Controversy of Fang Zhouzi's Essay Debated among American Professors

Back in 1995, when the Internet was still at its infancy, Fang Zhouzi, then a graduate student at Michigan State University, wrote an essay in a newsgroup (online forum of the day) during a heated discussion. In it he introduced and paraphrased an interpretation of science first proposed by Professor Robert Root-Bernstein in the same school (although the two never met in person). The essay was later revised and published in a couple of books as part of Fang Zhouzi's collective essays.

More than 15 years later, the essay was frequently used by Fang Zhouzi's detractors as evidence of an act of plagiarism. In April of this year, a Chinese newspaper carried the same accusation for which a legal battle is still underway.

More recently, the issue has been brought in front of Professor Root-Bernstein himself, who concluded that Fang Zhouzi did commit plagiarism and issued a lengthy open letter to a semi-public mailing list of concerned members and therefore ignited a heated debate among learned scholars and others interested parties. Parts of the discussion have been selectively made public in various online forums by both sides.

Following is a collection of the leaked exchanges, with a few narratives of my own to provide some connection and perspective.

The first is Professor Root-Bernstein's open letter itself. It is quite long, but included here in its entirety for the fairness to both parties.

An Open Letter to Shi-Min Fang from Robert Root-Bernstein, Ph. D., Professor of Physiology, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI 48824 USA; rootbern@msu.edu. Dated 3 August 2011.

A number of people, including myself, have accused you of plagiarizing my work. You and your followers have denied it. Let’s use this difference of opinion to educate ourselves about what constitutes plagiarism in and see if we can reach an accord.

Let me begin by stating that I am basing my arguments on The Universal Copyright Convention, to which the People’s Republic of China and the United States both adhere.

1) You admit that you used my article “On Defining a Scientific Theory” as the basis for an essay that you published online in your blog in 1995 and subsequently in a book. The full bibliographic reference for my article is: Root Bernstein, R. S. "On Defining a Scientific Theory: Creationism Considered," in Evolution and Creationism, Ashley Montagu, ed. (Oxford: The University Press, 1984), pp 64 94.) It is copyrighted by the Oxford University Press.

2) You and four of your Chinese colleagues have sent me various English translations of your essay. Although there are some differences in the specific wording of each translation, all display exactly the same development of the argument in the same order using the same examples.

3) According to copyright law, a person may plagiarize another person’s work in several ways. The first is to copy their words without attribution. The second is to use more than a certain percentage of a work without explicit permission from the copyright holder. For example, in the U. S. one may not quote more than 250 words from a single source, even with attribution, without obtaining explicit permission from the copyright holder. I am told that in China, an essayist must not copy more than 3% of a text and that a student who copies more than 25% may be denied his or her degree. A third form of plagiarism consists of lifting another author’s arguments and examples without explicit permission. Accordingly, one may plagiarize a work even in the absence of copying its language and even with attribution, especially if the arguments and examples are unique and constitute a substantial portion of the work plagiarized.

4) Others claim, and I concur, that you have plagiarized my work in all three ways. Let’s take a look at each, one at a time. You claim that you have not plagiarized me because you have not copied my words. Translations of words and ideas from one language to another pose a special problem in plagiarism cases, since differing grammars and cultural idioms will necessarily create alterations from the original text. Re-translations back into the original language cause further distortions. While it is always difficult to prove copying of words when using translations, many of your sentences have the identical structures and occur in the same order as mine and this is highly suggestive of copying. Therefore, in considering plagiarism in translation one must look beyond exact verbal duplication.

5) Beyond exact verbal duplication, it is necessary to ask how much of the original text has been used in formulating the second-language text and whether the second language text copies the verbal logic, the development of the argument, and the specific examples of the first language text. With regard to your essay, the answer is that you plagiarized me all of these ways. Many of your sentences (retranslated into English) have the same logical structure and occur in the same order as mine. This is highly suggestive of copying. Moreover, this identity of logic and sequence certainly exceeds 250 words and you certainly did not obtain my permission to do so. Finally, whether or not it can be proven that your essay simply translates mine, it can certainly be proven that the argument and the order of the points that you make are identical to those in my article, and the majority of examples are also identical. Since these arguments and examples constitute virtually the whole of my article and they also constitute the whole of your essay, I must conclude that your essay is a copy of mine. In verbal logic, development of argument and choice of example, your essay replicates my article.

6) You and your followers respond that you have incorporated several of your own examples in the place of mine. This does not alter the fact that the development of the entire argument, the exact order of the points, and the majority of the examples are still drawn from my own text.

7) You and your followers also argue that you did cite my name in publishing your article, but the only evidence you have provided to me is a photograph of a page in Chinese from an undated book on which my name appears. This evidence is inadequate for two reasons. First, the issue is not whether you cited me in your book, but whether you cited me in your original blog post in 1995. I have been presented with evidence that your original blog post did not cite me, and that you subsequently altered your post to incorporate my name only after you were accused of having plagiarized my article. Even if you did cite me in your original blog post, and even though you cite my name and even the source of my article in your essay as it now appears in book form, the claim of plagiarism still stands. Because you use the same logic, the same development of argument and very largely the same choice of examples as my original article, and because you draw on no other sources, your essay is a representation of my work and you are still under the obligation to obtain my explicit written permission to publish your essay in any form.

