Xiao Chuanguo vs. Fang Zhouzi: A Chronology

Professor Xiao Chuanguo first surfaced in the world internet forums some time near the turn of the centry. But nobody knew him then -- He was posting under a pseudonym "Confused Professor" (昏教授). Around the same time, Fang Zhouzi was starting his efforts in exposing scientific fraud in China. "Confused Professor" took an interest in Fang Zhouzi's actions and decided that he didn't like what he saw. He posted a few articles criticizing Fang Zhouzi.

In 2001, Fang Zhouzi published a popular science essay in a newspaper in China, introducing some recent research results to the general public. "Confused Professor" reported it to Science, which carried the original study, as a case of plagiarism. Science responded that it was not plagiarism because Fang Zhouzi "neither implied that the work was his own by writing in the first person nor directly copied the language in the Science paper." Nevertheless, "Confused Professor" and his followers continued to propagate the myth that Fang Zhouzi had committed plagiarism.

Fast forward to the fall of 2005, "Confused Professor" was revealed to be Professor Xiao Chuanguo, then in the process of moving back to China from his post in New York and applying to become a member of the prestigeous Chinese Academy of Science. Alerted netters wrote to New Threads suggesting that Xiao Chuanguo had been mispresenting his resume in his application. On September 21, 2005, Fang Zhouzi publised an essay in Beijing Science and Technology summarizing the charges, questioning Xiao Chuanguo's claims of his academic status, number of publications and that he had invented a world-famous "Xiao's Procedure" (At that time, the term "Xiao's Procedure" had only existed in Xiao Chuanguo's own tellings).

In October, Xiao Chuanguo sued Fang Zhouzi and the newspapers that carried the articles.

May, 2006, as Fang Zhouzi's efforts were exposing more scientific fraud in China, 120 Chinese scholars, mostly biologists based in US, published an open letter calling for a stop of such public investigation in the name of protecting scientists' reputations.

That June, Xiao Chuanguo also published an open letter of his own, attacking Fang Zhouzi personally and swore that "this must be revenged!" He followed that up by launching a series of libel suits against Fang Zhouzi.

On July 31, 2006, a local court in Wuhan reached verdict on the very first Xiao Chuanguo vs. Fang Zhouzi case. The court decided in favor of Xiao Chuanguo, employing some very convoluted logic. Fang Zhouzi denounced it as a practice of local protectionism and vowed to defy any penalty ruling.

That very same day, an open letter supporting Fang Zhouzi began circulating. Over a hundred people signed up right away. The number of signatures eventually reached over 600.

September 5, 2006, Xiao Chuanguo launched another lawsuit against Fang Zhouzi, this time in Beijing, challenging Fang Zhouzi's assertion of local protectionism in Wuhan, where Xiao Chuanguo lived and worked. Also in that September, Rao Yi, then a professor at Northwestern University in US, published a friend-of-court style essay criticizing Xiao Chuanguo. In China, Professor Qing Chenrui (the wife of Professor He Zuoxiu) also published an open letter supporting Fang Zhouzi.

By November that year, escalation continued. Xiao Chuanguo launched another round of lawsuits, this time in New York against Rao Yi, Fang Zhouzi, and New Threads. (Rao Yi's insurance company in US eventually settled on his behalf.)

In China, Professor He Zuoxiu and Fang Zhouzi's lawyer Peng Jian established a Fund in support Fang Zhouzi, who at that time was also facing several other lawsuits in addition to those by Xiao Chuanguo. Overseas, The Organization of Scientific and Academic Integrity in China was also formed to collect donations supporting Fang Zhouzi's cause. Science reported thusly, "China's Fraud Buster Hit by Libel Judgements; Defenders Rally Round"

March, 2007, Xiao Chuanguo, together with other plaintiffs against Fang Zhouzi, issued a public threat to all signatories of the open letter supporing Fang Zhouzi, vowing to sue every person who did not publicly rennounce their signatures. Within that month, Fang Zhouzi lost most of those cases in several courts. He once again pledged to defy the judgements.

But then on May 28, 2007, Beijing Intermediate Court reached a verdict in Fang Zhouzi's favor, a first court victory of its kind.

After that, the dispute seems to have died down for a couple of years until August 2009 when Xiao Chuanguo boasted on Internet that he had received a court-issued fine from Fang Zhouzi. It was news to the latter. It was then that Fang Zhouzi discovered that his wife's bank account had been raided by the Wuhan court without their knowledge. (Fang Zhouzi and his wife had a prenuptial agreement that separates their finances.) His appeal was denied by the court.

