方舟子的Blog

中国大学未能解决剽窃问题

记者：Yojana Sharma
翻译：方舟子
英国《大学世界新闻》2010年4月25日，第121期

　　中国大学未能打击剽窃，尽管教育部在一年前破天荒地发给他们一份通知，要求他们负责调查和处理泛滥的造假问题。

　　由于像方是民这样的敢说话的斗士的揭露，许多引人注目的案例才得以曝光。方是民以方舟子为笔名写作，用其受欢迎的新语丝网站揭露学术造假。

　　剽窃案例并不是由大学自己清除的，而是由个人报告给网上论坛或新语丝网站，然后由在美国受过生物化学训练的方舟子严谨地跟踪和审核。

　　但是，方舟子近年来披露的900多起学术腐败案件中，只有20起由大学做了处罚。受处罚的多数是学生，而不是教师，方舟子说。

　　新近暴露的剽窃和造假案大部分是科学方面的。但是中国文化杂志《花岗斋》的读者正密切关注一起文学剽窃大案，南京大学文学系教授王彬彬指控北京名牌大学清华大学汪晖教授剽窃他人的作品，未注明是引用。

　　学术界人士说，这个案子有意思的是，争论是由王彬彬本人公开挑起的，而不是由互联网上的博客写手或其他揭发者。

　　据爆出这个事件的《南方都市报》的说法，难得见到有人指名道姓地批评别人。

　　这一指控涉及汪晖研究中国经典文学巨人鲁迅的论文，该论文是1985年他还是南京大学的博士生时发表的【译按：此处有误，汪晖是中国社科院的博士生】，后来印成书出版。这个事件表明当局允许公开几十年前的旧案，试验剽窃指控能公开追溯到什么程度而不会危及大学的名声。

　　王彬彬与汪晖的争论被视为一个试验性案例，在一定程度上是由于它没有涉及到有可能败坏中国的国际形象的著名科研成果。

　　即便如此，对学者的剽窃指控还是很敏感的，《南方都市报》的记者发现在互联网论坛上某些关于这个争论的帖子被删掉，代以显然是故意要误导人的消息：“学术界已澄清了此事。”——这个对报纸报道的擅自改写在互联网上广为传播。

　　王彬彬与汪晖的争论的另一个不寻常之处是，其他学者公开地站队支持两人中的一个。媒体引用政府智囊中国社会科学院的一名研究员赵京华的话声称，被王彬彬认为是抄袭的例子属于“引用不当”。

　　“那是技术问题，不是不道德的剽窃问题，”赵说。

　　中国社会科学院最近告诉《南方都市报》它“经常遇到剽窃案”。

　　学术剽窃问题被归咎于中国在“学术规范”或什么算剽窃方面缺乏共识。有些学者甚至争论说采用西方标准将会“限制学术自由”，该报说。

　　另一个问题是学术界缺少西方机构具有的那种正式、严格的同行评议过程。

　　在几年前的一场突如其来的开除风波之后，近年来大学当局似乎没有胃口再对学术剽窃采取行动。

　　但是今年3月，在西安交通大学的6名教授反复地张贴致学校的公开信，并揭露该校李连生发表的论文并不属于其能量研究的专业范围之后，李连生被开除了。

　　这六名教授用实名揭露李连生剽窃他人工作的30个例子。一开始，他们遭到校方的反驳，但是在距他们首次指控两年多之后，李连生终于被开除了。

　　中国学者认为，大学难得执行制定的规章。方舟子说这个国家从来就没有严肃地对待剽窃问题。即便在学者遭到指控后，许多机构宁愿视而不见，也不愿意失去一个能够带来国际资金的著名研究人员。

　　由于特别关注中国在科学方面的国际名声，在英国医学杂志《柳叶刀》批评中国的科研造假，以及其他西方学术界的批评之后，教育部才给大学发了第一份关于处理学术剽窃问题的通知，其中包括要采取法律行动和开除肇事者。

　　去年3月份发出的通知要求大学为教师和学生办班“提高他们对学术规范的认识”。

　　“这些措施是为了建立长期预防机制让学术界保持‘干净’，”教育部发言人许梅当时说。

　　三年前科技部设立了科研诚信建设办公室，但是方舟子说，该办公室迄今没有调查过一个案例。他相信这些部定规章不太可能被执行。

http://www.universityworldnews.com/article.php?story=20100424180813702

CHINA: Universities fail to tackle plagiarism
Yojana Sharma
25 April 2010
Issue: 121

China’s universities are failing to crack down on plagiarism despite an unprecedented education ministry circular sent to them a year ago making them responsible for investigating and dealing with rampant cheating.

