方舟子的Blog

猖獗的欺诈伤害了中国科研的雄心

美联社  4月11日

Gillian Wong

（clark翻译）

（中国柳州）当中国的教授们要写研究论文评用来职称的时候，很多都会求助于卢克谦这样的人。

在一间狭小简陋的卧室里，以前也是学校老师的卢克谦正在他的笔记本电脑上工作——给教授、学生、政府官员和任何愿意付费的人代写论文，一般300块左右一篇。

“我的观点是为其他人写论文并没有什么错，”他说，“人都有需要其他人帮助的时候，即使我们伟大的领袖毛泽东和邓小平也需要代笔。”

代写、剽窃和结果造假在中国学术界是如此猖獗，以至于一些专家忧虑这会妨害中国为了成为科学领导所付出的努力。

共产党当局把科学视为中国现代化中的关键，而且近日要求今年用于科学技术的政府开支增长8%，达到1630亿元。

有报告表明中国在国际期刊上发表的论文数仅次于美国，居世界第二位。国营媒体最近都在为此欢呼雀跃，但并不是所有的研究都经得起检验。十一月，一份英国期刊一次性撤消了来自中国高校的七十篇论文，认定这些都出自两位主要作者的论文都属编造。

“在中国学术欺诈、学术不端行为和违反科学伦理很常见，”北京大学生命科学学院院长饶毅如是说。“这是个大问题。”

批评者将此归罪于无力的惩罚和基于论文数量而非质量的奖励系统。

Dan Ben-Canaan对于剽窃非常熟悉。

这位以色列教授曾在位于中国东北哈尔滨市的黑龙江大学执教九年。2008年一位同事向他索要他的一篇关于一个犹太音乐家1933年在日据哈尔滨被绑架的论文。

“他竟敢在我组织的一个会议上将这篇论文作为自己的文章提交，”Ben-Canaan说。“无耻至极！”

在另一起事件中，他把自己写的一些材料交给了一位来自鼎鼎大名的中国社科院的研究人员。他说当他收到一本这位研究员的著作时完全被震惊了——这本书几乎就是他所提供的材料的复制和翻译，却连一个字的感谢都没有。

发表论文的压力已经掀起了代写的高潮。来自武汉大学沈阳教授的一项研究表明，去年在中国论文代写的费用将近十亿，五倍于2007年的数据。

在柳州这个南方工业城市当中，卢克谦的公司就是提供这种服务的公司中的一家。他的“卢克学术中心”有其引以为豪的团队——由20到30个研究生、教授组成，所涉专业从计算机技术一直到军事领域。

58岁的中共党员卢克谦在网上通过聊天软件接洽顾客，其中大多数是急于晋升的学院教授和四处寻求帮助写论文的学生。他说，有一次，有一个班级的十个学生集体请求为他们代写论文。

“自己独立地做任何事情，理论上有可能，但实际上非常难，所以一个人总需要一些帮助。”卢说。“我就是这么看的，我也不知道对不对。”

甚至在卖论文的生意中，还是存在欺骗。武汉大学的研究发现，2007年所买卖的论文当中超过70%都是剽窃来的。

去年早些时候，网民发现安徽农业大学副校长在多达20篇论文中存在剽窃行为。学校将其撤职却还允许其继续执教。

同年六月份，广州中医药大学校长被指博士论文40%剽窃而来。

而今年三月，中国青年报报道一篇1997年的医学论文在过去的十年当中被反复抄袭。该报道说，两个学生用抄袭侦测软件发现至少来自16家机构的25人从中抄袭，随着调查的继续，更多的医生将会被点名。

方是民（方舟子），一位独立的欺诈揭露者，说他和网民每年都要揭露并在“新语丝网站”上公布一百起左右的学术欺诈案件。

“最常见的就是剽窃和夸大个人学术成就，”方说。

被英国杂志撤消的论文来自于华中地区的井冈山大学的研究人员。该杂志的编辑们还在检查来自同一学校的其他论文，并说将来还有更多的撤消。给这些论文的两位主要作者钟华和刘涛打电话、发电子邮件都没有得到回复。与该校的其他研究人员联系，也没有得到回应。

那本杂志，《晶体学报（E）》，发表晶体结构方面的新发现，大多数来自中规中矩的中国的研究。

“中国作者已经向《晶体学报（E）》提交了数以千计的高质量的结构，这代表了对科学的重要贡献，”Peter Strickland在电子邮件中写到。他是国际晶体学联合会下属杂志的执行编辑，《学报（E）》正是其中之一。他说这是第一次在联合会所有的杂志中都发现了造假的论文。

俄勒冈大学中国科学政策方面的专家Richard P. Suttmeier说这些问题可以追溯到上世纪80年代和90年代初中国在科研体系现代化方面的努力，当时研究的问责和评估制度还很薄弱。

在试图找到现成的成就评价标准过程中，中国模仿了西方的实践，开始注重高质量的发表，但结果好坏参半。

Suttmeier说，这些问题可能会伤害中国成为全球研究领导的雄心。

“我怀疑非华裔科学家会很少有兴趣和处于一种学术不端行为流行的文化之中的中国同事合作。”他说。

上个月，教育部发布了组建包含35名成员的监督委员会的指导意见。而且在一份对相关问题的传真回复中，教育部表示它已经要求各高校采取更为严厉的措施。

北京大学的院长饶毅仍然表示怀疑。

政府各部门乐于资助研究，但都不愿意监督，他说。“当局都不愿意扮黑脸。”

