CHINA: Scandals have come thick and fast as Chinese professors try to win global kudos for coming up with new ideas, writes Clifford Coonan in Beijing
The headlong rush to add innovation to China's growing list of achievements has led to a spate of academic fraud in the country's top universities, prompting the government to step up efforts to stamp out the plagiarists and charlatans.
The scandals have come thick and fast as professors try to win global kudos for coming up with new ideas. This week, Tongji university in Shanghai sacked dean of biology Yang Jie for faking a ground-breaking paper on lung cancer. Mr Yang (49) was removed from the post of dean in March, but school authorities had previously told Chinese media the dismissal was due to his poor performance in administrative matters.
One of the tenets of Confucian philosophy is that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, but academics say fraud is undermining efforts by China to win an international reputation. China's enormous success in turning itself into the world's manufacturing centre is well known, but the government likes to stress the importance of innovation for future development and hopes to build a strong high-tech industry in coming years.
This focus on a technology-based future is of the chief reasons why Chinese government officials are so interested in Ireland's economic development.
Last month, Chen Jin, a professor at another top Shanghai university, Jiaotong, was fired for falsely claiming to have invented a new kind of computer chip, a Chinese 'superchip' called the Hanxin, widely heralded as real competition for Intel and other international manufacturers.
The American-educated Mr Chen was the former darling of the country's high-tech fraternity and the project had been heavily funded by the government, a major embarrassment.
The rash of scandals has led to much grumbling in China's academic community - a recent survey found nearly 80 per cent of top scientists thought China faced a "grave decline" in academic ethics.
In March, Liu Hui, a professor in the medicine department of Beijing's Tsinghua University was dismissed for faking his academic achievements and work experience. As many Chinese people have the same surname, he had simply appropriated research by another Liu and put it on his curriculum vitae.
This fact was pointed out on a website called "New Threads", which has exposed 400 cases of plagiarism and fabrication since 2000. While many scientists cry foul, no one has yet tried to sue Fang Zhouzi, the biologist who runs "New Threads", for libel, and the website has claimed some major scalps.
"When corruption or misconduct is exposed, relevant departments and universities should respond immediately and entrust a group of independent scholars to investigate. The process of any investigation should be transparent and those being accused should have the right to appeal," Fang told the China Daily.
In response to the scandals, the education ministry has set up a 30-member commission to curb academic fraud and plagiarism and mete out punishments for anyone caught cheating. Education minister Zhou Ji has warned researchers to strictly observe academic ethics or they will be "disciplined" and urged all universities to handle reports of fraud or plagiarism seriously.
In March, around 100 Chinese scholars published an open letter calling for a national supervision mechanism to stamp out academic plagiarism.
Under its latest five-year plan, China has pledged to spend 2 per cent of gross domestic product (GDP) by 2010 on research and development. Last year it was 1.23 per cent of GDP on R&D.
Professor Lu Yongxiang, president of the influential Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), said scientists need to be more self-disciplined. "Ethics education, checks and balances, and outside supervision are necessary to cure the disease," Prof Lu told the Xinhua news agency.
The inappropriate distribution of public funding for research was leading to deteriorating ethical standards, he said.
Academic rigour has been hotly debated in Asia since South Korean stem-cell scientist Hwang Woo-suk was found to have fabricated his published research.