8) In addition, you and your followers have argued that my own essay “On Defining a Scientific Theory” is itself a popularization or “summary” of other people’s scholarship and therefore not protected by the same copyright laws as scholarly works. I gather that you believe that because you think you could have found the ideas in my article expressed elsewhere, my work is derivative and not therefore a copyrightable work. This is simply untrue on two counts. In the first place, Oxford University Press did copyright my essay. It is protected under law. Indeed, popularizations of all kinds are protected by copyright. Secondly, my article was not a popularization. It is a scholarly work published by a major university press. Moreover, you cannot find any other author arguing that a scientific theory must satisfy four sets of criteria simultaneously: logical, evidential, sociological and historical. You may find other scholars who have argued one or two of these together, but I know of no one who has argued any three of them together, and I am quite certain that I am the first scholar to argue that there are historical criteria that must also be part of the mix (see also my book Discovering [Harvard University Press, 1989]). Thus, my essay represents a unique and important scholarly contribution to the study of science. In plagiarizing my work, you have therefore stolen a scholarly synthesis of intellectual ideas that is unique to me, and which occurs in no one else’s scholarly or popular work. In other words, you could not have found these ideas anywhere else, nor could you have invented them yourself.

9) You and your followers have also argued that same criteria for citations do not pertain to popularizations as to scholarly essays and books. This argument is simply irrelevant. A popularizer may not plagiarize any individuals work whether they cite it or not.

In short, I maintain that whether you have used my exact words or not, you have certainly plagiarized my work by copying my unique scholarly argument, the logic and the points I use to substantiate it, and most of the examples I laboriously found to support it. I further maintain that because of the extent of this plagiarism, which consists of your entire article, you have plagiarized me in both your blog post and in your written essay. This plagiarism stands whether or not you cite my name in your blog post or in your written essay because of the extent of the material borrowed. Stated another way, your essay is an unacceptable copy of my work both because of the extent of the material borrowed and because you drew upon no other source or sources but mine in writing it. Due to this replication, you were obligated to obtain my explicit written permission before posting your blog or publishing your essay.

Now, what do I want from you? The answer is simply an apology. I am a teacher and I welcome this opportunity to teach about the complexities and subtleties surrounding the protection of intellectual property. We all make mistakes. What is important are the lessons we learn from our mistakes. The lesson here is that all you needed to do was to ask permission if you could popularize my essay and I would have said “yes!”. I was, after all, in the building right next to yours at MSU when you wrote your essay in 1995! And, like most scholars, I am always very pleased to have my work used by other people – as long as I get credit for having done that work! So my advice to you and all other scholars is something I learned very early in my career: it never hurts you to credit everyone who might have contributed to your own ideas; it always hurts you to leave anyone out. It never hurts to obtain copyright permission, even if you may not need it; but it always hurts to try to get away without obtaining that permission.

I look forward to your reply!

Sincerely,

Bob Root-Bernstein, Ph. D., Professor of Physiology, Michigan State University

Although Professor Root-Bernstein claims that he intends "to teach about the complexities and subtleties surrounding the protection of intellectual property," his own open letter seems to have confused the distinction between "plagiarism" and "copyright infringement," a point he had to clarify to some extend in the list. He also invoked the mythical "250 words" criteria as copyright threshold.

Fang Zhouzi responded with a concise statement disputing the plagiarism or copyright charges, but included an apology for lack of explicit crediting in the original version of the essay:

Dear Dr. Root-Bernstein,

In 1995 when I was a graduate student at MSU, I posted a short writing to an online forum called alt.chinese.text when there was a debate about pseudoscience among oversea Chinese students. It was an informal, casual follow-up to a discussion thread, not an academic paper or assignment. Part of it paraphrased the criteria of science from your article. I presented the criteria of science as "consensus in philosophy of science" and give my own examples to explain it. This writing was revised and formally published in one of my books in 1999, and it cited the source as "According to the summary by Root-Bernstein", and when the criteria were mentioned again in another book of mine in 2007, it gave reference as "On Defining a Scientific Theory: Creationism Considered, Robert Root-Bernstein, Science and Creationism, Oxford University Press, 1984".(Without this reference, I don't believe the supporters of Xiao Chuanguo, the surgeon who hired assailants to attack me using pepper spray and hammer after I exposed his malpractice, could track down the source and report the "plagiarism" to you and MSU administration 16 years later. I have deleted email addresses of four Xiao's supporters in this reply)

I never presented the criteria as my own original idea, nor did I copy your wordings. And when it's formally published, the source had been credited and cited. Therefore I don't think it consists of plagiarism or copyright infringement according to the common accepted definitions with which you disagree. But it's inappropriate not to explicitly credit you in my original posting, and I apologize for it.

Sincerely,

Shi-min Fang

Professor Root-Bernstein was not satisfied with the response and apology as he still insists on his "plagiarism" charge, but now he added the phrase "copyright infringement" to go along with it, seemingly still mixing up the two distinct concepts:

Dear Shi-min Fang,

Thank you for admitting your error in failing to cite my article in your initial online essay, and for the apology regarding it. I do not, however, believe that your response adequately addresses the points I made in my open letter. The issue is not a matter of a missing citation, which, since you have corrected it, would be a minor matter indeed. The issue is that you have appropriated my entire argument and most of the examples that I use to support it. Whether we want to label this "plagiarism" or "copyright infringement" or some combination of the two is irrelevant. The fact is that you did not alter my argument in any way; you did not mix it or modify it with other peoples's arguments; and you presented it in exactly the same order and (and here I must insist on this) using the same language. Now you add the additional insult in arguing that I am mis-using the concepts of plagiarism and copyright infringement in making my accusations. And you do so without justifying this attack upon my supposed ignorance. So how, exactly, do you define plagiarism and copyright infringement? At what point did you inquire of me or of Oxford University Press the right to use a large portion of my article, or even to popularize it?

