A "Success" that Could be Easily Replicated

Followers of this blog are well aware that Fang Zhouzi has been a lonely crusader in exposing scientific fraud and misconduct for over a decade. Although there had been a few cases that gained wide publicity, much of his efforts remain unknown to the general public. It is therefore somewhat ironic that it was when he occasionally wandered out of the ivory tower settings that he achieved an usually fame.

It all started with an innocent comment on the Chinese-version of twitters. When answering a question from a follower, Fang Zhouzi casually mentioned that he had been aware that the diplomatic credentials of a famous individual are most likely faked. All of a sudden, the Chinese twitter world exploded and the "news" flooded into traditional news media. In a matter of days, it became the top news in China.

The famous individual in question is Tang Jun (唐骏), a purported self-motivator who had achieved huge success in business world through his own unrelenting efforts. Tang Jun boasts an enviable resume, including the chief executive in China for Microsoft and several successful startups. Several books about his story, including a couple of his autobiography, are best sellers and he is a well-sort motivational speaker in universities and colleges. Indeed, Tang Jun is an idol for China's youth. One of his autobiographies is titled as My Success Can Be Replicated.

In various versions of his books and speeches, Tang Jun describes his experience as having earned a bachelor degree in China, a master in Japan, and a Ph.D. in USA, all while producing several inventions and starting up a few companies.

It was that Ph.D. degree in USA that caught Fang Zhouzi's eyes first. More than a year ago, in fact, Fang Zhouzi had already pointed out that Tang Jun's story could not be consistent with facts. In his online resume, Tang Jun claimed that he left Japan to pursue research in the famed California Institute of Technology (Cal Tech) and then "earned a Ph.D. degree." Fang Zhouzi searched the Cal Tech database and could not find any record of Tang Jun, either as a degree recipient or an author of any published research work. Fang Zhouzi concluded that Tang Jun had lied about his degree.

After the Chinese twitter storm, Tang Jun went through several phases in his defense. He first accused Fang Zhouzi as having ulterior motives and unworthy of responding. Then he claimed that he has been misquoted in his own autobiography and that he had never implied that his Ph.D. was from Cal Tech. Finally, as most who had been exposed by Fang Zhouzi, Tang Jun threatened to sue in courts.

The story quickly takes another turn. After "clarifying" that his degree was not from CalTech, Tang Jun produced a certificate indicating that he indeed has a Ph.D. degree and it was from Pacific Western University in California.

Pacific Western University, Fang Zhouzi quickly pointed out, is a well-known "diploma mill" in the US that has been the target of various governmental and consumer complains. Such a degree certificate could be readily obtained for a fee of over $2,000 USD. Furthermore, Fang Zhouzi and his supporters provided evidence that Tang Jun's claim on his inventions and other achievements are likely to be baseless. "80% of his autobiography could be made-up," Fang Zhouzi told a newspaper.

Tang Jun insists that his degree is genuine. But he has since toned down his public defense and threats. Meanwhile, the story continues to spread, with more and more Pacific Western University degree holders are discovered, some of them occupy prominent positions in business as well as academic worlds in China. There appears to be already a flurry of activities in revising online resumes and pages to remove such degrees, while others argue that their PWU degree was earned through studying programs.

The media circus caught Fang Zhouzi himself by surprise. He hopes that he could soon return to his beloved work of writing scientific essays and paying attention more in academia rather than business world.

An Interesting Resume

Professor Zhang Yangde (张阳德) has many significant titles. He is the leader of the National Hepatobiliary & Enteric Surgery Research Center (NHEC), the National Key Laboratory of Nanobiological Technology, the Institute of Biomedical Engineering of Central South University (中南大学), the Institute of Endoscopic Medicine of Central South University, etc. Through his leadership position, he has direct control of billions RMB in research funding.

NHEC has a web site that links to Zhang's various research institutes and activities. It also has an accompanying English version. But if anyone is interested to learn about Zhang's achievements and qualifications, he/she will quickly find out that the links to Zhang's personal information, in both English and Chinese editions, all lead to a "page not found" error. It's been like that since the summer of 2007.

Before that, those links proudly led to Zhang Yangde's personal resume. During the summer, Fang Zhouzi took an interest in Zhang's resume after someone reported that Zhang had obtained a major funding in nano-biological research through improper means. Fang found Zhang's resume more than interesting and wrote a series of articles exposing Zhang's fraudulent claims in it. After that, the resume disappeared from the NHEC site (but they didn't bother to fix the links). A copy of the resume can still be seen at the bottom of Fang's article here.

