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News Focus
SCIENTIFIC MISCONDUCT:
Scandals Shake Chinese Science
Hao Xin*
A spate of misconduct cases may force China's scientific leaders to clean house or watch their drive for a more innovative society sputter
Figure 1 Golden. Shanghai's horizon reflects a growing ambition that powers China's investment in research and technology.
CREDIT: NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC/GETTY IMAGES
For more than a decade, the Chinese government has been heaping money and prestige on its academic community in a bid to gain ground in a global technological race. In this scientific Wild East, an unprecedented number of researchers stand accused of cheating--from fudging résumés to fabricating data--to gain fame or plum positions. Buffeted by scandals and an urgent appeal for action from expatriate scientists, top scientific leaders now acknowledge the need for change in a system notorious for its high expectations and scant oversight. "Too many incentives have blurred the reasons for doing science in some people's minds," Lu Yongxiang, president of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), told Science. "We need to improve our evaluation and assessment system to establish a better culture for R&D innovation."
The central government is taking the first tentative swipes at what will amount to a Herculean task. For starters, the Ministry of Education (MOE), which funds and oversees the nation's universities, last month issued ethics guidelines and formed a panel to police conduct in the social sciences. "Though it is difficult to ascertain the number of misconduct cases, the negative impact of these cases should not be underestimated," says MOE spokesperson Wang Xuming. CAS, adds Lu, "will do its best to improve oversight. Monitoring by society is also needed." Xu Guanhua, minister of science and technology, told Chinese reporters in March that "if academic corruption exists, then we will investigate every single case, thoroughly." That pledge notwithstanding, the Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST), with one of the largest portfolios, has not yet revealed how it plans to crack down on misconduct.
Figure 2 Back to basics. Incentives have "blurred the reasons for doing science," says academy president Lu Yongxiang.
CREDIT: TORU HANAI/REUTERS
Part of the challenge, observers say, is that science in China is acutely susceptible to influence peddling. Only a small percentage of R&D funding is awarded after Western-style peer review. Success often depends more on how well a scientist cultivates support from grant managers and politicians than on the quality of research.
In a milieu of unhealthy relationships, some question whether the government has the resolve to police the scientific community strictly. "Many leaders shield misconduct; this is a serious problem," says Chen-lu Tsou, a biophysicist at CAS's Institute of Biophysics. Adds Liu Jixing, a retired physicist, "Without fundamental changes, we won't be able to buck the trend of academic corruption."
Running to the ministries
When the late paramount leader Deng Xiaoping pronounced in late 1988 that "science and technology is the primary productive force," it was like firing a starting gun. Since then, China has steadily ratcheted up the emphasis on R&D and innovation, setting goals such as creating 100 world-class universities in the 21st century and having science and technology contribute to 60% of the economy by 2020. The central government's R&D appropriation has tripled in 10 years, from $3 billion in 1996 to $9 billion in 2006, with further increases planned for the next 15 years (Science, 17 March, p. 1548).
The infusion of new money, critics say, accentuated the shortcomings of a research funding system tailored to a planned economy and driven by top-down political decisions. One exception is the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC), which sponsors basic research and since its founding in 1986 has used Western-style peer review to administer grants. But its 2006 budget, $425 million, amounts to less than 5% of the central government's R&D spending. MOST will distribute around $1.7 billion this year, mostly for applied research at universities, CAS institutes, and occasionally, companies. The ministry relies on experts to choose and evaluate projects. "On the face of it, the process looks pretty good. But in reality, a small circle of stakeholders have already predecided where the money will go," asserts Tang Anguo, director of East China Normal University's Institute of Higher Education Research in Shanghai. MOST declined repeated requests for an interview.
Tang and others claim that although MOST says it relies on expert opinion in choosing which proposals to fund, grant managers can veto the advice of scientific experts, often citing political reasons for doing so. Compounding the potential for abuse, in the name of streamlining, MOST has slashed its in-house staff and now routinely borrows grant managers from universities, says Liu. This creates a group of scientists-cum-managers with potential conflicts of interest.
