http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2010/07/06/why_was_china_afraid_of_a_science_journalist?page=0,0
Who Tried to Kill Fang Xuanchang?
谁想要杀了方玄昌？
A chilling attack on a controversial science journalist in Beijing bodes poorly for scientific progress.
受争议的科学记者在北京遭凶残暴徒袭击，科学进展前景堪忧。
BY SAM GEALL | JULY 6, 2010
作者：SAM GEALL 2010年月6日
On the evening of June 24, Fang Xuanchang, a 37-year-old science and technology editor at China's Caijing magazine, finished work around 10 p.m. and began his walk home. Half an hour later he was nearing his apartment by Beijing's third ring road when he felt a sudden blow to his back. Fang turned to see two large men behind him brandishing steel bars.
六月二十四日晚，37岁的中国《财经》杂志科技编辑方玄昌在10点左右下班回家。半小时后，当他接近北京三环路公寓时，突然觉得后背被打。当方转过身时，发现后面两个体格高大的男人正挥舞着钢筋。
Fang tried to run away and then shield himself as the men, ignoring his attempts to communicate with them, struck him repeatedly across his back and head. Brawny and adept in martial arts, Fang not only remained conscious, but also managed to fight back. Finally, as Fang stumbled toward a taxi, his clothes soaked in blood, the attackers left the scene.
方试图与对方理论，但两人毫不理睬，并不停地打他的头部和背部。于是方试图逃走并寻找掩护。由于方体格强壮，精通武术，所以他不仅保持清醒，还进行了还击。最后，当方满身鲜血、步履阑珊地走向一辆计程车时，两个歹徒终于离开了现场。
Later that night at Beijing's Navy General Hospital, doctors sutured a 2-inch gash on the back of his head. His assailants behaved like professionals, carrying out the brutal ambush in about four minutes and showing little concern about passersby witnessing the attack. "Their goal was clear," Fang told me in a June 30 email. "It was to kill me on the spot, or stop me from reaching the hospital in time so that I would bleed to death."
当晚，在北京海军医院，医生在他的后脑上缝合了2英寸长的伤口。这两个歹徒的行为好像是专业杀手，在四分钟内进行了这场凶残的袭击，对路旁的目击者毫不在意。“他们的目的很清楚”，方在六月三十日给笔者的电邮中写道。“他们就是要当场打死我，或是让我来不及去医院就失血过多而死”。
Why would someone try to kill Fang Xuanchang? No one knows, or even seems to care. The attackers remain at large, despite an ongoing police investigation and Caijing's best efforts to cooperate with the police and involve the All-China Journalists Association. The attack was covered in brief in Beijing-based newspapers, including a brief editorial in a state-run newspaper arguing that journalists shouldn't be attacked. But no one in the Chinese media has gotten into the question of who would attack Fang -- and more importantly, why exactly Fang might have been attacked.
为什么会有人想致方玄昌于死地呢？没人知道，甚至没人在意。尽管警方正在调查，《财经》也尽力与警方合作，并动用了中华全国新闻工作者协会的力量，但凶手目前仍然逍遥法外。此次袭击在北京的报纸上有简短的报道，还有一个国有报纸发表社论，认为记者不应成为攻击目标。但在中文媒体中，没有人问过，谁会来袭击方。也没有人问过，到底方为什么会被袭击。
For Fang's colleagues, however, the message is clear: Reporting on controversial topics, as Fang has done, is unsafe. Journalists who are abused don't necessarily find out who has attacked them or why, but the message sent to their friends and colleagues is clear: Don't go there, or you could be next. It has a chilling effect on a wide circle of people. In the case of science journalism, the financial and political stakes are increasingly high, and the personal risks might be increasingly high as well.
而对于方的同事来说，教训是很明显的：如果再报道有争议的话题，生命就会有危险。受到袭击的记者并不一定能找出谁是凶手，也不一定知道原因，但对于他们的朋友和同事来说，教训非常明确：如果不想成为下一个袭击的目标，就不要越雷池一步。对于很多人来说，这就有杀鸡儆猴的效果。对于科学新闻来说，金钱和政治上的风险越来越高，甚至个人的风险也越来越大。
Fang is one of the leading figures among China's scientific muckrakers -- a scourge of academic and government-sponsored pseudoscience and a critic of public and private quackery. For more than 10 years as a journalist, editor, and blogger on the influential (although frequently blocked) Chinese watchdog website New Threads, Fang has taken on academics listing faked awards and publishing plagiarized papers; hawkers of herbal cancer "cures," such as Wang Zhenguo, peddler of the Tian Xian herbal cancer treatment; and Chinese scientists who claim to predict earthquakes, among other targets. But paranoia and anger, even violence, mark some recent responses to Fang's work.
在中国，方是科学丑闻揭露者的个中翘楚－－对科学界以及政府资助的伪科学的痛斥，以及对公开和地下的江湖医术的批评。十几年来，作为一个记者、编辑以及颇具影响力（但不时被封）的中文打假网站新语丝的供稿人，方揭露了科学界假造的奖项、抄袭的论文，贩卖“治愈”癌症药的骗子，如“天仙疗法”的推销者王振国，号称可以预测地震的中国科学家，还有其他很多。而方的工作最近得到的回应，则是偏执、愤怒，甚至暴力。