The fraud case of Xiao Chuanguo
By xysergroup | 2月 25, 2010
November 30, 2007
By Eddie
A Victory at Beijing’s High Court
In the morning of November 30, 2007, the People’s High Court in Beijing announced its final judgment on the libel case brought on by Xiao Chuanguo.
Just about a year ago, Science magazine carried an alarming report on Fang Zhouzi’s efforts and his setbacks. At the time, Fang Zhouzi was hit by three big libel cases in various courts in China, all brought by people he had exposed as fraud. The preliminary judgments had all gone against Fang Zhouzi. He was ordered by the courts to pay huge amount of fines, which, to this day, he has refused to pay.
One of the libel cases was brought by Xiao Chuanguo, a urology professor at Huazhong University of Science and Technology in Wuhan, China. Fang Zhouzi had previously exposed him for falsifying and exaggerating his resume and achievements. (The details of the case will be described later in this Blog.) Apparently, Fang’s effort dealt a fatal blow to Xiao’s chance of becoming an Academician in China, a prestige Xiao had openly campaigned for himself. Angered, Xiao sued Fang in Wuhan for libel. Last November, a judge in Wuhan ordered Fang to apologize publicly and pay Xiao $3,750 in compensation. Fang Zhouzi appealed and lost again. So far, he had neither apologized nor paid any money.
Not satisfied by the ruling in Wuhan, Xiao Chuanguo brought a similar libel case against Fang Zhouzi in Beijing in January. This time, he was much less successful. In May, Beijing Intermediate Court determined that Fang Zhouzi’s criticism of Professor Xiao did not constitute libel and therefore rejected Xiao’s case. Xiao appealed to the Beijing High Court. Today, Beijing’s High Court reached its final ruling. As such Fang Zhouzi won his first case.
Given that Fang Zhouzi had lost three other libel cases in China already and is currently defying court orders, today’s victory is a small but more or less comforting one.
The Origin of the Case
In September, 2005, the Chinese Academy of Science (CAS) announced a new slate of candidates for her prestigious Academician program. Almost on the same day, an alert New Thread reader reported that one of the candidates, Professor Xiao Chuanguo (肖传国), although nominated from the Huazhong Science and Technology University(华中科技大学) at Wuhan, China, actually holds a full-time faculty position at New York University (NYU). If so, he should not be eligible to become a CAS Academician.
Other New Thread readers soon joined in to dispute many of the critical accomplishments listed in Professor Xiao Chuanguo’s resume. On September 21, 2005, Fang Zhouzi published an essay in Beijing Science and Technology and summarized the major disputes surrounding Professor Xiao Chuanguo’s credentials:
1. Professor Xiao’s position at NYU had been an Assistant Professor up until recently (2005), not Associate Professor as he had claimed. Even then, he was promoted as a Clinic Associate Professor, not a tenured Associate Professor.
2. Professor Xiao’s resume claimed that he had published 26 papers written in English. However, there had been only 4 such publications. The others are abstracts submitted to conferences. There were only 9 citations to the 4 publications he had, hardly a laudable record.
3. Professor Xiao claimed that he had won a couple of highest awards from the American Urological Association (AUA) for his achievements. However, one of the awards was given for a conference abstract and the other unverifiable.
4. Most important of all, Professor Xiao claimed that his work resulted in a “Xiao’s Reflective Arc” procedure that is internationally recognized. In fact, he claimed that it was one of the very few procedures that were named after the name of a Chinese national. However, an extensive search of that term and its similar variations did not turn out any results. The so-named procedure could not be so recognized or acclaimed.
Professor Xiao eventually lost his bid to be elected as a CAS Academician. It is not known how much impact Fang Zhouzi’s essay had had in the matter. Nevertheless, Professor Xiao launched a series of lawsuits against Fang Zhouzi and the media that had carried Fang’s work, resulting in some very interesting, and even peculiar rulings.
Wither “International Journal”
When Professor Xiao Chuanguo was a candidate for an Academician post in Chinese Academy of Science in 2005, his resume boosted that he had published 26 research papers. These papers were all written in English, he claimed, apparently to enhance their credibility. After an extensive search in publication databases, Fang Zhouzi concluded that, at that time, Professor Xiao had only published 4 papers in “international journals”. The rest of them, Fang pointed out, were only abstracts submitted to conferences, whose inclusion as bona fide papers in the resume is one of Professor Xiao’s unethical practices.
The term “international journals” is widely used in China, to distinguish publications in domestic ones, which are not widely read and generally considered inferior as credentials for achievements. It’s not unusual for Chinese Academy of Science and universities to impose performance standards that included number of papers published in “international journals”.
Among the various disputes around Professor Xiao’s credentials, this one seems to be the easiest to decide. However, a judge in Wuhan presiding on Xiao’s libel case against Fang Zhouzi has other ideas.
During the proceedings in the Jianghan District Court, Xiao Chuanguo produced a different list of his publications as evidence that he had published more than 4 papers as Fang Zhouzi claimed. Indeed, this list includes 15 papers, and apparently none of them were abstracts for conferences.
Upon close examination, however, these 15 papers are entirely different from the original 26 Xiao had listed on his resume. Indeed, there is no longer any conference abstract in these 15. But 9 of the 15 were actually written in Chinese and published in Chinese journals, in direct contraction of his “written in English” claim accompanying the original 26.