Please note that I am sending this to all of the people who have expressed interest in this issue. As I said in my open letter to you, I want to use this as an educational forum. Your attempt to prevent those who you consider your "enemies" from having a voice in this discussion undermines the openness with which I approached you and is counter-productive.

Sincerely,

Bob Root-Bernstein

At about this point, it appears that the discussion on the mailing list has taken a bad turn with personal attacks and other accusations, including that Fang Zhouzi had committed academic fraud in his thesis work. Fang Zhouzi's thesis adviser, Professor Zachary Burton, was compelled to rise in defense of his formal student:

To the list,

As Dr. Shi-min Fang’s former graduate school mentor, I would like to re-iterate my support for Dr. Fang’s prominent position in Chinese society.

I have no interest in the efforts of Dr. Fang’s political opponents to try to discredit him.

Dr. Fang completed a good quality thesis in my laboratory, awarded in 1996. He published a high quality research paper in the Journal of Biological Chemistry based on his thesis work. So far as I know, his thesis work has passed the test of time, and Transcription Factor for RNA polymerase II (TFII)F still interacts with TFIIB.

If there is merit in Dr. Root-Bernstein’s accusations, I fail to see it. Dr. Fang has responded to Dr. Root-Bernstein in a reasonable and measured way.

With best regards and sincerity,

Zachary Burton, Ph.D.

Professor

Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology

Michigan State University

E. Lansing, MI 48824-1319

But apparently the attacks continued and included Professor Burton as targets, so much so that Professor Root-Bernstein himself had to issue a desperate call to "stop attacking Dr. Fang's and Dr. Burton's Characters":

To All,

I want to say that I am very displeased with the direction that the conversation about Dr. Fang has taken. I am not Dr. Fang's enemy. I am not attacking Dr. Fang's character. I am offended by those people who are doing so. I am even more offended that my colleague and friend Zach Burton should be attacked as well. This is a complicated issue and Dr. Burton is entitled to his opinion, and to air it freely. The issue we are debating is whether Dr. Fang made an error in using more of my work than is considered appropriate under academic and legal definitions of plagiarism and copyright infringement. Whether or not Dr. Fang is guilty of such an error should be the focus of our discussions as we try to work out how different cultures using different languages assess these issues. The outcome of our deliberations should have nothing to do with whether Dr. Fang is a good person, a bad person, a prominent member of Chinese society, or any other aspect of his character. Nor should the characters of any other individual involved in this controversy be an aspect of our deliberations. If such personal attacks on Dr. Fang and/or Dr. Burton continue, I shall withdraw my allegations and consider the matter closed. Deal with the facts, not the people or their personalities, or this ends now!

Sincerely, Bob Root-Bernstein

Robert Root-Bernstein, Ph. D.

Professor of Physiology

2174 Biomedical and Physical Sciences Building

Michigan State University

East Lansing, MI 48824 USA

It is hard to predict where this discussion could lead to from here, if anywhere. What is clear is that Professor Root-Bernstein's efforts "to teach about the complexities and subtleties" of plagiarism and copyright infringement in that forum has been ineffective to say the least. Part of the problem may well be with the teacher himself.

Fang Zhouzi's Wife Responds to Charges of Plagiarism

Media attacks on Fang Zhouzi continue in China and they are now turning on his wife, Liu Juhua. The magazine Legal Weekly published another lengthy report accusing Liu Juhua plagiarism in her masters thesis completed in 2002, a couple of years before she married Fang Zhouzi.

In an essay signed as "Fang Zhouzi's Wife," a customary way for her to write in such occasions, Liu Juhua responded by saying that she keeps a clear conscience on her earlier work. She explained that she had never intended to work in academic research or publish her thesis. The thesis was done only to satisfy the degree requirement. She regarded her thesis, like any those for masters degree in liberal arts, as a review of given issue and not necessarily full of original ideas. However, she denies that she had plagiarized.

Liu Juhua expressed her frustration as being the target of vicious personal attacks on the Internet because of his husband's work. But she was confident that she could handle whatever comes with grace.

Fang Zhouzi had initially maintained his silence when the accusation first surfaced on the Internet. After the publication of this article, he forcefully defended his wife and vowed to "go after" those who had attacked his wife by "applying the same plagiarism standard"(*) to examine their thesis work.

(*) As that had been applied to his wife's work, which sometimes confuses copying and paraphrasing.

At the same time, however, Fang Zhouzi allows that her wife's thesis could have been improved with better citation and quoting techniques, a skill that was rarely taught to students in China. It is a common and wide-spread problem for which he has been advocating that a thesis should not be required for earning a bachelors or masters degree.

Chinese Magazine Stirs Up Old Controversy

The Legal Weekly (法治周末), a relatively new and small weekend magazine, published a four-page "investigative report" on Fang Zhouzi on the eve of the April Fool. The acid-toned article was based on many slandering rumors that had been circulated on the Internet for years.

The article interviewed many characters that either had been exposed for fraud by or had clashes with Fang Zhouzi in the past. One of them was quoted saying that Fang Zhouzi has very few long-term friends, "he is not a person suitable to be a friend."

More damningly, the article accused Fang Zhouzi of having committed plagiarism himself. It lists many verbiage comparisons between Fang Zhouzi's work and those he had used as source material. The comparison generally showed the reporter's lack of understanding in the difference between copying and paraphrasing.

Although the same accusations and rumors had been around for a long time, this is the first time they were published in an official media. The report stirred up heated exchanges in the Chinese blogsphere over the weekend.

Fang Zhouzi has threatened to sue the paper for slandering.

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.

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.