In the months of October through December of 2009, a couple of Chinese newspapers, led by science reporter Fang Xuanchang, published a series of investigative findings exposing the ineffectiveness of the Xiao's Procedure and its severe side effects. Lawyer Peng Jian announced lawsuits to seek damages from the surgery.

February, 2010, A group of volunteers of New Threads collected documented materials and published an open letter questioning the Xiao's Procedure. The letter was sent to several institions and hospitals involved in clinical trials of the procedure in US.

August, 2010, the first clinial trial result of Xiao's Procedure from Beaumont Hospital in Michigan, US, was published in Journal of Urology. The journal also published sharply critical comments.

June 24, 2010, reporter Fang Xuanchang was brutally attacked by two thugs on his way home. He suffered serious head injuries and barely escaped.

August 29, 2010, Fang Zhouzi was attacked in daylight in a similar mannar. Fortunately he was able to escape with only minor injuries.

September 20, 2010, Xiao Chuanguo was arrested and identified as the mastermind behind both attacks.

More Retractions from Nobel Laureate Linda Buck

After retracting an influential paper from Nature a year and half ago, Nobel laureate Linda Buck is now retracting two more papers from Science and PNAS, respectively, as they have failed to reproduce the findings in these papers. All three papers were first-authored by Zou Zhihua (邹志华), a Chinese researcher who worked as a postdoc for Buck from 1997 to 2005.

The Scientist magazine also reported the retractions:

In 2008, Zou wrote in a statement provided by UTMB [University of Texas Medical Branch] that he was "disappointed" by the Nature retraction, he "declined to sign" the Science retraction, as reported online today in Science. But "we have no information to suspect misconduct," Natasha Pinol, senior communications officer at the AAAS/Science Office of Public Programs, told The Scientist in an email.

In addition to the irreproducible results, the PNAS paper also contained "figures inconsistent with original data," according to the FHCRC statement. While the PNAS retraction is "not embargoed," according to Managing Editor Daniel Salsbury, the journal refused to share any information with The Scientist.

Zou Zhihua is reported to be currently in China and unavailable to comment.

Science: Urologist Arrested for Attacks on Chinese Whistleblowers

The following is a report by Science on September 23, 2010.

Urologist Arrested for Attacks on Chinese Whistleblowers

by Hao Xin

BEIJING—The police bureau here announced Tuesday evening that they have detained the suspected mastermind behind assaults on China's science misconduct watchdog Fang Shimin (aka Fang Zhouzi) and journalist Fang Xuanchang. (The two Fangs are not related.)

Earlier on 21 September, police detained Xiao Chuanguo, chief urology surgeon at the Tongji Hospital affiliated with Huazhong University of Science and Technology (HUST) in Wuhan, after Xiao returned from a trip to Argentina. According to a Beijing police report published online, Xiao believed that the Fangs' muckraking investigation of his academic achievements resulted in his failure to be elected a member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS). Chinese media have reported that, according to a police briefing, Xiao paid about $15,000 to a distant relative, who allegedly arranged the assaults on Fang Xuanchang in June and Fang Zhouzi in August. Police took the relative and two accomplices into custody earlier this month.

The bone of contention between Xiao and the Fangs is a surgical procedure Xiao developed that he claimed can help patients with spinal cord injury and spina bifida to restore some control over bladder and bowl movements. After seeing material supporting Xiao's nomination as member of CAS in 2005, Fang Zhouzi asserted on his Web site, New Threads, that Xiao's procedure was not nearly as internationally famous as Xiao claimed and alleged that Xiao exploited the Chinese public's inability to access information in English to inflate his achievement. Xiao sued Fang for libel in a Wuhan court and won in 2006, but attempts to sue Fang in Beijing courts failed.

Last December, while working for the biweekly Chinese Science News, Fang Xuanchang edited a series of investigative reports on Xiao's procedure, which has been performed on thousands of Chinese patients, according to Xiao. Before the Ministry of Health in May 2009 issued regulations banning the clinical application of unproven and controversial medical procedures such as stem cell therapy, some Chinese hospitals peddled experimental procedures to make more money. It's not clear whether Xiao's procedure falls in the banned category, but no clinical trials have been conducted in China to prove its efficacy. Many prospective patients were enticed by the touted 85% success rate. Since publication of the investigative reports, however, "the number of patients seeking treatment has fallen sharply," says Jia Hepeng, editor-in-chief of Chinese Science News.

