Amit Adlakha's revised thesis, shown here, was approved in 2007. Pages 9 through eleven are virtually identical to pages 9 through eleven in an earlier thesis written by MR Puneet.

Two former Ohio University engineering students told to rewrite their master’s theses were allowed to delete large portions of the texts and resubmit the remainder for credit.

One of the revised theses was re-approved without a literature review; the other contains two pages of text virtually identical to portions of another thesis.

Both students graduated from the Russ College of Engineering and Technology’s mechanical engineering program in the late 1990s. That program has been under scrutiny since 2004, when a graduate student discovered widespread plagiarism in numerous master’s theses.

Two university employees who investigated the problem concluded that “rampant and flagrant plagiarism has occurred in the graduate program of the Department of Mechanical Engineering for over 20 years.”

The university’s chief plagiarism investigator defended the deletions, saying he is more concerned with the academic integrity of the work than its academic quality.

Amit Adlakha graduated in 1997, the same year his thesis was approved by the university. Last year, following an investigation, a revised copy of his thesis was re-approved. A small section of the thesis was rewritten, 24 of the 85 total pages were deleted and at least one citation was added.

Two pages in the remaining text are virtually identical to pages in a thesis published by another student in 1991.Adlakha could not be reached for comment.

The Russ College now requires students to submit their theses, new and rewritten, to a computer program that compares them to other documents in an attempt to weed out plagiarism by revealing similar works.

Michael Prudich, an engineering professor charged with investigating plagiarism allegations, said it would be unusual, but not impossible, for the software to miss plagiarism in a rewritten thesis. He also personally reviews theses sent to the Academic Honesty Hearing Committee, marking suspect portions for review and comparing them with other works.

“Do I catch everything?” said Prudich, whose official title is interim associate dean for Research, Graduate Studies and Planning. “I don’t think so.”

Prudich said he could not comment on specific plagiarism cases, allegations, individual students and theses because of federal student privacy laws.

Tom Matrka, the graduate student who first discovered plagiarism in the Russ College and is now a full-time student at Ohio State University, discovered the similarity between the two theses. He also has raised questions about another revised thesis, which he said lacks a critical section.

Ram Kumar Reddy Ghanta, who submitted his original thesis in 1998 and graduated the same year, resubmitted his thesis with two missing chapters, an additional missing page and a reference page containing works not cited in the text.

A note in the table of contents reads: “Please ignore the page number and chapter number abnormalities. There is no missing content.”

Of the thesis’ original 83 pages, 35 are missing.

Ghanta could not be reached for comment.

Prudich, who must approve such deletions, acknowledged that a 35-page gap is unusual, but stressed he considers the academic integrity of the work more important than its academic quality.

“If there has to be a trade-off, that’s the trade-off we’ll make,” Prudich said.

The revised document also lacks a literature review, a standard part of a thesis that details relevant research in a field and lays out the intellectual foundation for the author’s own work.

Former students who would not benefit from rewriting a literature review are not forced to, Prudich said, adding that text unnecessary in the original thesis could also be deleted in a rewrite without problem.

“If the literature review were an integral part, meaning an intellectually integral part, we would expect it to be part of the rewritten thesis,” Prudich said.

It would be “unimaginable” that a current mechanical engineering student, writing his or her thesis for the first time, could avoid a literature review, said Gregory Kremer, chair of the Russ College’s mechanical engineering program.

“I can’t imagine a thesis that doesn’t require some kind of background evaluation,” Kremer said.

Peter Griffith, professor emeritus of Mechanical Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said it would be unusual for a thesis not to have a literature review or include references not referenced in the document.

“You should certainly have one before you finish,” Griffith said.

University officials have conducted three investigations into plagiarism in the mechanical engineering program. Among those who worked on the first two investigations were mechanical engineering professors who had approved theses later found to contain plagiarism. The third, conducted by university officials removed from the scandal, produced a report that led two mechanical engineering professors to sue OU for defamation.

As a result of the investigations, at least 18 former students have been told to rewrite their theses, and the university revoked one degree last year.