USA Today: Plagiarism Shuts Down US School in China

USA Today reported today that a "plagiarism epidemic" has forced Centenary College to discontinue an MBA program in China. According to the paper:

"The college is extremely concerned with the welfare of the Chinese students involved in the program, but must note that its review revealed evidence of widespread plagiarism among other issues, at a level that ordinarily would have resulted in students' immediate dismissal from the college," Debra Albanese, Centenary's vice president for strategic advancement, said in a statement. "Despite that, in an effort to afford students every fair possibility, the college has opted to attempt to reach an amicable solution, in lieu of any such dismissal. The students were offered a choice to receive a tuition refund in exchange for a standard release in higher education or take a comprehensive exam in order to earn a degree."

It went on to say that all but two of about 400 students have accepted a refund.

A Few Examples of Recent Extractions Involving Chinese Authors

A New Threads netter, sicheng, did a simple search and found quite a few extractions of published research articles authored by Chinese scientists. The reasons for extraction are plagiarism and/or multiple submission. Below is what he found:

Journal of Molecular Diagnostics 2010, Vol. 12, No. 1

DOI: 10.2353/jmoldx.2010.090231
Retraction

Following correspondence from a concerned reader, an inquiry was initiated into the novelty of results reported in the article entitled "Quantification of mitochondrial DNA with the A1555G mutation in deaf patients using real time-amplification refractory mutation system-quantitative PCR," which appeared online December 3, 2009 in The Journal of Molecular Diagnostics as publish-ahead-of-print (doi: 10.2353/jmoldx.2010.090065). It was determined that four tables present in the JMD article had been previously published in the Chinese language journal National Medical Journal of China. After editorial communication with the corresponding author, Dr. Qi-shui, the Editors determined that the data represented redundant publication. The article is therefore being retracted from The Journal of Molecular Diagnostics by the American Society for Investigative Pathology and the Association for Molecular Pathology (the Publishers). All authors have been notified of this decision.

J Exp Clin Cancer Res. 2009; 28(1): 101.
Published online 2009 July 16. doi: 10.1186/1756-9966-28-101.

PMCID: PMC2717054
Copyright © 2009 Hao et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd.

Retraction: siRNA directed against c-Myc inhibits proliferation and downregulates human telomerase reverse transcriptase in human colon cancer Colo 320 cells
Huang Hao,#1,2 Yu Nancai,1 Fu Lei,#1 Wei Xiong,3 Su Wen,1 Huang Guofu,1 Wu yanxia,1 Huang Hanju,2 Liu Qian,1 and Xiao Hongcorresponding author1

1 Center of Experimental Medicine, Wuhan No.1 Hospital, Wuhan, 430022, PR China
2 Department of Pathogentic Biology, Tongji Medical College, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, 430030, PR China
3 Brain Research Center, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada
corresponding authorCorresponding author.
#Contributed equally.

Retraction
The corresponding author submitted this article [1] to Journal of Experimental and Clinical Cancer Research although this article had been accepted and previously published by Cancer Biotherapy & Radiopharmaceuticals [2]. The article was also received and subsequently accepted and published by Nucleosides, Nucleotides and Nucleic Acids [3]. Since it has been brought to the attention of all authors that duplicate submission and publication have taken place the decision has been made to retract the article published in Journal of Experimental and Clinical Cancer Research. The authors are deeply sorry for any inconvenience this may have caused to the editorial staff and readers.

Brazilian Journal of Medical and Biological Research
Print version ISSN 0100-879X
Braz J Med Biol Res vol.41 no.5 Ribeirão Preto May 2008
doi: 10.1590/S0100-879X2008000500014

Braz J Med Biol Res, May 2008, Volume 41(5) 437 (Retraction)

Retraction

Retraction of the paper "Niemann-Pick type C1 protein influences the delivery of cholesterol to the SREBP:SCAP complex"

Yong-Jun Guo, Wei-Hua Li, Rong Wu, Qiang Xie, Zu-Huang Zhang and Lian-Qun Cui
Braz J Med Biol Res 2008; 41: 26-33

The Editors of the Brazilian Journal of Medical and Biological Research are retracting the paper "Niemann-Pick type C1 protein influences the delivery of cholesterol to the SREBP:SCAP complex". Yong-Jun Guo, Wei-Hua Li, Rong Wu, Qiang Xie, Zu-Huang Zhang, Lian-Qun Cui. Braz J Med Biol Res 2008; 41: 26-33 because of plagiarism. The person responsible, Y.J. Guo, Department of Cardiology, Shandong Provincial Hospital, Fujian Medical University, Xiamen, China, has admitted this breach of ethics, has stated that the other authors were not aware of the plagiarism, and sends his sincere apologies to all involved. The original work was published in an Honour Thesis by Julie Wood of the University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia.

Retraction: Gong Z et al. Injuries after a Typhoon in China. N Engl J Med 2007;356:196-7.

To the Editor: I request that our letter to the editor, "Injuries after a Typhoon in China,"1 be retracted because much of it was previously published in Chinese journals.2,3

Zhenyu Gong, M.P.H.
Zhejiang Center for Disease Control and Prevention

References

1. Gong Z, Chai C, Tu C, Lin J, Gao Y, Qui Y. Injuries after a typhoon in China. N Engl J Med 2007;356:196-197. [free full text]
2. Gong Z, Chai C, Tu C, et al. Epidemiologic study of the present status of injury to the population caused by typhoon Yunna. Natl Med J China 2005;85:3007-9. (In Chinese.)
3. Gong Z, Chai C, Tu C, et al. A field epidemiological study on the risk factors of injury caused by typhoon. Chin J Epidemiol 2006;27:773-6. (In Chinese.)

