Confusion Surrounds the Status of Released Professor

Professor Xiao Chuanguo, who was previously sentenced to 5.5 month detention for masterminding brutal attacks on Fang Zhouzi and the journalist Fang Xuanchang, is recently released from prison after serving his term. The newspaper XinKuaiBao interviewed the unrepentant doctor, who continued to call Fang Zhouzi as a "mad dog."

Curiously, the reporters found Dr. Xiao Chuanguo at work in his old office at HUST, which had, supposedly, stripped all his administrative and teaching positions. The doctor did not directly answer reporter's questions on his work status, but he appeared to be busy at his work. He also disclosed that he is scheduled to travel abroad for his surgical work.

Despite a videotaped confession in which he admitted to the details of his involvement, Dr. Xiao Chuanguo now claims that he had never violated any law, nor admitted to such. He claimed that it was the media that were spreading rumors.

In response to complains of his patients, he appealed for calm and promised that he could reexamine and "fix" those who had failed to see effects of his procedure. He also blamed most doctors in China lacked sufficient expertise to understand his work.

Meanwhile, both Fang Zhouzi and Xiao Chuanguo are appealing to the highest court of China for a retrial of the attack case.

Authors Accuse Baidu of Stealing Work

On March 15, China's "Consumer Rights Day", more than 40 Chinese authors published an open letter accusing the search engine company Baidu for making their work available on its site free of charge without authorization.

Fang Zhouzi is one of the authors. He told news reporters that he could find almost all his books in the Baidu repository called Baidu Wenku. Even older books had been scanned and uploaded. Therefore, he suspected an organized and intentional effort of piracy.

According to AFP:

"Baidu has become a totally corrupt thief company," the authors said in the letter posted Tuesday on the website of government-linked China Written Works Copyright Society.

"It stole our works, our rights, our property and has turned Baidu Wenku into a marketplace of stolen goods," it said.

Baidu Wenku was launched in 2009 and allows users to read, share or download files and books, or their excerpts, for free. Readers can also purchase books from the online library -- at a much lower cost than the cover price.

All documents are uploaded by Internet users and as of November Baidu Wenku had stockpiled more than 10 million files and books, accounting for 70 percent of China's online file sharing market, according to the company's figures.

Baidu spokesman Kaiser Kuo said the search engine "attaches great importance to intellectual property rights protection" and had deleted "tens of thousands of infringing items" uploaded by web users.

"We promised that authors or copyright holders can report problematic content found on Baidu Library to the complaint centre ... and we will delete infringing content within 48 hours," Kuo said in a statement Wednesday.

In a disclaimer on its website, Baidu said users who uploaded the files must take on all liabilities and be responsible for compensation in any copyright disputes.

However, the writers insisted Baidu should bear responsibility, claiming the company took advantage of the uploads to "enhance its own influence, boost its stock price and increase its profits".

"We do not blame the friends who uploaded (the documents). We only blame the evil platform of Baidu," they said.

Baidu has long been criticised for flouting intellectual property rights and its MP3 search service, which provides links to free but often pirated music downloads, has drawn fire from the recording industry.

The US Trade Representative's office last month named Baidu as one of the world's top marketplaces for pirated and counterfeit goods, saying the company was enabling piracy with "deep linking" searches.

Fang Zhouzi Goes to the Highest Court

Fang Zhouzi and Fang Xuanchang, the two victims (no relation) of a vicious attack masterminded by the disgraced Dr. Xiao Chuanguo, made a formal appeal to the Supreme People's Court of the People's Republic of China yesterday, asking for a review of the previous lower court decisions which led to a five and half month detention for Xiao Chuanguo. They are appealing that the decisions contained mistakes in legal basis and that there are new evidences proving that the facts recognized by the earlier judges were in error.

The lengthy appeal document lists seven major issues:

1. Obvious errors in the application of law and the crime. (The lower courts had settled with a minor "causing disturbance" charge while the attackers had clearly intended to kill or at least causing major injuries.)
2. New evidences prove that previous court-recognized facts are in error. (The lower courts had accepted a hospital statement that Fang Xuanchang only suffered minor injuries while the involved doctor told a newspaper that Fang Xuanchang had lost a large amount blood and showing signs of shock and dizziness.)
3. The lower courts made mistakes in recognizing key facts, missed important leads in the case, and confused a few facts.
4. There are significant discrepancies in the motives of the defendant.
5. The sentences given by the lower courts are too light for the crimes involved.
6. On their appeal, the Intermediate Court did not factually record evidences provided by the prosecutors.
7. The original court procedure was seriously fraud.

By the original sentence, Dr. Xiao Chuanguo is due to be released at the present time.

