中国科研，发表还是灭亡

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《自然》评论：
发布时间: 2010-01-15 07:35:08　　作者: 梅进/编译 　　信息来源:科学网
调查称1/3中国科研人员有过造假；急功近利和官僚干预是诱因

1月12日，《自然》杂志网站刊登评论文章——《发表还是灭亡》（Publish or perish in China），对中国的科研造假现象进行了评述，称中国科研人员需要在高影响力期刊上发表论文的压力可能促进了不端行为的产生。

文章说，中国最近发生的一系列重大学术造假事件凸显，中国的学术评价系统过于强调发表论文。由武汉大学进行的调查估计，中国代写论文等造假行为的市场在2009年达到10亿人民币。

文章说，中国科技部曾组织对科研造假行为进行调查，但结果尚未对外公布。《自然》杂志从多种渠道设法探知，在调查涉及的中国6家顶级研究机构的6000多名科研人员中，大约三分之一承认有过剽窃、造假行为。

文章引用清华大学科技与社会研究所所长曾国屏的话说，许多人认为，急功近利的文化是造成这种现象的首要原因。

另一个被广泛提起的原因则是官僚干预学术活动。文章引用方是民（方舟子）的话说，中国的大多数学术评估——人员聘用、晋升、资金分配等——是由非该领域内专家的官僚主义者执行的，“结果，数数论文的数量，而不是评价研究的质量，就成了评估的标准。”

文章最后引述北京大学生命科学院院长饶毅的话认为，对造假者（包括牵涉有声望科学家的著名造假案例）缺乏严厉的制裁，也助长了学术欺诈的蔓延。饶毅说：“当对这些著名案例没有恰当地处理，就释放了一个非常错误的信号。”（科学网 梅进/编译）


Publish or perish in China

The pressure to rack up publications in high-impact journals could encourage misconduct, some say.

Jane Qiu

Under pressure: one-third of researchers surveyed in China admit to plagiarism, falsification or fabrication of data.K. Brofsky/Getty

The latest in a string of high-profile academic fraud cases in China underscores the problems of an academic-evaluation system that places disproportionate emphasis on publications, critics say. Editors at the UK-based journal Acta Crystallographica Section E last month retracted 70 published crystal structures that they allege are fabrications by researchers at Jinggangshan University in Jiangxi province. Further retractions, the editors say, are likely.

Chinese universities often award cash prizes, housing benefits or other perks on the basis of high-profile publications, and the pressure to publish seems to be growing. A new study from Wuhan University, for instance, estimates that the market for dubious science-publishing activities, such as ghostwriting papers on nonexistent research, was of the order of 1 billion renminbi (US$150 million) in 2009 — five times the amount in 2007. In other studies, one in three researchers surveyed at major universities and research institutions admitted to committing plagiarism, falsification or fabrication of data.

"The extent of the misconduct is disturbing," says Nicholas Steneck, director of the Research Ethics and Integrity Program at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. "It highlights the challenges China faces as it struggles to rapidly improve the research capacity of a very large system — with significant variations in quality — to be a world-class player in science."

Two weeks ago, reacting to the retractions of the crystallography papers, Jinggangshang University fired the correspondent authors, Zhong Hua and Liu Tao. It is unclear whether their co-authors, who include researchers from other institutions in China, will also be investigated.

“Counting the number of publications becomes the norm.”

The journal's editors say that the discrepancies came to light during tests of software designed to flag possible errors and unusual chemical features, such as abnormal distances between atoms. The software identified a large number of crystal structures that didn't make sense chemically; further checking, the editors say, suggests that the authors simply changed one or more atoms of an existing compound of known structure, then presented that structure as new. Zhong and Liu could not be reached for comment.

Editors at the journal are now checking the authenticity of other published crystal structures, including all submissions from Jinggangshan University.

Half of the 200,000-odd crystal structures published by the journal during the past five years have come from China. William Harrison, a chemist at the University of Aberdeen, UK, who is one of three section editors for the journal, would not discuss the ongoing investigation but says that the generation of large numbers of structures by one group would not necessarily raise questions, because diffractometers can easily collect a couple of data sets a day. "In terms of papers submitted to Acta E, the vast majority coming from China are correctly determined structures, and they make a valuable contribution to science," he says.

Nevertheless, the Wuhan University study suggests that misconduct could be widespread in many fields. The team, led by computer scientist Shen Yang, used website analyses and onsite investigations to identify a wide range of dubious publishing activities. These include ghostwriting theses and academic papers on fictional research, bypassing peer-review for payment, and forging copies of legitimate Chinese or international journals.

The researchers analysed the most popular 800 websites involved in such activities — which together rack up 210,000 hits a day — and found that the cost of each transaction is typically 600–12,000 renminbi. Three-quarters of the demand comes from universities and institutions, says Shen. "There is a massive production chain for the entire publishing process," he says.

Concerned by such trends, China's science ministry commissioned a survey of researchers, the results of which remain under wraps. However, several sources revealed to Nature that roughly one-third of more than 6,000 surveyed across six top institutions admitted to plagiarism, falsification or fabrication. Many blamed the culture of jigong jinli — seeking quick success and short-term gain — as the top reason for such practices, says Zeng Guopin, director of the Institute of Science Technology and Society at Tsinghua University in Beijing who was involved in running the survey.

The second most-cited cause is bureaucratic interference in academic activities in China. Most academic evaluation — from staff employment and job promotion to funding allocation — is carried out by bureaucrats who are not experts in the field in question, says Fang Shimin, a US-trained biochemist who runs a website called 'New Threads' that exposes research misconduct in China. "When that happens, counting the number of publications, rather than assessing the quality of research, becomes the norm of evaluation," he says.

Cao Nanyan, a colleague of Zeng's at Tsinghua, conducted a similar survey commissioned by the Beijing municipality, which surveyed 2,000 researchers from 10 universities and research institutions. It, too, found that roughly one-third of respondents admitted to illegitimate practices.

To critics such as Rao Yi, dean of the life-science school at Peking University in Beijing, the lack of severe sanctions for fraudsters, even in high-profile cases, also contributes to rampant academic fraud. Many researchers criticize the fact that Chen Jin, a former researcher at Shanghai Jiao Tong University who is accused of falsely claiming to have developed a series of digital signal-processing chips, was fired with no other repercussions. Meanwhile, others involved in the scandal have gone unpunished.

"You send out a very wrong signal when such high-profile cases are not dealt with properly," says Rao.