionnaire, our conclusion after a careful reading of the webpage http://fh.desy.de/projekte/gfitter01/Gfitter01.htm is as follows:
Undoubtedly, the DESY webpage on Gfitter01 proves that the Gfitter authors plagiarized the software of ZFITTER over a long term and with high intensity.
"Plagiarism" understood as defined in the Company Regulations of DESY, Appendix 5.
Plagiarized - by 'integrations' from ZFITTER into Gfitter in 2006 to 2011, and by never attributing this in the publications.
The Gfitter authors team stays silent until now.
We express our full respect against Professor Helmut Dosch for his decision to publish http://fh.desy.de/projekte/gfitter01/Gfitter01.htm, although his motivations and conclusions are more hidden than explicit, and the precision is not at the professional level.
The publication of Gfitter01.htm on 25 June 2013 is the first substantial step in the ZFITTER/Gfitter case since the first accusations by ZFITTER in March 2011.
We would welcome if the DESY representative Professor Helmut Dosch would initiate, finally, an open-minded dialogue with the ZFITTER collaboration.
This is timely since long.
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