The procedure also caught the attention of Kenneth Peters, director of urology research at the William Beaumont Hospital in Royal Oak, Michigan, who launched a phase II clinical trial at his hospital (see also an Associated Press report). Trial results have not been published. Peters also obtained two grants from the National Institute of Health to study the safety and efficacy of the procedure for treating spina bifida patients. According to a description in his grant proposal, preliminary results show that seven out of nine patients who received the treatment have shown improvements. Peters did not respond to an e-mail request for comment.

Xiao could not be reached for comment. His employer, HUST, yesterday issued an online statement that said the university was shocked by the police investigation into Xiao's alleged crime of intentional injury to others. The statement says that the university will follow the case closely and take appropriate action once the judicial system renders its verdict.

Details of the Fang Zhouzi Attack Emerging

A day after the Beijing police arrested Xiao Chuanguo, a few details of the case and its investigation started to emerge publicly.

After the attack on Fang Zhouzi gained much publicity, both local and city police allocated a large amount of resources to investigate the case. They interviewed close to a thousand people in the area and identified a couple of eyewitnesses. They were also able to retrieve a surveillance video footage showing a man following Fang Zhouzi right before the attack.

Within days from the attack, police was already able to identify the man in the video as 32-year-old Xu Lichun (许立春). Further surveillance on Xu Lichun then led police to his co-suspect Long Guangxing (龙光兴) and Dai Jianxiang (戴建湘). After they were comprehended, Dai Jianxiang, a distant relative of Xiao Chuanguo's, confessed that Xiao Chuanguo paid him 100,000 RMB (14,000 USD) to "teach Fang Zhouzi and Fang Xuanchang a lesson". Dai Jianxiang then offered half of that money to Xu Lichun and Long Guangxing to do the dirty work.

Xiao Chuanguo himself was abroad at the time of these arrests, so the crack of the case was kept secret for days, until police was able to arrest Xiao Chuanguo on his return at the Shanghai Airport yesterday.

The attack itself was more dangerous than it had previous thought. Fang Zhouzi escaped thanks in part to a comical error committed by the perpetrators. The attack was designed to have Xu Lichun confront Fang Zhouzi head on with pepper juice and an iron hammer while Long Guangxing hit with a steel rod behind Fang Zhouzi's back at the same time. Fortunately, Fang Zhouzi ducked quickly enough that the majority of the pepper juice landed on Long Guangxing's face instead, neutralizing that sneak attack. Fang Zhouzi was then able to run away. Xu Lichun chased and threw his hammer to him a couple of times. He managed to hit Fang Zhouzi on the back once but only caused minor injuries.

Various news reports indicate that all suspects, including the mastermind Xiao Chuanguo himself, had already confessed their criminal actions to police.

Xiao Chuanguo Detained for Assaulting on Fang Zhouzi

Beijing Police Bureau announced last night that they have cracked the case of Fang Zhouzi's assault. They identified Xiao Chuanguo, the professor who pioneered the controversial "Xiao's Procedure" and a long-time target of Fang Zhouzi's fraud exposure, as the mastermind behind the attack. Xiao Chuanguo and three other suspects are currently detained by the police.

Police also said that they had uncovered iron hammers and steel pipes, tools that were used in separate previous attacks on Fang Zhouzi and Fang Xuanchang.

Fang Zhouzi first exposed Xiao Chuanguo's misconducts in 2005 for lying about his resume. Xiao Chuanguo launched a series of law suits against Fang Zhouzi. Later, Fang Zhouzi further questioned the effectiveness of the "Xiao's Procedure," a charge that has also led to court cases in China and apparently supported by a recent clinical trial result.

The police will have further details as they continue their investigation.

Chinese Journal Finds 31% of Submissions Plagiarized

In a recent correspondence to Nature magazine, Yuehong Zhang reports the finding of wide-spread plagiarism at a science journal in China. Here is the abstract:

Since October 2008, we have detected unoriginal material in a staggering 31% of papers submitted to the Journal of Zhejiang University–Science (692 of 2,233 submissions). The publication, designated as a key academic journal by the National Natural Science Foundation of China, was the first in China to sign up for CrossRef's plagiarism-screening service CrossCheck.