An Assistant Professor with a $450K Annual Salary

A few days ago, an alert netter informed New Threads that a local newspaper in China had reported that a Chinese student gave up his $450K salary in the US and returned to serve his motherland. The newspaper story also introduced the hero, Dr. Mu Qiwen, as the Chief Scientist at the Medical University of South Carolina. However, the netter claimed that he knew the truth, that Dr. Wu Qiwen neither was a Chief Scientist nor has a $450K salary.

Dr. Wu Qiwen himself quickly responded to the charge. He referenced his page in at the South Carolina university which lists him as having two titles, one as "Adjunct Assistant Professor" and another as "Senior Investigator Faculty/Chief Scientist/Radiologist/Mentor in Doctoral and Postdoc Programs". Furthermore, he produced a job offer letter signed by his boss to prove his salary:

January 5, 2011

Dear Dr. Qiwen Mu,

　　

As you know, you are relatively unique in the world in some of your clinical and research training and knowledge. You have worked with Dr. Elliot Stein, who is a world leader in brain imaging and addictions. We were able to recruit you to MUSC where you worked for many years with our groups and learned and developed new techniques with image data analysis and TMS. You are also clinically trained as a neuroradiologist and have passed the required board examinations for licensure.

Based on your unique skills and knowledge, I would like to offer you the following positions - Senior Investigator Faculty (Professorship), Chief Scientist, Radiologist, and Mentor in Doctoral

and Postdoctoral Programs at Brain Stimulation laboratory, Medical University of South Carolina. Your responsibilities would include, but would not be limited to, interleaved TMS-fMRI, perfusion, diffusion, and spectroscopy. You will also be involved in clinical trials as well.

The annual salary for this position would be USD 450K.

　　

Thank you for your consideration. If you have any questions, please contact me.

Sincerely,

Mark S. George, MD

Distinguished University Professor of Psychiatry, Radiology and

Neuroscience

Director, Brain Stimulation Laboratory

Founding Director, Center for Advanced Imaging Research (CAIR)

MUSC Director, SC Brain Imaging Center of Excellence

Editor-in-Chief, Brain Stimulation: Basic, Translational and

Clinical Research in Neuromodulation

Dr Mu Qiwen challenged his detractors to contact Dr. Mark George for verification.

Although the evidence appeared convincing, suspicion grew nevertheless, especially from the awkward language used in the offer letter. Multiple inquires were indeed sent to Dr. Mark George's way, to which he replied thusly:

Dear Doctors:

I am confused and am not clear what has happened.

Dr. Mu was indeed a scientist working in our lab at MUSC for many years. He left last year to return to China. He told me that he was offered a position to do research in China involving imaging and TMS. He suggested that we try and continue collaborations, which I encouraged.

While at MUSC he was a very good and hard working scientist with numerous publications. He is trained as a research scientist and as a neuroradiologist. After he announced that he was returning to China, we offered him a continued appointment at MUSC, non-paid, in order to

continue analyzing data and potentially applying for grants.

In December Dr. Mu returned to Charleston and asked me to re-issue an offer letter. If Dr. Mu were available in the US we would indeed like to have him rejoin our faculty. I informed him that I would not be able to make a formal offer as I am not head of my department (psychiatry) and that it would take higher administrative approval and several months to get a fully binding letter. He asked that I sign the letter below which I read. He stated that he needed it signed and soon in order to apply for collaborative grants. I was confused. When I saw the salary level, I was surprised, as it is over twice my salary and I have been here 20 years. However, Dr. Mu is trained as a neuroradiologist, and their clinical salaries are higher than a psychiatrists. He found the salary number as the national average of neuroradiologists. It is not clear if he could serve as a clinical neuroradiologist without taking the US boards and completing a US fellowship.

I have no information about the number of houses or other issues you raise.

I am a bit astonished to be bothered by this exchange and I hope this email clarifies things.

Sincerely,

Mark

Mark S. George, MD

Distinguished Professor of Psychiatry, Radiology and Neurosciences

Medical University of South Carolina

Charleston, SC 29425

So there you have it, Dr. Mu Qiwen had manufactured his own position and salary, making himself a much bigger asset for his motherland.

Ministry of Science and Technology Revokes an Award

Almost a year after Xi'an Jiaotong University fired its professor Li Liansheng for fraud after a lengthy and difficult campaign by six elder professors, the Ministry of Science and Technology of China finally reached a decision to revoke an award it had given to Li Liansheng in 2005.

The ministry cited severe plagiarism and inaccurate economic impact data in the application for the reason for its action.

