Dear Professor Root-Bernstein:
I am genuinely impressed by your this recent email as well as by Dr. Burton's open letter. Perhaps I should write to you once more time in case you need to understand the culture differences. Based on the information provided by the emails from your allies, I did some web search and would like to summarize their achievements, with the hope, to provide you some insights.
I. I. TERMINOLOGY
A "Fang Expert" (translated from Chinese 方学家) is a person who has systematically collected, studied, and scrutinized everything Dr. Fang has written and said.
The term "Fang Expert" also refers to an angry gallery of exposed cheaters.
There are many "Fang Experts" in China, the name of the top 8 of them have been widely published and hence are well known [ref 1]. There are many forums in China that are actually devoted to the study and discussion of Fang’s activities [ref 2]. Each forum now posts or publishes 2 – 10 hundreds of articles each day. Most of those articles or postings are reports, comments, rumors, or accusations of Dr. Fang’s plagiarism, copyright infringement, and/or things of that kind.
None of the presidents in the US history has ever been scrutinized so thoroughly by so many people
II. MILESTONES
(1) Fang Experts have collected and studied all of Dr. Fang’s academic work, including his thesis, dissertation, and research papers, as well as all the references cited. No evidence of plagiarism in his academic work has ever been found.
(2) Fang Experts then have collected and studied all the news paper articles, poems, or things of that kind, written by Dr. Fang. They found that, in one news paper article written by Dr. Fang, no references were provided, nor were the Princeton University author names of the original research mentioned. So, in 2001, one of the Fang Expert, Chuan-Guo Xiao, wrote to the "Science" magazine and accused Dr. Fang of plagiarism. The Science magazine had a third party translated Dr. Fang's Chinese article, and after an investigation, responded with the conclusion that, because Dr. Fang "neither implied that the work was his own" "nor directly copied the language in the Science paper", although the article "would not be considered acceptable journalism in the United States", but "a charge of plagiarism would be difficult".
Mr. Xiao, the well-known Fang Expert, later hired thugs to attack a Chinese mainstream journalist and also Dr. Fang.
(3) Being unable to find plagiarism In academia and in journalism, Fang Experts have then searched, collected, and scrutinized Dr. Fang's activities outside academia-journalism, i.e., all the online postings, web-conversations, etc.
Your accusation may fall within this category.
(4) Fang Experts have also searched and investigated everything written by Dr. Fang's wife. First they found an article written by his wife in which she praised Dr. Fang's talent. They accused Dr. Fang's wife of violation of the "conflict of interest" code. It was later found that she wrote that article before they knew each other. They have then studied Dr. Fang's wife's master thesis and the references cited, and have accused her of plagiarism.
There was a time when one could see Dr. Fang's wife's thesis with red marks and highlights posted on various websites in China. One could also find information published about Dr. Fang's wife's former mentor, her school, and also her other former MS thesis committee members.
(5) Fang Experts or anti-Fang people have also been collecting information on Dr. Fang’s supporters, relatives, etc. posting their home address, emails, personal information, and pictures on the internet.
References
[1]
http://bbs.sciencenet.cn/home.php?mod=space&uid=487024&do=blog&id=413762
http://www.google.com/#hl=en&sugexp=bvec&cp=3&gs_id=9&xhr=t&q=%E6%96%B9%E5%AD%A6%E5%AE%B6&qe=u2-2&qesig=ROyt_uSEWCbSr85vRubKyg&pkc=AFgZ2tkqWIB7zlcpsS-J3yK7emFPlQlWSMEtQxnzsEtwcGsQiRoCFjcpoJgKDRfQ7pzuXj67TcMIOTheFu7Pzg4EIOjgHFvJFA&pf=p&sclient=psy&site=&source=hp&pbx=1&oq=%E6%96%B9%E5%AD%A6%E5%AE%B6&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&gs_sm=&gs_upl=&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.&fp=82209f629b833d1f&biw=1119&bih=827
[2]
http://www.rainbowplan.org/bbs/edu/
http://www.2250s.com/
http://tieba.baidu.com/f?kw=%B7%BD%D6%DB%D7%D3&fr=ala0