A HONGKONG University reader yesterday began a bid in the Court of Appeal to clear his name after he was found to have plagiarised the research work of two colleagues.
Dr Lam Tai-hing was found to have copied a questionnaire that had earned Dr Linda Koo Chih-ling and Professor John Ho Hung-chiu an international reputation for research into the high incidence of lung cancer among Chinese women.
He was ordered to pay Dr Koo and Professor Ho legal costs of about $5 million incurred during six years of litigation.
After a bitter 46-day trial, Mr Justice Bokhary found in April last year that Dr Lam had breached his colleagues' copyright and made wrongful use of their confidential information in his own research.
Dr Lam and Dr Koo work in the department of community medicine; Professor Ho is a cancer specialist in the department of surgery.
Yesterday, Mr John Griffiths QC, for Dr Lam, said Dr Lam's career hung on the appeal. The High Court had levelled against him one of the most serious criticisms one could make of any academic - that he cribbed someone else's work.
