[ Bengia Ajum ]
ITANAGAR, 14 Nov: The geopolitical tension between India and China is starting to impact the scientific community.
Three Indian scientists – Dr Mukesh Thakur, Lalit Kumar Sharma, and Avijit Ghosh – were forced to withdraw their article from a China-based science journal as it mentioned the name of Arunachal Pradesh.
For long, China has been refusing to accept Arunachal as part of India and considers it as ‘south Tibet’. The article, on the white-cheeked macaque (Macaca leucogenys), was published in the journal Wildlife Letters, which is an international peer-reviewed journal and is published by the Northeast Forestry University in China.
Dr Thakur and his team’s paper, titled ‘Two Y chromosome lineages in white-cheeked macaque (Macaca leucogenys)’, was accepted on 14 February, 2023, and published online on 5 April, 2023, in the journal.
However, in the last week of October, the paper was withdrawn by the journal. In the paper, the Indian scientists’ team mentioned finding the white-cheeked macaque in Dibang Valley and West Siang districts of Arunachal.
On 26 April this year, Marcel Holyoak, co-editor in chief of Wildlife Letters, first wrote to Dr Thakur, saying that the journal is published in China and they are obliged to follow official Chinese maps and use of place names.
“Failure to do so could result in the removal of Chinese funding and create problems for journal staff. Either correct the paper or withdraw it,” Marcel wrote.
In his response, Dr Thakur expressed strong opposition to the decision to withdraw the article. He made it clear that “the decision reflects poorly on the integrity of the journal and its commitment to the academic community.”
“I did not budge and stood my ground. Publication of articles in a scientific journal should not be dictated by geopolitical issues. But sadly I did not receive enough support from the scientific community,” Dr Thakur told this daily.
First discovered by Chinese scientists in south Tibet, the white-cheeked macaque was later reported by Dr Thakur and his team from Dibang Valley and West Siang region of Arunachal.
“We carried out extensive research in the state. The state government, in particular the forest department, extended full cooperation to us. As per our finding, we saw similarity between the white-cheeked macaque found in south China and in Dibang. But those in West Siang are genetically different,” he informed.
Dr Thakur is the officer in charge of the mammal section of the Zoological Survey of India (ZSI). He has more than 100 papers to his name, and has been a recipient of several distinguished awards, including the DST Young Scientist (2013), the DST INSPIRE Faculty (2017), the INSA Medal for Young Scientist (2018), and the TULIP LAb Ex Fellow-France (2022). He had also served at the Chinese Academy of Sciences as a visiting scientist from 2015 to 2016.
