University of Maryland President Darryll J. Pines has called for an independent review of his research following accusations that he plagiarized a research paper from 2002.

Pines said he doesn’t “believe there is merit” to the plagiarism claims, which were published Tuesday in and article in The Daily Wire, a self-titled “counter-culture” outlet.

The Daily Wire piece said Pines lifted 1,500 words from a tutorial website called “Surfing the Wavelets” and included them in an article he co-authored. The website was maintained by Joshua Altmann, a student at an Australian university at the time, and hasn’t been updated since 1996.

This isn’t the first time Pines’ name has appeared in The Daily Wire. On Sept. 9, the outlet said he used faculty research to defend his decision at the time to allow Students for Justice in Palestine to reserve the mall in the middle of campus on Oct. 7, but the research was copied from ChatGPT. And on Sept. 6, the outlet reported that Pines threatened to call the police on a Jewish woman who emailed concerns to the UMD Joint Presidential-University Senate Task Force on Antisemitism and Islamophobia.

“The Daily Wire does not claim to be without bias,” the website reads. “We’re opinionated, we’re noisy, and we’re having a good time.”

In an email sent by Pines to faculty and obtained by The Baltimore Sun, the university president said he’s “come under scrutiny and attack, both personally and professionally” for various reasons in the past year, similar to other university leaders in the country.

“I have always prided myself on producing the highest-quality scientific work in nearly four decades of submitting peer-reviewed research to academic journals,” Pines said in the email.

The Daily Wire said Pines and his co-author, Liming Salvino, used text from Altmann’s website in their 2002 paper, “Health monitoring of one-dimensional structures using empirical mode decomposition and the Hilbert-Huang transform,” without citing Altmann. Then in a 2006 paper titled “Structural health monitoring using empirical mode decomposition and the Hilbert phase,” the article claims Pines and Salvino used much of the language from their previous paper, including what came from Altmann’s website.

Pines has been on the faculty of the A. James Clark School of Engineering at UMD since 1995 and currently holds the role of Glenn L. Martin professor of aerospace engineering while serving as president of the university. He “immediately connected” with the co-author to review the paper, Pines said in the email. Salvino, the co-author, is an executive in residence in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Duke University.

“While I am steadfast that our results, data and findings are sound, I acknowledge recurrent language in the introductory sections,” Pines said in the email.

Introductions, background or methods sections in research papers can often fall outside of plagiarism, said Lauran Qualkenbush, senior director for research integrity and training at Northwestern University, as they can include general statements with commonly accepted phrases.

There’s a distinction between scope and severity levels of plagiarism, and context is important to consider, said Qualkenbush, who’s also president of the Association of Research Integrity Officers.

She said her colleague advised her to color-code things, and from there, it’s easy to see what’s been copied, whether it was a few words, a paragraph, a whole section or a chapter.

“Without the context of that, I think it’s hard to judge whether or not it’s actually plagiarism,” Qualkenbush said.

While she is not familiar with Pines’ case, Qualkenbush said often as high-profile individuals, university leaders face additional scrutiny.

The allegations against Pines come as other university leaders at institutions across the country have had their work called into question, often by groups who don’t support diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives.

Qualkenbush said plagiarism has been weaponized or used to attack people who research divisive issues or are in the spotlight on politically charged topics. When a group might not like certain research findings, they can try to discredit them with research misconduct allegations, she said.

“I think the same is true where we are seeing this with institutional leaders who have spoken out,” Qualkenbush said. “I mean, that makes them a target, and it makes them a target for anything. People are going to dig and dig and dig and look for whatever they can find.”

UMD policy requires the institution to “maintain high standards of honesty, accuracy, and objectivity in scholarly work” and prevent any scholarly misconduct. Alleged misconduct will be evaluated and resolved both quickly and fairly. Disciplinary and remedial action will be taken in response to any misconduct found.

Pines asked the Office of Research Integrity to begin an independent review, and the results will be shared with the Chancellor of the University System of Maryland Jay Perman.

“While I do not believe there is merit to these claims, an impartial review is in the best interest of the university,” Pines said in his email.