TIME: In China, the Bad News for Reporters Gets Worse

The following is a report by TIME magazine:

In China, the Bad News for Reporters Gets Worse

By Austin Ramzy / Beijing Wednesday, Sep. 08, 2010

When the man on the Beijing street sprayed something that smelled like ether onto his face, Fang Shimin had a pretty good idea what would come next. So he ran. Another man began chasing him with a metal hammer. The assailant swung and missed, then threw the hammer at Fang as he fled, grazing him on the back. Fang kept running and escaped the Aug. 29 attack with minor injuries.

Fang is a freelance journalist who has come to be known in China as the "science cop," specializing in exposing plagiarism, dodgy scientific claims and fraudulent résumés of prominent figures. He has recently felt his work would eventually cause one of his subjects to lash out. "I think the hit men were hired by someone whose fraud had been exposed by me," he says by e-mail. "I've received threatening phone calls and e-mails, and was followed and threatened before."

China has long been an unfriendly place for journalists. Publications face stringent government censorship, and reporters and editors who push the boundaries can be demoted or sacked. The nation leads the world in jailing journalists for their work, with 24 in prison last year, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists. And it ranks near the bottom of the annual index of press freedom compiled by Reporters Without Borders, the Paris-based advocacy group. (Last year it was placed 168th out of 175 countries and territories.)

But two attacks on journalists in Beijing this summer serve as a reminder that the threats to the press can extend beyond censorship to outright violence. Two months before Fang Shimin was chased down the street, Fang Xuanchang, an editor at Caijing magazine, was struck repeatedly by two men wielding metal bars while walking near his house on June 24. He sustained a long gash to the back of his head that had to be stitched at a local hospital.

Fang Shimin says he thought both attacks were related to the men's work. After Fang Xuanchang was attacked, "it was apparent that I would be the next target," Fang Shimin says. The two men are acquaintances and sometime collaborators. Scientific charlatanry is one of their main interests, and the Wild West nature of China's booming economy has given them no shortage of material. Beginning with his time at Chinese publications Science News and China Newsweek, Fang Xuanchang had exposed multiple quack doctors who promoted dubious cures for everything from cancer to incontinence.

Fang Shimin, who writes under the pen name Fang Zhouzi, grew up in coastal Fujian province and studied biology, receiving a Ph.D. in biochemistry from Michigan State University in 1995. He created his New Threads blog as a grad student, originally to focus on literature and creative writing. When he returned to China in the late 1990s, Fang says he was shocked by the popularity of "pseudo sciences and superstitions." He eventually changed the subject of his blog to combat the trend and promote science. "In an ideal world, some more formal and organized watchdogs ... professional organizations or a governmental agency would be in place," he says. "But China does not have these, so individual watchdogs become essential."

Recently, Fang Shimin has questioned the résumé of Tang Jun, CEO of the conglomerate New Huadu Industrial Group, which stated that Tang graduated from the prestigious California Institute of Technology. Tang later said that claim had been promoted by others, and he had in fact received a Ph.D. from the Pacific Western University. But Fang investigated further and noted that school was an unaccredited institution that the U.S. Government Accountability Office called a diploma mill. Just before he was attacked, Fang Shimin had done a television interview on the case of Li Yi, a popular Taoist master who claimed to have supernatural powers that were later found to have been faked. Li was investigated for allegedly raping a former student, though police say those charges are unfounded.

Li Datong, former editor of Freezing Point, a groundbreaking supplement to the China Youth Daily newspaper, says that journalists like Fang Shimin, a.k.a. Fang Zhouzi, are "hard to come by in Chinese society." Aside from the pressures of censorship, low-paid Chinese journalists are often tempted by "red packets" — cash payments from businesspeople and officials meant to buy positive coverage. That leaves a lot of opportunity — and responsibility — for journalists like Fang who are willing to confront vested interests. "Fang Zhouzi touches upon power and business and the officials who support those businesses, because with any business, behind it there are officials in support," says Li. "So it's a matter of facing up to power. Chinese media, generally speaking, don't do a good job of this."

Facing up to power brings risk. Beijing police are investigating both journalists' attacks, but so far have made no arrests. The unresolved cases contribute to a climate of fear facing investigative journalists and whistle-blowers. "I will continue what I am doing," says Fang Shimin. "And of course I will take some security measures." But for other Chinese journalists facing similar risks pursuing a sensitive story, the best security measure, unfortunately, might be to ignore it.