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What amazed us was that this section described the protocol as “specially designed”, and carried
no reference in the entire section, implying that the protocol was specially designed by the errant
authors. The entire paper had no reference to our various publications on CHUF, no credit was
given and was therefore, implicitly and quietly, usurped (or stolen?) by the authors. We were also
amazed that the thorough refereeing process of a reputed journal allowed this to slip through,
even though two papers had already appeared in the same journal where this protocol had been
used and our paper appropriately cited. Our protest to the editors resulted in an Erratum (Sarkar,
et al., 2011b), but hardly anyone reads an erratum. I pointed this out to the editors, illustrating my
point with the examples already discussed here. The response was interesting because it agreed
that pointing out this type of omission in an erratum is less likely to be found and may even be
ignored by those who do find it. Was this an acceptance by the journal that the erratum would
only provide partial closure? As I have asserted earlier (Chaddah, 2015), physicists often study
first order transitions that can be caused by two (or more) control variables; the self-explanatory
acronyms CHUP and CHUE would be used if the second control variable is pressure (as in liquid-
solid transitions) or electric field (as in dielectric transitions). More detailed discussion on this
protocol can be read in my recent book (Chaddah, 2018b). Would anyone give us credit when the
analogous protocols like CHUP and CHUE are used?

A Proposal for Ensuring “Complete Closure”

What are the issues if a victim gets only partial closure? I have described episodes that occurred
during 2001-2005, and during 2009-2011. We had obtained peer-reviewed corrections in 2005
(including an expression of regret) and in 2011 (including an explicit apology). I shall now describe
events that happened in 2012 and later, emphasizing that various other groups are still trying to usurp
credit for our original ideas.
In 2012, a group of researchers from institutes across the USA, Japan and Russia published a detailed
study of kinetic arrest phenomenon in a magnetic shape memory alloy (Monroe, et al., 2012). Though
kinetic arrest was referred to close to a hundred times in this paper, the manuscript has no reference to
our contribution. This was apparently noticed at the Editor office at some late stage, and two references
to our works appear as “Additional Relevant References” in the final print version. That these were
added as an afterthought is clear from the fact that these two papers are not cited in the text, and no
justification is given for listing these additional references. It is a conjecture that such heavy sprinkling
of “kinetic arrest” alerted some radar and some reference to our works was deemed essential.

What followed was unusual. Some of these authors were apparently unhappy in drawing attention to
our works, and giving us any credit! Three of these authors (viz. Umetsu, Kainuma, and Ito) were part
of a bigger group from Japan that submitted a paper within a few months of this episode, and this
was published six months after Monroe, et al. (ibid.). This later paper stated (Umetsu, et al., 2013),
“We have also observed the thermal transformation arrest (which was called “kinetic arrest” in our
previous papers) phenomenon.” It was obvious that they were changing the terminology with the likely
intention of not giving us credit. I recently saw a paper published almost four years later (Wakamori,
et al., 2016) titled “Thermal Transformation Arrest Phenomena in Mn Sb Sn ”, with Umetsu as one
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of the authors. The title makes clear that Umetsu is consistently following what was enunciated in their
2013 paper, and trying to stop the use of the term “kinetic arrest”, at least by researchers in his sphere
of influence! I wish to put on record that these researchers from Japan are the only ones that have tried
to rechristen the phenomenon. As is obvious from their having to cite many of our papers even in this
paper, the checks and balances in the peer review process have not allowed them to take away our
credit. But I cannot attribute this protection of our credit to any support from any Indian body.

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