Retraction: Correlation between DNA Repair Capacity in Lymphocytes and Acute Side Effects to Skin during Radiotherapy in Nasopharyngeal Cancer Patients

* Wei-Dong Wang,
* Zheng-tang Chen,
* De-zhi Li,
* Zheng-huai Cao,
* Ping Pu,
* Shi-liang Sun,
* and Xiao-pin Shen

Clin Cancer Res May 15, 2009 15:3642; Published OnlineFirst April 23, 2009, doi:10.1158/1078-0432.CCR-15-10-RET

Notzon's journal was alerted to such a case by Déjà vu. A group in China had, by Déjà vu's estimate, copied more than 95% of a paper on breast cancer first published in 2003 in the International Journal of Radiation Oncology, Biology, Physics. The Chinese group changed the focus from breast cancer to nasopharyngeal cancer, which is much more common in those of Asian ancestry, and reported data from their own patients. The lead author of the original paper, Odilia Popanda of the German Cancer Research Center in Heidelberg, notes that she was rather miffed that the Chinese work, published in 2005, appeared in a higher profile journal, Clinical Cancer Research.

RETRACTED: Tube domains on antisymmetric matrices and representations of minimal representations
Journal of Mathematical Analysis and Applications, Volume 352, Issue 2, 15 April 2009, Pages 846-855
Li Zhu

This article has been retracted at the request of the Editor-in-Chief. Please see Elsevier Policy on Article Withdrawal (http://www.elsevier.com/locate/withdrawalpolicy).

Reason: The author has plagiarized part of a paper that had already appeared in Int. J. Math., 19 (2008) 1247–1268, doi:10.1142/S0129167X08005114. One of the conditions of submission of a paper for publication is that authors declare explicitly that their work is original and has not appeared in a publication elsewhere. Re-use of any data should be appropriately cited. As such this article represents a severe abuse of the scientific publishing system. The scientific community takes a very strong view on this matter and we apologize to readers of the journal that this was not detected during the submission process.

RETRACTED: Pricing currency options based on fuzzy techniques
European Journal of Operational Research, Volume 193, Issue 2, 1 March 2009, Pages 530-540
Fan-Yong Liu

Reason: The author has plagiarized part of a paper that had already appeared in Comput. Oper. Res., 31 (2004) 1069–1081, doi:10.1016/S0305-0548(03)00065-0. One of the conditions of submission of a paper for publication is that authors declare explicitly that their work is original and has not appeared in a publication elsewhere. As such, this article represents a severe abuse of the scientific publishing system. The scientific community takes a very strong view on this matter and we apologize to readers of the journal that this was not detected during the submission process.

Separately, another netter, ASH, reported that an article published in New England Journal of Medicine has been subsequently published in Chinese journals by the same author. It has been used as an example of misconduct by NEJM's associate editor in his seminars.

South China Morning Post: The Lie Detector

South China Morning Post is a leading English language newspaper in Hong Kong. In its January 31, 2010 edition, it publishes a lengthy article on Fang Zhouzi's struggle against scientific misconduct in China.

Below is the report, provided by Fang Zhouzi on New Threads:

The Lie Detector

Widespread corruption among some of the mainland's most ambitious academics has undermined the country's scientific community but one man has made it his mission to expose the culprits and clean up the system

Paul Mooney

Jan 31, 2010, South China Morning Post Magazine

On January 16, Fang Shimin kicked off the new year with a recap of his top 10 news items of 2009. On his popular New Threads blog, Fang, both respected and hated as the mainland's self-appointed "science cop", revisited a string of startling allegations: 12 university presidents and vice-presidents accused of plagiarism; a university president who claimed a leading scientific prize that was not rightfully his; two professors caught faking research results in an international journal; and a medical doctor who distorted the success rate for a new surgical procedure, which could have had serious health implications.

Fang's rogue's gallery made it seem like every time a light bulb goes on in the head of a genuine genius, there's a mainland scientist at hand to steal the idea and bask in the illicit glory, but the list came as no surprise to followers of the blog. For close to a decade, Fang, who goes by the pen name Fang Zhouzi, has been using the site to battle academic corruption, which, some say, has become so endemic on the mainland, it poses a threat to the country's development.

Fang, who earned a PhD in biochemistry from Michigan State University, in the United States, in 1995, became concerned about the phenomenon in 2000, when he started to see an increase in reports of academic cheating on the internet and in the print media. A fan of literature, Fang had a literary website called New Threads, which he has since employed to expose academic fraud.

"I care about science in China," he says, sitting in a Beijing cafe. "I want to see it go somewhere. [academic fraud] is more common [here] than in any other country and more common than in any other period in Chinese history."

A survey conducted by the China Association for Science and Technology showed more than half of the scientists contacted said they were personally familiar with cases of scientific misconduct. However, few of the guilty parties are punished and that's what irks Fang, whose training in the US exposed him to a system in which plagiarism is rare and, when it does occur, is severely punished.

Shen Yang, an associate professor at the Information Management School of Wuhan University, pioneered software that detects plagiarism in university papers, but the will to implement such innovation has yet to surface.

Fang says that out of the more than 900 cases of academic corruption he has exposed only 20 have resulted in punishment - and the majority of those involved students.

New Threads receives about 100,000 hits a week, with close to 16 million people - academics and students primarily but also journalists - having visited it during the past nine years. The government occasionally blocks access, forcing users to reach it via mirror sites.

"New Threads is the news source for the vast majority of science journalists in China, including myself," says Fang Xuanchang (no relation to Fang Shimin), a reporter with Science News.

