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Former Labour MP and maritime law lecturer Sandro Schembri Adami has sent an article on sea pollution to MaltaToday which is virtually totally copied from an official International Maritime Organisation document and two other sources.
The article called ‘Dumping at Sea’ and signed by ‘Dr Sandro Schembri Adami’ is in fact a collation of three different reports downloaded from the internet, with a couple of sentences adding a personal flair to the otherwise plagiarised text.
In fact, Schembri Adami did not even have the imagination to give a new title to ‘his’ essay. An official International Maritime Organisation report called ‘Dumping at Sea’ issued in July 1997 provides a good chunk of the paragraphs lifted by Schembri Adami. It can be downloaded from: www.imo.org/includes/blastDataOnly.asp/data_id%3D7576/dumpingfocus1997.pdf.
Another report plagiarised by Schembri Adami is a general article published on www.oceansatlas.com, also carrying the title ‘Dumping at Sea’.
A third uncredited source identified by MaltaToday was an official Rotterdam Municipal Port Management Report which can be downloaded from http://w3g.gkss.de/projects/loicz_basins/Rotterdam/rep_part_d.pdf.
After quick check on the internet, MaltaToday found out that eight out of 10 paragraphs submitted by Schembri Adami for publication were totally lifted from these three sources – a definitive confirmation of rumours about his plagiaristic tendencies.
The former MP makes no reference whatsoever to these publications in his article. At one point, what he describes as his “considered opinion” on the key environmental problems associated with the disposal of waste material at sea is in fact a whole chunk lifted from the IMO report. Even his concluding sentence is lifted word for word from the Rotterdam report.
When contacted for his comments, Schembri Adami said he had written the article on “information” passed to him by his own maritime law students.
“Well, that is the work my researchers provided me with,” the lecturer said unapologetically. “I have researchers who give me the information. I lecture at the International Maritime Law Institute, and students whom I lecture did the research for me.”
Asked why the article was signed under his name, when it looked as if at least 70 per cent of the document had been plagiarised, Schembri Adami said: “Well, I don’t know what to say, qalbi. Heqq, hux, don’t publish it.”
MaltaToday smelled a rat upon receiving Schembri Adami’s ‘opinion’ for publication, given that it was highly technical, academic, encyclopaedic, and short of a personal viewpoint that normally characterise opinion articles in newspapers.
On his own website, the law graduate and Notary Public by profession boasts of having “published a myriad of articles with and underlying socio-political theme” as well as “presented various research work and papers”.
There have been other occasions when Schembri Adami has been accused of plagiarising.
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