Nevertheless, the presiding judge of the case, Luu Ying, ignored this detail and ruled that since these Chinese journals are publicly available internationally, they are also “international journals”. Therefore, Fang Zhouzi’s claim that Xiao had only published 4 papers in “international journals” is a falsehood.
This peculiar ruling raised many eyebrows in the academic circle in China and became a running joke. Unfortunately for many, Chinese legal system does not allow the use of legal precedent. Otherwise there could be a flood of lawsuits by people who had lost their positions due to their lack of publications in “international journals”.
In the meantime, the real issue, that Professor Xiao Chuanguo had used conference abstracts to inflate his original resume (which he had tacitly admitted by providing a different list in court), had fallen wayside and been ignored.
What Awards Had Professor Xiao Chuanguo Earned
In 2005, Professor Xiao Chuanguo boosted in his resume that he had won two big awards for his urologist research from the American Urologist Association (AUA): the Jack Lapides Award and an AUA Achievement Award. According to Xiao himself, these are the highest honors from AUA.
In his essay exposing Xiao’s resume-padding, Fang Zhouzi pointed out that Jack Lapides award is not an achievement award but an award for an essay contest. Xiao did not provide the exact name in English of the other Achievement Award name, so Fang searched for recent winners of AUA’s Achievement Awards and did not find Xiao in it.
During the libel lawsuit proceeding, Xiao presented his Jack Lapides Award certification. Although the certification clearly states “Jack Lapides Essay Contest … … Grand Prize Winner”, Xiao continued to claim that it is one of the highest honors in the urological field, that “only the most world-renown scholars had won this award.” Despite Fang Zhouzi’s rebuttal and without further investigation, the Wuhan Court sided with Professor Xiao.
For the other award, Xiao presented a different certificate, indicating he was the winner of “Pfizer Scholars in Urology Award” in 2000. This is certainly different from the AUA Achievement Award he seemed to have claimed in his resume. The “Pfizer Scholars in Urology Award” is an award sponsored by the Pfizer Inc. and given to many young researchers each year. It is not uncommon for this award being given to outstanding residents. It is hardly prestigious worthy of “highest honor”. What is more, it has since been discontinued.
In the Wuhan Court, Fang Zhouzi argued that this “Pfizer Scholars in Urology Award” is irrelevant since Professor Xiao had claimed in his resume as the winner of the AUA Achievement Award, which he certainly did not.
On this issue, the judge in the case pronounced: just because Fang Zhouzi failed to find Xiao Chuanguo’s name in the past winners of the AUA Achievement Award is not enough evidence that Xiao did not win the award. Therefore, the Court recognizes that Professor Xiao has won the AUA Achievement Award.
Just like that, Fang Zhouzi was pronounced guilty for libel.
What is “Xiao’s Reflex Arc”?
Professor Xiao Chuanguo claimed that the fruit of his research, the so-called “Xiao’s Reflex Arc” or “Xiao’s Procedure”, is one of the very few world-wide recognized surgical procedures that are named after a Chinese national. If true, it is certainly a remarkable achievement worthy consideration of Chinese Academy of Science’s Academician-ship.
However, after an exhausive search, Fang Zhouzi concluded that the terms such as “Xiao’s Reflex Arc” or “Xiao’s Procedure” do not exist in either medical literature or general information base. Indeed, up to today, a google search on these teams only turn up pages about Xiao Chuanguo vs. Fang Zhouzi libel case. Therefore, Fang Zhouzi accused that Professor Xiao Chuanguo had cooked up such terms on his own to gain fame.
On the web site of New York University, where Xiao worked during the period of dispute, it describes that Xiao “is actively engaged in pioneering research regarding creation of a somatic-autonomic reflex pathway for treatment of neurogenic bladder in patients with spinal cord injury.” The term “Xiao’s Reflex Arc” is nowhere to be found.
Today, we seem to know this much:
* In 1999, Xiao coauthored a paper describing a bladder reflex pathway in cats. This work was cited in Walsh Campbell’s Urology, 8th edition, 2002. Xiao uses this example to show recognition of his work, but he never mentioned the fact that the cited work is not on human, nor did he mention his co-authors. More importantly, nowhere in Urology, can the term “Xiao’s Reflex Arc” be found.
* The only occurrence of the term “Xiao’s Reflex Arc” is in a Chinese textbook, edited by Xiao Chuanguo’s thesis advisor Qiu Fazu（裘法祖）.
During the trial in Wuhan, the presiding judge ignored Fang Zhouzi’s plea that the validity of Professor’s work itself is not in dispute. The issue is whether the term “Xiao’s Reflex Arc” is an internationally recognized name for the work, as Xiao had repeated claimed. Instead, the judge declared that since Xiao’s research work is real. “Xiao’s Reflex Arc” must also be real.
Topics: Xiao Chuanguo |
9:22 pm on 3月 8th, 2010
[…] One of the most significant fraud case exposed by Fang Zhouzi was that involving Professor Xiao Chuanguo, a self-claimed world-famous urologist. The case first came to light in September, 2005, when Xiao Chuanguo was being nominated to become an Academician. Fang Zhouzi publicly accused Xiao Chuanguo for having engaged in various acts of exageration in his credentials. […]