"Actually, the vast majority of the cases of academic corruption that were brought to light by the media in recent years were originally exposed by contributors to the New Threads blog," says the journalist, who calls the site the "New Threads deep throat", in reference to the informant in the US' Watergate scandal.

Fang Shimin says he gets more than 20 e-mails a day reporting academic corruption and he spends an average of four hours following up on the claims. He says he applies strict criteria in handling reports: accusers must provide their name - many decline to do this out of fear of retribution; concrete evidence must be provided; and the case must be relevant. Fang often does his own research, sometimes consulting with experts in fields he is less familiar with.

Academic corruption runs the gamut from false claims about international awards to outright intellectual-property theft. No less than 16 Chinese scholars have claimed to have won the prestigious Albert Einstein World Award of Science since it was launched in 1984. For some years, more than one mainland scientist has claimed the award, despite that fact that it is given to only to one person a year. A search of the recipients list on the website of the World Cultural Council - the body that bestows the honour - yields not one Chinese name.

In 2006, when Fang, acting on a tip, pored over the online resume of the new assistant dean of Tsinghua University's medical school, he became suspicious when he noticed that one of the research papers it listed was about the molecular biology of HIV - a subject not related to the dean's speciality: surgery. Fang dug a bit further and discovered that the paper had been written by a Chinese scientist in the US with the same family name and first initial. He also discovered the professor had lied about his work experience.

Fang argued that Xiao Chuanguo, professor of urology at Huazhong University of Science and Technology, had lied about winning a major award given by the American Urological Association and questioned the success rate of a new surgical procedure being touted by Xiao. The doctor failed in two attempts to be appointed to the prestigious Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) and scholars credit New Threads for this.

Fang says that prior to the 1990s, the government had tight control on science and research and managed to keep a lid on cheating.

"After reform and opening, the controls were relaxed, and that was a good thing," he says. "We don't want the government controlling everything. But the side effect was that corruption and misconduct emerged."

Critics say government efforts to modernise the higher-education system are exacerbating the problem. The Ministry of Education and universities put pressure on academics to publish in journals catalogued by the Science Citation Index. School rankings, funding and monetary rewards are often based on such results.

A PhD candidate has to publish at least three papers before he can graduate, says Fang, and many graduate students are also required to publish. "That's huge, particularly for someone in biology or medicine," says Fang.

The publish-or-perish phenomenon has even extended to people teaching at junior colleges and high schools. But as more papers need to be published than can be accommodated by the country's key journals - the numbers run close to 500,000 per year - the trend has spawned a raft of low-quality "black journals", in which people pay to have their papers published.

"It's become a huge industry," says Fang. "And no one trusts the papers published in this kind of journal. It's just for promotion."

The pressure to publish has meant scholars churn out papers, often paying little attention to the quality of research or even lifting information from other sources without giving attribution. In many cases, professors allow their graduate students to do their research. If the student plagiarises, the professor pleads ignorance.

One of the problems, as Fang sees it, is that the fear of being caught is no disincentive.

"No one cares because the majority of scientists are involved in misconduct," he says. "So they don't think it's a big deal. You don't need to worry about being caught or punished."

Officials bear some of the blame, too, says Fang.

"The officials who have the power to distribute funding for research know nothing about science," he says. "They only know how to count the number of academic papers one has published. You only have to copy other peoples' papers and they say, `You've done a good job, here's your funding.'"

Universities and the government are often reluctant to punish cheaters, especially high-level scientists or someone who has Communist Party connections, which means just about any senior academic official.

"Government officials don't want to investigate and punish a vice-president or a president of a university because there's nothing in it for them," says Fang.

Universities will usually try to cover up such behaviour to protect the reputation of the institution. CAS members bring in large amounts of funding for their universities, Fang says. His website has exposed the misdeeds of about 20 members of the academy but none has been officially investigated or punished, he says.

He Shigang, of the CAS' Institute of Biophysics and a supporter of Fang, says: "Everything boils down to the political system. If the political system is corrupted you can't have a clean environment for anything."

"[although the number is rising slightly] what appears in the media is a very small minority of the cases," says Fang Xuanchang. "Journalists have to consider whether or not there's a risk in reporting something. As a result, many cases go unreported."

There's a long history of scholarly cheating in China. During the Qing dynasty (1644-1911), scholars taking the rigorous imperial exam, to win coveted positions in the civil service, resorted to all sorts of tricks, including smuggling in miniature books, cheat sheets the size of a fingernail and even undershirts covered with relevant information.

In 1964, Mao Zedong went so far as to endorse cheating during a speech in which he criticised the staid education system and its emphasis on exams.

"At examinations, whispering into each other's ears and taking other people's places ought to be allowed," he declared. "If your answer is good and I copy it, then mine should be counted as good."

Cheating is also rampant among students. In recent years, qiangshou, or "hired guns", have been employed to take exams. Their services can be retained for just about any test on the mainland, including English language exams. One now-defunct website offered three options: a hired gun for 2,000 yuan (HK$2,275), answers in advance for 4,000 yuan or, for 1,200 yuan, answers provided during the test via a wireless device described as an imported "satellite receiver" no bigger than a thumbnail.

Fang says he makes no money from his blog, relying instead on the popular science books he writes to earn a living.

Eleven lawsuits have been brought against the crusader: courts ruled against him in three cases and dismissed five, while three are pending.

Xiao sued Fang for libel in a local court in Wuhan, Hubei province, where he teaches, winning the case and an appeal. Fang ignored the ruling and, last year, the court deducted 40,763 yuan from his wife's bank account.