MOST research managers wield significant power. Universities have long been engaged in pao bu qian jin, a pun satirizing the practice of "running to ministries to get money." Professors' incomes are often tied to how much grant funding they bring in; they may take up to 40% as commission, according to grant-management documents of several universities. Last year, MOST issued a directive forbidding the use of grant money as rewards, but it is not clear whether it will stop the linkage of salaries to grants.
In return for their largess, managers demand quick results to demonstrate zheng ji, or administrative achievements, to higher-ups. "If you don't give them results in 3 to 5 years, your project is terminated," grumbles Wang Yiqiu, a former vice president of Beijing University. And results are often measured in numbers. Tallies of citation-indexed papers, by individual and by institution, have become a national obsession. Nanjing University was the first to use the number of papers published in journals covered by the Science Citation Index (SCI) to evaluate faculty members in the early 1980s, and the practice has spread widely. (The Institute of Scientific and Technical Information of China publishes annual statistics ranking universities by the number of papers and by citation rates.) To earn a master's degree, students at many universities must be first author of at least one SCI paper, and Ph.D. students need two. Many institutions hand out cash rewards--hundreds of dollars, scaled by the journal's reputation--for publishing an SCI paper (Science, 23 February 2001, p. 1477). The combination of pressure and incentives has nurtured an environment that's rife with simultaneous or serial duplicate manuscript submissions, self-plagiarized cookie-cutter papers, individual and institutional honorary authorship, and outright plagiarism, says Ouyang Zhongcan, director of CAS's Institute of Theoretical Physics.
Not surprisingly, quality suffers. According to CAS, although China ranked ninth in the world in 2004 in the total number of science and technology publications, it ranked only 124th in terms of the average number of citations per paper. Former CAS president Zhou Guangzhao has long criticized an overemphasis on SCI papers, arguing that it discourages long-term or risky work. The problem, says Ouyang, is that no one seems to be listening to Zhou.
Higher political attention to a lab or a project raises the likelihood of securing ample funding. For example, in early 2000, biologist Cheng Jing gave a talk to the State Council, China's cabinet, about the importance and applications of biochips, catching the interest of then-Prime Minister Zhu Rongji. The following September, Cheng founded a company, Capital Biochip Corp., with more than $30 million from the State Development Planning Commission (Science, 15 December 2000, p. 2061). Ministries also chipped in non-peer-reviewed support, validating a popular saying among Chinese scientists: "Big grants, no review; small grants, big review."
Figure 3 No more Mr. Nice Guy. Chinese scientific leaders tolerate misconduct--and that's a "serious problem," says biophysicist Chen-lu Tsou.
CREDIT: GONG YIDONG
The advantage of showing off political connections was not lost on another researcher, Chen Jin, who claimed to have designed China's first homegrown digital signal processor chips. The former dean of Shanghai Jiao Tong University (SJTU) had a picture hanging outside his office of Prime Minister Wen Jiabao on a visit when Chen's star was rising. Other photos on the lab's Web site trumpeted visits of a former vice premier, a former MOE minister, a current vice minister of MOST, and a vice mayor of Shanghai. Chen was fired last month, after an inquiry concluded that his chips were faked (Science, 19 May, p. 987).
The chip scandal illustrates many shortcomings of the system. When questions surfaced about the chips' authenticity, SJTU, fearing a blow to its own reputation, asked higher authorities to step in, sources close to the investigation told Science. They say two inquiries were carried out: first by the Shanghai government, then by MOST. The first investigation, they say, was inconclusive partly because city officials were looking for but did not receive clear instructions from the central government on whether to punish or spare Chen. As the Chinese media continued to scrutinize the case, the main sponsor of the research, MOST, launched a second inquiry that laid the blame at Chen's feet.