A number of high-profile cases have only come to light thanks to outspoken campaigners such as Fang Shimin* with his popular literary New Threads website written under his pseudonym Fang Zhouzi and used to highlight academic fraud.

Rather than being rooted out by the universities themselves, individuals report cases of plagiarism to online forums or the New Threads blog, which are then rigorously followed up and checked by Fang, a US-educated biochemist.

But of more than 900 cases of academic corruption highlighted by Fang in recent years, just 20 have resulted in punishment by universities. Most involve students rather than academics, Fang said.

The majority of plagiarism and fraud cases recently exposed have been in the sciences. But readers of a Chinese cultural magazine Granite Studio have been avidly following a major literary plagiarism case where Nanjing University literature professor Wang Binbin accused Professor Wang Hui at the prestigious Qinghua University in Beijing of stealing from other works without citation.

Academics say that what is interesting about this case is that the spat was brought into the open by Wang Binbin himself, rather than being by bloggers and other whistleblowers on the internet.

According to the Nandu Times, a daily newspaper which broke the story, actual instances of criticising someone by name are rarely seen.

The accusation relate to Wang Hui’s dissertation on the classic Chinese literary giant Lu Xun, published while he was a doctoral student at Nanjing University in 1985 and later published as a book. This indicates that the decades-old dispute is being allowed into the open by the authorities to test how far to allow plagiarism accusations to be aired without jeopardising a university’s reputation.

The Wang Binbin vs Wang Hui dispute is seen as a test case, in part because it does not relate to high-profile scientific research that has the potential to undermine China’s international standing.

Even so, in an indication of the sensitive nature of plagiarism accusations against academics, Nandu Times reporters found that some posts on the dispute in internet forums had been deleted and replaced with a message that was clearly intended to mislead: “Academic circles have already clarified this issue,” unofficial translations from the newspaper widely circulating on the internet state.

Another unusual aspect of the Wang vs Wang case is that other academics have openly weighed in to side with one or other of the two academics involved.

Zhao Zhinghua, a professor at a state-run think-tank, the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, was quoted as claiming that Wang Binbin’s examples of supposed plagiarism were “quotations with non-standard citations”.

“That is a problem of technique, not a moral question of plagiarism,” Zhao said.

The Chinese Academy of Social Sciences recently told the Nandu Times that it “often encounters cases of plagiarism”.

The academic plagiarism problem was attributed to the lack of consensus in China over ‘academic standards’, or what constituted plagiarism. Some academics even argued that adopting Western standards would “limit academic freedom”, the newspaper said.

Another problem is that academics lack the formal and rigorous peer review process in place in Western institutions, the Times said.

After a spate of sackings a few years ago, there appeared to be little stomach for action against academic plagiarism by university authorities in recent years.

But in March this year, Li Liansheng from Xi’an Jiaotong University was sacked after six of his colleagues repeatedly posted letters to the university and on the internet highlighting that the area in which Li had published was not within his area of expertise of energy studies.

Using their real names, the six professors exposed some 30 examples of Li plagiarising the works of others. At first they were rebuked by the university and it was more than two years after their first complaint that Li was finally sacked.

Universities rarely enforce the rules, according to academics in China. Fang said the country has never taken plagiarism seriously. Even when academics were implicated, many institutions turned a blind eye, rather than lose a high-profile researcher who could bring in international funding.

Concerned about China’s international reputation in science in particular, it was only after complaints by the British-based medical journal The Lancet about faked scientific results and complaints by other Western academics, that the education ministry issued its first circular to universities to deal with academic plagiarism, including taking legal action and sacking perpetrators.

The circular issued in March last year ordered universities to set up workshops for faculty and students to “improve their awareness of academic discipline”.

“These measures are intended to build up a long-term prevention mechanism to keep the academic field ‘clean’,” said Xu Mei, a ministry spokeswoman, said at the time.

Three years ago, the Ministry for Science and Technology established an Office of Scientific Research Integrity yet not a single case has been investigated, according to Fang. He believes the rules drawn up by the ministries are unlikely to be enforced.

* The ‘China Scientific and Academic Integrity Watch blog closely follows the work of Fang.