Some of the legal cases have bordered on the absurd. In November 2006, the family of scholar Liu Zihua sued Fang for libel. In the 30s, Liu argued that he had used the Eight Diagrams theory - from ancient Chinese philosophy - to discover a 10th planet in the solar system, a claim Fang labelled "pseudoscience". The No 2 Beijing Intermediary Court ruled against Fang, fining him 20,000 yuan - despite the fact that Liu had passed away 14 years earlier.

Fang's legal setbacks are the result of politics, local cronyism and a flawed legal system, claims He. "I think he does his homework very carefully. That's the reason I respect him so much."

Supporters have set up a legal defence fund to defray his court costs as well as another website to fight his detractors.

Meanwhile, there is growing concern that academic cheating could adversely affect the development of education and science on the mainland. Fang says international academic journals are now reluctant to accept submissions from Chinese scholars, a problem that was highlighted last month when scientific journal Acta Crystallographica Sections E published an editorial announcing that some 70 crystal structures submitted by two scientists from Jinggangshan University, in Jiangxi, in 2007, had been faked.

Cao Cong, a senior research associate with the Neil D Levin Graduate Institute of International Relations and Commerce at the State University of New York, wrote this month that the peer-reviewed journal had been flooded with Chinese papers, ostensibly because it's just a database of crystal structures in which articles are usually one page long and go through a less-than-vigorous review process. Cao wrote that one chemistry professor at Heilongjiang University had submitted 297 papers to Acta Crystallographica over the past five years.

The incident attracted the attention of Richard Horton, editor-in-chief of medical journal The Lancet, who wrote that rewarding Chinese scholars for being prolific publishers was creating problems.

"In China, unfortunately, there are great incentives to commit fraud," he wrote on The Lancet's website. "When you make prestigious jobs and large amounts of money closely tied to publication, that creates conditions for fraud.

"The concern is if science in China cannot be trusted in certain areas, that undermines China's economic growth."

"Academic corruption is an incredible waste of taxpayer money," says Fang Xuanchang. "Furthermore, this general trend of corruption in scholarly circles will lead to a decline in the efficacy of scientific research and seriously obstruct China's dream of internationalising."

While on the surface it appears New Threads has had limited success, "without Fang Shimin, academic corruption in China would have been worse", says Rao Yi, dean of the School of Life Sciences at Peking University.

"Fang's goal of fighting academic misconduct should not be simply reduced to the number of people who are punished," says Fang Xuanchang. "The more important thing is making those potential cheaters afraid, which has resulted in reducing the emergence of this phenomenon within the academic world."

Fang Shimin says the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Science and Technology (MoST) have both laid down guidelines for dealing with academic misconduct but he doubts they will be enforced. MoST set up the Office of Scientific Research Integrity in 2007, he says, but he's not heard of the office investigating a single case. He also contends that some MoST officials are corrupt and accept kickbacks for handing out research funding.

"There's an office at least," he says, optimistically. "The government now recognises that it's a problem - and although it hasn't done anything, I think that's progress."

Another Academician Who Plagiarized

Several days ago, Fang Zhouzi received copies of two published papers from an alert netter. The two papers were almost identical word-by-word, including the titles, abstracts, contents, and cited references. The only difference was an extra half-sentence added in the abstract of the latter paper. The first paper was published in December, 1998, by a pair of authors in Hunan University (湖南大学). The latter paper was published in September, 2003 by a different pair of authors from the same school. It was obvious that the second paper was a blatant practice of plagiarism.

One of the authors of the second paper was Zhu Yinghao (朱英浩), who is a member of the Chinese Academy of Engineering. He had also been a professor at Hunan University starting in 2000, during which the second paper was published. However, he could not have been part of the research that was first published two years before his arrival there.

After Fang Zhouzi publicized the plagiarism case, he received two more papers that showed blatant plagiarism committed by the same academician and his co-author. One copied from a book and another from another paper, each with only minor text modifications.

University Vice President Loses His Degree for Plagiarism

More than two years ago, alert readers of New Thread have uncovered two separate plagiarism cases committed by Huang Qing (黄庆), vice president of Southwest Jiaotong University (西南交通大学).

A couple months after the public exposure, the school received a formal complain near the end of 2007. It was not until last week that they have reached a verdict that Huang Qing had indeed committed plagiarism. On July 10, the school decided to revoke the Ph.D. degree it had given Huang Qing in 2000 and his qualification in advising graduate students.

There was no decision on his position of vice presidency or faculty status, which the school said it would be dealt with separately in the future. The school did however say that Huang Qing is welcome to stay in school and presumably work in some teaching capacity.

Huang Qing himself has denied all wrongdoings.

Danwei has previously reported this case.

"Youngest Mayor" is a Plagiarist

In June, the Internet in China was abuzz that a twenty-nine years old had become the mayor of a city in Hubei Province. Zhou Senfeng (周森峰) thus became known as the "youngest mayor" of the country.

While many people tried to find out if Zhou Senfeng's rise was benefited from family background or connections (there did not appear to be any), Fang Zhouzi examined his published papers and concluded that Zhou Senfeng was a plagiarist while as a student in Tsinghua University.

Fang Zhouzi reported that Zhou Senfeng published only two papers while studying for this masters degree. In one of them, two sections that makes up the core of the paper were essentially a copy of a paper from someone else. The second paper, on the other hand, is made up by plagiarized content from various different sources.

Commenting on the case, Fang Zhouzi pointed out that one of the biggest reasons that Zhou Senfeng was selected as the mayor was his Masters degree, which is now proven to be a fraud. This shows that Zhou Senfeng has serious character flaws and is unfit for his position.

