方舟子的Blog

记者：Peter Ford
翻译：方舟子
《基督教科学箴言报》2009年3月23日

一所一流中国大学的三名教授——包括该国传统医学领域的一名顶尖专家——在一个新的剽窃丑闻中丢掉了工作。中国政府看来终于被促使要解决困扰许多教职员工的学术造假问题。

但是专家们对此拭目以待。他们警告说，在一个从运动服装到DVD的盗版都属于常态的文化中，想要除掉根深蒂固的学术习惯并不容易。但是也有人说，希望也许在于受过国际训练的新一代教师。

这一震惊中国学术界的最新造假事件的核心人物是享有名校浙江大学的药学副教授贺海波。他现在承认在送交国际期刊的8篇论文中存在剽窃或捏造数据的问题，并已被开除。同时被开除的还包括其研究机构的负责人。

这个事件之所以获得特别的关注，是因为一名中医药领域世界知名的专家李连达名列其中一篇造假论文的共同作者【译按：有误。李连达是贺海波所有造假论文的共同作者】。浙江大学校长说，李连达的聘用合同即将到期，他不再被续聘。

“这个迄今最大的学术丑闻肯定会唤醒人们注意到，中国大学正面临着诚信危机，”官办《中国日报》的社论说。

一个面向大学教师的网站的创建者方舟子说，学术造假在中国并非新鲜事；在过去的十年，丑闻时不时地发生，但是多数事件从未被曝光。

大学领导“根本就无视造假指控，或试图将其掩盖……为了保护学校的名声和利益，”方舟子在电子邮件中说。

耶鲁大学生态学和进化生物学教授Stephen Stearns在2007年在北京大学教过两个班级，他说，剽窃和赤裸裸的捏造在中国学术界泛滥，因为“至少直到最近，造假的回报很大，而对其处罚微不足道。它有利可图。”

Stearns教授对其中国学生造假行为的谴责曾被发表在互联网上，一度在这里引起轩然大波。

“中国大学的剽窃现象有悠久的传统，”Stearns上周在电子邮件中说。“有些中国教授实际上教他们的学生如何剽窃。”

方舟子密切跟踪他称为“学术腐败”的事件，把其泛滥归咎于以下这些因素相结合的结果：猖獗的资本主义让中国教育商业化；由于缺少言论自由，使得丑闻被遮盖下去；以及讲情面的传统。

其他人提出，大学根据发表的数量而不是质量来给教师提职称，这个政策也是一个因素。

“中国大学教师承受着发表论文的压力，”目前正在北京做研究的加州大学戴维斯分校博士候选人Jeremiah Jenne说，“最坏的情形是，这意味着匆忙复制并粘贴他人的工作。”

“在教授当中有很多装没看见的和事老，”Jenne补充说。“因此很多人抄近路，并且逃脱处罚。”

学术道德不过是中国社会道德的缩影，北京理工大学经济学教授胡星斗指出。“腐败和造假在中国非常常见，学术腐败和造假只是反映了社会状况，”他说。

胡教授补充说，众所周知，如果付给编辑们足够的钱，许多中国学术期刊将不经同行评议发表任何东西。

方舟子说，不管学术不端行为的原因是什么，它对中国科研的国际声誉的影响非常严重。他说，例如，“有些美国科学家拒绝为中国研究者提交的论文审稿，因为他们不知道能否相信其数据。”

Stearns说他及其在耶鲁大学的同事们“不相信来自中国教授的推荐信，因为我们知道它们中有许多是学生自己写的”，他们的老师不过是签个名。

不过，挽救中国学术荣誉的努力已经开始。例如，在上周，200所大学的教授得以无偿试用一个新的反剽窃软件，自去年12月以来，已有1000多个中国科学期刊在使用它。

同时，教育部在上周发布通知，要求大学严厉处理学术不端行为，并报告他们发现的所有事件。教育部建议的处罚包括从警告到采取法律行动，并建议应该收回剽窃者的研究资金，撤销其学术奖励。

通知警告说，教育部将在今年年终检查这些建议是否得到了实施。

据官方新华社报道，教育部发言人许梅说，“这些措施是为了建立一个长期防范机制，让学术界保持干净。”

方舟子怀疑这些努力是否会有效果。他指出，科技部在两年前建立了科研诚信建设办公室，但是还没有处理过一个案件。

浙江大学的中医药专家李连达教授用了科技部的资金做研究，但是科技部并未对他采取行动。

不过，Stearns看到希望不仅在于其中国学生（“当我给他们一个纠正的机会时，他们中几乎所有的人都照办了，”他在其电子邮件中写道），而且也在于新一代的大学教师。

“最近有一些具有国际水准的优秀学者由于看到了中国有前途而回到中国，并正在大大地提高中国的学术标准，”他写道。

这些归国者中包括饶毅，他原先在芝加哥的西北大学任教，在Stearns开始在北京大学教学时，他成为北京大学生命科学学院院长。

“我们将会重获长久以来就拥有的诚信传统，”在Stearns引爆了丑闻之后，饶教授在给他的一封信中如此誓言。不管谁违反“基本诚信准则”，他保证都会将其开除。

“这将会是一小步，”他补充说，“但是我希望这将会是我们许多人正在致力的更多变化的开端。”

China targets an academic culture of cut-and-paste
After a scandal highlighting rampant plagiarism, the government tries to rein it in – and a new generation of teachers trained abroad could help.
By Peter Ford | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

from the March 23, 2009 edition

Beijing -  Three professors at a leading Chinese university – including one of the country’s top experts in traditional medicine – have lost their jobs in a new plagiarism scandal. And the government finally seems to have been jolted into tackling the academic dishonesty that plagues many faculties here.

