A 14-year-old girl from Maharashtra's Aurangabad, Diksha Shinde, who has been going viral on the internet after a news report claimed that she got accepted as a panellist for NASA's virtual Minority Serving Institution (MSI) Fellowships. The news report claimed that Diksha was accepted after the girl wrote a research proposal on 'Black Holes and God' last year for NASA. If the story sounds a little fishy to you, that's probably because several Netizens have pointed out that it is probably not true. "I wrote a theory on black holes & God. It was accepted by NASA after 3 attempts. They asked me to write articles for their website," she was quoted by news agency ANI.
However, a rudimentary check of NASA's website says that to be eligible for the Minority Serving Institution Fellowship, candidates must be a US citizen or a national and should hold a bachelor’s degree in an allied discipline at the bare minimum and be enrolled in a master's or doctoral degree programme and should intend to pursue research in a NASA-relevant field.
As a Twitter user pointed out, the certificate produced by Diksha as proof that her research proposal was accepted itself appears to be a forgery. Not only is the language suspect, but the design and signatures are also definitely causes for concern. "There is no designation such as CEO, President of NASA. The guy named James Frederick Bridenstine (also known as Jim Bridenstine) was NASA's administrator in Trump's Gov't. ANI has split him into two, Jim Bridenstine and James Frederick," he said in a tweet.
Apart from that, he pointed that the certificate is based on a ready-to-use template available on the popular design website Canva. The news agency also attached screenshots of what they claim to be official communication by NASA. However, there are several discrepancies and spelling errors in the mail. For starters, the mail was sent yesterday but the deadline for Panelists Online Review is July 9, 2021.
According to an article published in The Wire, International Journal of Scientific and Engineering Research (IJSER), in which the 14-year-old has claimed to have published a paper, accepts articles across multiple academic disciplines for a monetary charge — which by itself is seen as a marker of a fake journal. The article further states that there are many Indian names on the journal website that are affiliated to various colleges. The article suggests that often, the person who is submitting the research paper is unaware that the journal is fake. "In many cases, the articles are nonsensical. Many are plagiarised or are crude copy-and-paste efforts," The Wire article reads.
