With the recent talk about how degrees don't matter and anybody can be somebody, it appears the National University of Singapore had already been there done that.

From 2005 to 2008, they hired Anoop Shankar, 39, as assistant professor with the Department of Community, Occupational and Family Medicine at NUS' Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine, even though he only had a master's degree in epidemiology from the University of North Carolina.

Shankar had apparently been working at a professor level until his cover was blown recently.

US media outlets reported that West Virginia University (WVU) handpicked him in 2012 for the first endowed position in a new School of Public Health, where he would have controlled millions of dollars in federal funding and research grants.

However, the made up credentials were exposed during a routine pre-appointment review by Dr Ian Rockett, who is chair of the promotion and tenure committee at the School of Public Health at WVU and a tenured professor in the Department of Epidemiology.

Shankar had claimed in his resume that he graduated from India's top medical school when he was 21, has a doctorate in epidemiology and was a member of the prestigious Royal College of Physicians. He had also supposedly been awarded a "genius" visa to America.

It is still uncertain what are the full ramifications of this expose for his former employer NUS.

But at least one NUS professor who worked with Shankar is feeling defensive.

From The Straits Times on Sept. 12, 2014:

Associate Professor Koh Woon Puay of Duke-NUS Graduate Medical School said she was taken aback by the allegations as she had not found any reason to question his credentials.

"Personally, I did not have any reason to suspect at that time that he was not trained in epidemiology or statistics to carry out his research," said Prof Koh, who stood by the three papers they had worked on together.

Here's the kicker though: Shankar was dismissed by WVU in 2012, but the school did not address the case publicly.

He subsequently still managed to find employment as an associate professor of family medicine at the Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) in Richmond and even published three papers in the last year, including one in the prestigious Journal Of The American Medical Association.

Shankar has since quietly parted ways with VCU. His whereabouts are unclear.

Top photo via NUS Facebook

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