Experts are not holding their breath, though. In a culture where knockoffs are normal, from sportswear to DVDs, it will not be easy to expunge deep-rooted academic habits, they warn. But some say hope may lie with a new generation of internationally trained teachers.

The latest fraud to rock Chinese academia centers on He Haibo, an associate professor of pharmacology at the prestigious Zhejiang University. He now admits to copying or making up material he submitted in eight papers to international journals and has been fired, along with the head of his research institute.

The affair has drawn particular attention because a world-renowned expert in traditional Chinese medicine, Li Lianda, lent his name as coauthor to one of the fraudulent papers. His tenure will not be renewed when his contract expires soon, the president of Zhejiang University has said.

“This biggest-ever academic scandal is for sure a wakeup call that the Chinese universities are facing a crisis of credibility,” editorialized the state-run “China Daily.”

Academic fraud is not new in China; scandals have broken sporadically over the past decade, but most cases never come to light, says Fang Shimin, founder of a website for academics.

University leaders “simply ignore the accusation or try to cover it up … to protect the fame and gain of the university,” Mr. Fang said in an e-mail.

Sparking debate

Plagiarism and sheer invention have flourished in Chinese academic circles, adds Stephen Stearns, a Yale University professor of ecology and evolutionary biology who taught two classes at Peking University in 2007, because “at least until recently, the rewards were great and the punishment was trivial. It paid off.”

Professor Stearns sparked a firestorm of debate here when his admonition to his Chinese students about their plagiarism was published on the Internet.

“There is a long tradition of plagiarism in Chinese universities,” Stearns wrote in an e-mail last week. “Some Chinese professors actually teach their students to plagiarize.”

Fang, who closely follows cases of what he calls “academic corruption,” puts its prevalence down to a nexus of rampant capitalism, which has commercialized Chinese education; a lack of freedom of speech, which keeps the lid on scandals; and the tradition of saving face.

Others suggest that universities’ policy of promoting teachers according to the quantity, rather than the quality, of their published output plays a role.

“Chinese academics are under pressure to publish,” says Jeremiah Jenne, a doctoral candidate at the University of California, Davis, who is currently studying in Beijing. “In the worst cases that means slapdash cut and paste jobs on other people’s work.

“There is a lot of wink-wink, nod-nod amongst professors,” Mr. Jenne adds. “So a lot of people take short cuts and get away with it.”

Academic morals are simply Chinese society’s morals writ small, argues Hu Xindou, an economics professor at the Beijing Institute of Technology. “Corruption and fraud are very common in China and academic corruption and fraud just reflect the social situation,” he says.

The fact that many Chinese academic journals will publish anything without peer review, if editors are paid enough, is common knowledge, Professor Hu adds.

Whatever the causes of academic misconduct, the effects on the international reputation of Chinese research are terrible, says Fang. For example, he says, “some American scientists refuse to review any manuscripts submitted by Chinese researchers because they don’t know if the data can be trusted.”

Stearns says that he and his colleagues at Yale “do not believe letters of recommendation from Chinese professors, for we know that many of them are written by the students themselves,” and merely signed by their teachers.

Cracking down on plagiarism

But moves are afoot to try to salvage Chinese academic honor. Last week, for example, college professors at 200 universities were offered free trials of a new antiplagiarism software that more than 1,000 Chinese science journals have been using since December.

Meanwhile, the Ministry of Education published a circular last week urging universities to crack down on academic misconduct and to report all the cases they uncover. The ministry recommended punishments ranging from warnings to legal action, and suggested that research funds should be withdrawn from plagiarists and academic awards revoked.

The ministry will check at the end of this year on how well these recommendations have been implemented, the circular warned.

“These measures are intended to build up a long-term prevention mechanism to keep the academic field clean,” said Xu Mei, an Education Ministry spokeswoman, according to the official Xinhua news agency.

Fang is dubious about the value of such efforts. The Ministry of Science and Technology set up an Office of Scientific Research Integrity two years ago, he points out, but it has not handled a single case.

Professor Li, the Chinese traditional medicine expert at Zhejiang University, was using Science Ministry funding for his research, but the ministry has taken no action against him.

A new generation of academics

Stearns, however, sees hope not only in his Chinese students (”when I gave them a chance to clean up their act, almost all of them did,” he wrote in his e-mail), but also in a new generation of academics.

“There is a recently arrived group of excellent scholars of international caliber and international standards who returned to China because they saw its promise, and who are greatly improving academic standards,” he wrote.

One such returnee is Rao Yi, who taught at Northwestern University in Chicago before becoming dean of the College of Life Sciences at Peking University just as Stearns began teaching there.

“We will regain our long-held tradition of honesty and trust,” Professor Rao pledged in a letter to Stearns in the wake of the scandal he had started, promising to fire anyone who violated “basic rules of integrity.”

“It will be a small step,” he added, “but I hope that it will be the beginning of more changes that many of us are working on.”