Fudan University Under Fire for its Plagiarism Decision

The controversial decision by Fudan University's Committee of Scholarly Standard that Professor Zhu Xueqin did not commit plagiarism in his Ph. D. thesis continues to draw attention on the Internet forums in China. Several print media also published reports questioning if the academic community in China is capable of policing itself.

Fang Zhouzi publishes more examples of Zhu Xueqin's thesis that were translated from Carol Blum's published book, including many "low-level mistakes" in misunderstanding and misinterpreting the original in English.

More damagingly, however, is an open letter published by more than a dozen of netters from an Internet forum where netter "Isaiah" raised his initial accusation. The authors of this open letter expressed their opinion that Zhu Xueqin had committed plagiarism "even by the loosest standard" and their worry that Fudan University's "partial and contradictory" conclusion could lead to a big setback in China's academic integrity.

The lengthy open letter disputes Fudan's claim that they do not accept anonymous leads, pointing out that they had indeed taken up cases originated from anonymous sources in the past. It also claimed that the investigation chose to narrow its scope so as to avoid the most damaging accusations being raised and its conclusion is self-contradictory. The Committee's spokesperson Professor Ge Jianxiong had said that they did not investigate the entire thesis (because it was out of the scope of the investigation) but nevertheless announced that the thesis "as a whole" was an adequate academic work.

The open letter also questions the Committee's verdict that Zhu Xueqin's thesis indeed contained "irregularities". It states that even the few "irregularities" listed by Ge Jianxiong as examples should have already qualified the work to be classified as plagiarism according to the common sense and norm of academic standards.

Finally, the open letter points out that plagiarism is plagiarism, even when the original author had granted permission to use his work. Zhu Xueqin's thesis had included passages from other scholar's work without citation, a practice that the Fudan Committee appeared to have found acceptable.

The open letter has by now received more than 200 signatories, including more than 30 with real names.

Fudan University Whitewashes a Plagiarism Case

Professor Zhu Xueqin (朱学勤) of Shanghai University is an outspoken scholar who has been involved in more than one controversy for his speeches. His latest trouble, however, comes from the content of his Ph. D. thesis in history, which he completed in 1992 at Fudan University. The thesis has been published in book form in several editions, receiving critical acclaim and popularity.

In July last year, a netter wrote to New Threads pointing out that the book, The End of Morally Idealist Nation, contained many passages that are plagiarized. Specifically, the netter claimed that Zhu Xueqin had lifted the Chinese translations of the book Sister Revolution: French Lightning, American Light by the American author Susan Dunn. Zhu Xueqin did mention the book in his preface, but neglected to mention its translated version and also left impression that the lifted passages were his own work.

About the same time, the apparently same netter published more detailed allegations in Internet forums in China with the pseudonym "Isaiah". In addition to Susan Dunn's work, Isaiah found more sources from which Zhu Xueqin has plagiarized passages, including that of a Chinese scholar Gao Yi (高毅) and the English book Rousseau and the Republic of Virtue: the Language of Politics in the French Revolution by Carol Blum.

Zhu Xueqin did not back down from the accusations. In fact, he referred the case to the Fudan University's Committee for Scholarly Standard himself, seeking an official redemption. He also submitted a lengthy essay in defense.

Half a year later, the Committee publicized its verdict. It declared that Zhu Xueqin's thesis and book contained irregularities in providing end notes and citations, as well as mistakes and misinterpretations in translations from foreign languages, but nonetheless did not commit plagiarism.

In the specific case of using Gao Yi's work, the Committee accepted Zhu Xueqin's explanation that Gao Yi himself had agreed on his usage, although the work was not properly cited as so. For the English books, the Committee noted that a part of his thesis was originally intended to be a preface for the translation of Susan Dunn's book, so a lack of citation or notes in that scenario is acceptable. As for Carol Blum's book, the Committee noted that the book was cited in the beginning of the thesis.

As soon as the Committee's conclusion was made public, both Isaiah and Fang Zouzi voiced strong objections.

Fang Zhouzi then made his own investigation and found that as many as 18,000 characters in Zhu Xueqin's thesis were direct translations from Carol Blum's book, most of which without citation. These passages even included end notes from Carol Blum's book itself, but made it appear as the author's own citations. He also pointed out a few obvious mistakes in Zhu Xueqin's translation work and concluded that, "if the thesis were original, then it's plagiarism; if the thesis were a translation, then it's of low quality."

Fang Zhouzi also expressed his disappointment in Professor Ge Jianxiong (葛剑雄), a member of the Fudan Committee who spearheaded the investigation. Ge Jianxiong has been outspoken in the past, advocating a "zero-tolerance" policy for academic fraud.