美联社调查员Xi Yue对此文有贡献。

网站：
卢克学术中心：http://www.luke99.com
新语丝：http://www.xys.org

Rampant cheating hurts China’s research ambitions

By GILLIAN WONG, Associated Press Writer – Sun Apr 11, 12:49 am ET
LIUZHOU, China – When professors in China need to author research papers to get promoted, many turn to people like Lu Keqian.
Working on his laptop in a cramped spare bedroom, the former schoolteacher ghostwrites for professors, students, government offices — anyone willing to pay his fee, typically about 300 yuan ($45).
“My opinion is that writing papers for someone else is not wrong,” he said. “There will always be a time when one needs help from others. Even our great leaders Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping needed help writing.”
Ghostwriting, plagiarizing or faking results is so rampant in Chinese academia that some experts worry it could hinder China’s efforts to become a leader in science.
The communist government views science as critical to China’s modernization, and the latest calls for government spending on science and technology to grow by 8 percent to 163 billion yuan ($24 billion) this year.
State-run media recently exulted over reports that China publishes more papers in international journals than any except the U.S. But not all the research stands up to scrutiny. In December, a British journal retracted 70 papers from a Chinese university, all by the same two lead scientists, saying the work had been fabricated.
“Academic fraud, misconduct and ethical violations are very common in China,” said professor Rao Yi, dean of the life sciences school at Peking University in the capital. “It is a big problem.”
Critics blame weak penalties and a system that bases faculty promotions and bonuses on number, rather than quality, of papers published.
Dan Ben-Canaan is familiar with plagiarism.
The Israeli professor has been teaching for nine years at Heilongjiang University in the northeastern city of Harbin. A colleague approached him in 2008 for a paper he wrote about the kidnapping and murder of a Jewish musician in Harbin in 1933 during the Japanese occupation.
“He had the audacity to present it as his own paper at a conference that I organized,” Ben-Canaan said. “Without any shame!”
In a separate case, he gave material he had written to a researcher at the prestigious Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. He said he was shocked to receive a book by the academic that was mostly a copy and translation of the material Ben-Canaan had provided — without any attribution.
The pressure to publish has created a ghostwriting boom. Nearly 1 billion yuan (more than $145 million) was spent on academic papers in China last year, up fivefold from 2007, a study by Wuhan University professor Shen Yang showed.
One company providing such a service is Lu’s, in Liuzhou, a southern industrial city. His Lu Ke Academic Center boasts a network of 20 to 30 graduate students and professors whose specialties range from computer technology to military affairs.
Lu, a 58-year-old Communist Party member, is approached by clients through Internet chat programs. Most are college professors seeking promotions and students seeking help on theses. Once, 10 students from the same college class put in a collective request for him to write their papers, he said.
“Doing everything on your own, independently, should be possible in theory, but in reality it is quite difficult and one will always need some help,” Lu said. “This is how I see it. I don’t know if it is right.”
Even in the business of selling research papers, there are cheats. Among the papers bought and sold in 2007, more than 70 percent were plagiarized, the Wuhan study found.
Early last year, Internet users found that the deputy principal of Anhui Agricultural University had committed plagiarism in as many as 20 papers. The university removed him from his post but allowed him to continue teaching.
In June, the principal of a traditional Chinese medicine university in the city of Guangzhou was accused of plagiarizing at least 40 percent of his doctoral thesis from another paper.
And in March, the state-run China Youth Daily reported a 1997 medical paper had been plagiarized repeatedly over the past decade. At least 25 people from 16 organizations copied from the work, and more doctors are expected to be named as the investigation by two students using plagiarism-detecting software continues, the report said.
Fang Shimin, an independent investigator of fraud, said he and his volunteers expose about a hundred cases every year, publicizing them on a Web site titled “New Threads.”
“The most common ones are plagiarism and exaggerating academic achievement,” Fang said.
The papers retracted by the British journal came from researchers at Jinggangshan University in southeastern China. The editors are checking other papers from the same institution, and say more retractions are expected. Calls and e-mails sent to Zhong Hua and Liu Tao, the two researchers named as lead authors of the papers, were unanswered. Other researchers contacted at the university too did not respond.
The journal, Acta Crystallographica Section E, publishes discoveries of new crystal structures, much of it from legitimate Chinese research.
“Chinese authors have submitted thousands of high quality structures to Acta E, which represent an important contribution to science,” wrote Peter Strickland, managing editor of Journals of the International Union of Crystallography, which owns Acta E, in an e-mail. He said it was the first time fraudulent papers had been found in any of the journals.
Richard P. Suttmeier, an expert in Chinese science policy at the University of Oregon, said the problems can be traced to China’s efforts to modernize its science system in the 1980s and early 1990s when research accountability and evaluation were still weak.
In trying to find ready measures of achievement, China emulated Western practices and began to focus on high-quality publications, but with mixed results, he said.
The problems could hurt the country’s ambition of becoming a global leader in research, Suttmeier said.
“I suspect there will be less appetite for non-Chinese scientists to collaborate with Chinese colleagues who are operating in a culture of misconduct,” he said.
Last month the Education Ministry released guidelines for forming a 35-member watchdog committee. Also, in a faxed reply to questions, it said it has asked universities to get tough.
Rao, the Peking University dean, remains skeptical.
Government ministries are happy to fund research but not to police it, he said. “The authorities don’t want to be the bad guy.”
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Associated Press researcher Xi Yue contributed to this report.
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On the Net:
Lu Ke Academic Center: http://www.luke99.com
New Threads: http://www.xys.org/