In response, Zhou Senfeng denied the charge by saying that he only used other papers as references. But he refused to provide more details in defending himself.

Academician Accuses Former Student for Plagiarism

It is quite unusual for cases of academic integrity to be discussed in open media in China. Therefore it is quite amazing when an Academician from the Chinese Academy of Engineering, Lu Daopei (陆道培), called for a press conference to accuse his former student for plagiarism. The accused is now the head of a research institute of the People's Hospital affiliated with Peking University by the name of Huang Xiaojun (黄晓军).

Lu Daopei alleged that Huang Xiaojun's 2008 award-winning research in stem cell was a direct derivative of Lu Daopei's earlier research in 2006, in which Huang Xiaojun was also a participant. Lu Daopei accused Huang Xiaojun for plagiarizing the earlier research as well as falsifying data in the later work.

Chinese Medical Association, which awarded a first class prize for Huang Xiaojun's work asked Peking University to investigate, which found Huang Xiaojun innocent. Lu Daopei organized an expert team of his own which concluded that Huang Xiaojun has committed multiple fraud including plagiarism and falsifying data.

Lu Daopei said in the press conference that it is a last resort of his to appeal to public on this matter. He hoped that a third-party investigation could help clarify the matter.

"A Chinese Scam"

Europe's Life Science journal Lab Times reported a case of plagiarism with an analysis article titled "A Chinese Scam." Its byline summarizes the story:

Fred Schaper from the Technical University of Aachen, Germany, gives a talk at a Keystone Meeting. A couple of months later he discovers the figures he presented in a fresh paper. The author is a Chinese who also attended the meeting.

The article chronicles the entire incident. Fred Schaper had given a speech of his research at the Keystone Meeting in January 2007 and then, on August 6, 2008, he found a preview of a to-be-published paper contained several figures that appeared to be his used during the speech. The authors of the later paper were a group of Chinese from Lanzhou University, led by Yang Jinbo （杨金波).

Fred Schaper launched an investigation effort that involved the editors of the journal Cellular Signalling, the organizers of the Keystone Meeting. Yang Jinbo had first responded by claiming that he had repeated Schaper's experiments himself, obtained the same results, but neglected to cite Schaper's work. But confronted with strong evidence, Yang Jinbo eventually caved in and "admitted that all the figures in question had indeed been pirated." Someone had downloaded the data from the computer at the Keystone Meeting for them. He promised to destroy all data and promised never to work in this field ever again.

There seems to be no mention of this incident in the Chinese media. A search on the schoo's web site failed to turn up any hits on the name Yang Jinbo.

Shanghai University Disciplines a Professor

Shanghai University (上海大学) has recently completed its investigation of professor Chen Zhanyun (陈湛匀) and concluded that he had committed serious plagiarism in two of his published papers. The investigation found that the papers contain 25% and 30% of plagiarized text, respectively.

Chen Zhanyun was stripped all of his committee appointments and managerial positions. However, it looks like his academic position was not affected.

Chen Zhanyun's academic credentials had been previously challenged on New Threads last year.

Anhui Agricultural University Dismisses its Vice President for Plagiarism

Without any fanfare, a local newspaper reported that Anhui Agricultural University (安徽农业大学) has dismissed its Vice President Li Xiaoming (李晓明). The school did not provide any details.

Since last August, XYS has reported that Li Xiaoming has committed serious plagiarism in his published papers.

Christian Science Monitor Reports Zhejiang University Case

Christian Science Monitor reported the dismissal of three professors at Zhejiang University and headlined the case as "China Targets an Academic Culture of Cut-and-Paste."

The paper quoted Yale Professor Stephen Stearns who had famously ignited a debate of plagiarism in China by an open letter. It quoted him saying "There is a long tradition of plagiarism in Chinese universities. Some Chinese professors actually teach their students to plagiarize." He also indicated that he and his colleagues at Yale do not take recommendation letters from Chinese professors seriously.

Fang Zhouzi was also quoted in the story and described as "dubious about the value of" government's efforts to keep the academic field clean.

Scandal at Zhejiang University

Last October, a netter wrote to New Thread to report a case of multiple submission in Zhejiang University (浙江大学). It was then expanded into forgery as papers describing different experiments were found to contain the exact same set of data. By December, another netter did a series of study of papers published by the group and concluded that massive and systematic unethical practices exist, including forgery, plagiarism, and multiple submissions. The case finally received media attention this week after several international journals recalled the questionable papers. As of now, the number of questionable papers has reached 16.

The group in question is led by an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering by the name of Li Lianda (李连达) and concentrated in the study of certain traditional Chinese medicines. Li Lianda claims that he lives in Beijing and only travels to Zhejiang University sporadically and therefore did not know the existence of these papers, although all the papers bear his name and some identified him as the communicating author. He also accused the exposure of the case as a conspiracy by his rivals.

The president of Zhejiang University disclosed results of its investigation, which completely exonerated Li Lianda. The investigation put the entire responsibility of wrongdoings on a junior researcher who it says has published the papers without the knowledge of his coauthors. The junior researcher wrote a lengthy self-criticizing report on his own and was fired by the university.

The case has received such attention that Fang Zhouzi was featured on the evening news by Beijing Television. The video can be seen (with IE only) here. Fang Zhouzi does not believe that such a massive fraud could be done entirely by a single individual without the knowledge of his colleagues. International journals usually require the signatures of all coauthors during the submission process.

Government Aviation Site Rips Off Blog

Danwei reports that a web site owned by the Civil Aviation Administration of China had plagiarized an article published by blogger David Wolf. The article, as Danwei verified, was an exact copy but without any attribution.

The article is no longer available at the CAAC web site.