Some question whether the experts who evaluated Chen's inventions--and lauded the design as a "landmark" in China's chip-development history at the 2003 unveiling--should also bear responsibility. Politicians basked in Chen's glory when he was on the rise: Shanghai officials had organized news conferences to announce his inventions. And SJTU President Xie Shengwu eagerly took dignitaries on tours of Chen's lab. All of them are silent now. "Chen may not be as culpable as he is made out to be; he may very well be just the fall guy" for the system, veteran chip designer Alex Lee suggests. Lee worked in Silicon Valley for 20 years and was recruited in 2003 by Chen's second in command to teach at SJTU's school of microelectronics. Lee says that there are standard benchmarks for evaluating chips and wonders how experts could have been so easily fooled in the first place. He does acknowledge that "exaggerations" are widespread in academia.
War of words
Chen's case is one of several recent high-profile misconduct sagas roiling academia. In March, Qinghua University in Beijing fired an assistant dean of its medical school for falsifying work experience and achievements in his résumé (Science, 14 April, p. 193). A month later, Sichuan University in Chengdu absolved biophysicist Qiu Xiaoqing of a data-falsification charge (Science, 28 April, p. 511), although questions about the research persist. Recently aired allegations against other scientists are unresolved.
Figure 4 Wake-up call. A letter drafted by Xin-Yuan Fu (right) calls on leaders to create a fair and open system to probe misconduct allegations. Chinese academia is rife with duplicate manuscript submissions, honorary authorship, and plagiarism, asserts physicist Ouyang Zhongcan (above).
CREDITS: LI MING; (INSET) X. H. ZHANG
Concerned by the flurry of allegations and the government's reluctance to mount inquiries, 120 Chinese scientists, most of whom are based in the United States, called on MOST, MOE, CAS, and NSFC in a letter last month to "establish a fair, open and formal system for dealing with allegations of scientific misconduct and other issues related to integrity of research." They urged the institutions not to leave the pursuit of misconduct cases to the media (Science, 19 May, p. 987).
The letter unleashed a torrent of frustration and anger. A handful of prominent voices welcomed it. The letter "raises a very good issue," says Tsou. Others claim that the authors' prescription--a new system for addressing misconduct allegations--is naïve. Disciplinary rules exist, they say; the problem is that the rules are rarely applied. (An exception is NSFC. It established specific rules in 2005 for investigating alleged fraud in grant proposals and has prosecuted about three dozen cases so far. Punishment ranges up to indefinite debarment.) Anonymous postings on New Threads, a popular Chinese Web site for airing misconduct allegations, accused the authors of being out of touch with realities in their homeland.
Supporters of New Threads argue that official institutions can't do the job, so vigilante justice is needed. Letter drafter Xin-Yuan Fu, an immunologist at Indiana University School of Medicine in Indianapolis, believes that the Web site's popularity stems from the lack of an independent press in China. "People do not trust official media and look for alternative sources," he says. Many allegations posted are anonymous, and some are unfounded. Fu reiterates the open letter's recommendation that China establish a "rule of law" to safeguard research integrity.
Despite the mixed reaction, the open letter has reignited a debate about whether China's research system is in need of an overhaul. People may argue over whether the letter's suggestions can solve the problem of scientific misconduct, but they should keep in mind the common goal of a healthy academic environment, says Yi Rao, a neurobiologist at Northwestern University's Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago and a letter signatory. A "proper mechanism for handling misconduct allegations is a part of that environment," he says. "Officials need to show that they are more interested in building research infrastructure than controlling funds."
The government seems to be coming around to that message. Two days after the open letter, MOE issued guidelines on "strengthening academic ethics." And late last month, it announced the formation of a committee on discipline in the social sciences; in March, more than 100 social scientists had signed an open letter calling on colleagues to behave themselves and urging the government to establish rules for combating "academic misconduct and corruption" in their field. The panel will formulate rules for universities on how to handle allegations.
It's unclear whether new rules will produce the desired results. As He Zuoxiu, a CAS physicist, notes, "the handling of misconduct cases is a matter of policy, not of mechanism"--and to date, the government has shown little appetite for cracking down. But the time may be ripe for a change. In March, Chinese Communist Party General Secretary Hu Jintao called on the country to establish a "socialist outlook on honor and dishonor" by learning "eight honors and eight shames." One of the honors is honesty.
With reporting by Gong Yidong of China Features in Beijing.