Apart of obvious language mishaps, Zhang's resume has some serious issues:

The resume claimed that Zhang had obtained a Ph.D. degree in the US during the period of 1987-1991. But it did not specify where the degree was earned. According to the same resume, Zhang was working as a surgeon and professor at Central South University during the time period. It did not seem that Zhang had studied in the US at all.

Zhang's resume also listed an impressive collections of Zhang's titles:

• Vice-President, International Endoscopist Association (USA)
• Vice-President, US-Asian International Exchange Foundation
• Director, Committee of Japanese Explosive Association
• Director, Committee of International Explosive Association (USA)
• Director, Committee of International Hepatobiliary & Enteric Surgery Association (UK)

None of these organizations seems to actively exist. They are more likely organizations registered with the sole purpose of boasting resume.

One organization that does seem to exist is the American Association of Nanoscience and Technology, which lists Professor Zhang as its Chairman. Interesting enough that here Zhang was listed as a person from the US, even though he lives and works in China. This AANST co-publishes a quarterly journal Nanoscience with Zhang's institutes in China.

Despite its official-sounding name, AANST was registered in the State of Washington in 2005 by someone named Hongbo Chen. The vast majority of articles published in Nanoscience are originated in China. The magazine boasts a big editorial board, most of them are Chinese names.
Fang Zhouzi carefully examined the non-Chinese names in the list and found a few are American medical doctors, engineers, or even real estate agents, who might have crossed paths with Zhang's previous visits to the US. None of them have expertise in nano-science at all.

Professor Zhang has maintained a dead silence since Fang's exposure, other than taking down his resume page.

Professor Xiao Chuanguo's Resume

Over at xys-readers, Yush has just posted a nice rundown on the evolution and fallacies of Professor Xiao Chuanguo's resume.

What is "Xiao's Reflex Arc"?

Professor Xiao Chuanguo claimed that the fruit of his research, the so-called "Xiao's Reflex Arc" or "Xiao's Procedure", is one of the very few world-wide recognized surgical procedures that are named after a Chinese national. If true, it is certainly a remarkable achievement worthy consideration of Chinese Academy of Science's Academician-ship.

However, after an exhausive search, Fang Zhouzi concluded that the terms such as "Xiao's Reflex Arc" or "Xiao's Procedure" do not exist in either medical literature or general information base. Indeed, up to today, a google search on these teams only turn up pages about Xiao Chuanguo vs. Fang Zhouzi libel case. Therefore, Fang Zhouzi accused that Professor Xiao Chuanguo had cooked up such terms on his own to gain fame.

On the web site of New York University, where Xiao worked during the period of dispute, it describes that Xiao "is actively engaged in pioneering research regarding creation of a somatic-autonomic reflex pathway for treatment of neurogenic bladder in patients with spinal cord injury." The term "Xiao's Reflex Arc" is nowhere to be found.

Today, we seem to know this much:

• In 1999, Xiao coauthored a paper describing a bladder reflex pathway in cats. This work was cited in Walsh Campbell's Urology, 8th edition, 2002. Xiao uses this example to show recognition of his work, but he never mentioned the fact that the cited work is not on human, nor did he mention his co-authors. More importantly, nowhere in Urology, can the term "Xiao's Reflex Arc" be found.
• The only occurrence of the term "Xiao's Reflex Arc" is in a Chinese textbook, edited by Xiao Chuanguo's thesis advisor Qiu Fazu（裘法祖）.

During the trial in Wuhan, the presiding judge ignored Fang Zhouzi's plea that the validity of Professor's work itself is not in dispute. The issue is whether the term "Xiao's Reflex Arc" is an internationally recognized name for the work, as Xiao had repeated claimed. Instead, the judge declared that since Xiao's research work is real. "Xiao's Reflex Arc" must also be real.

What Awards Had Professor Xiao Chuanguo Earned

In 2005, Professor Xiao Chuanguo boosted in his resume that he had won two big awards for his urologist research from the American Urologist Association (AUA): the Jack Lapides Award and an AUA Achievement Award. According to Xiao himself, these are the highest honors from AUA.

In his essay exposing Xiao's resume-padding, Fang Zhouzi pointed out that Jack Lapides award is not an achievement award but an award for an essay contest. Xiao did not provide the exact name in English of the other Achievement Award name, so Fang searched for recent winners of AUA's Achievement Awards and did not find Xiao in it.

During the libel lawsuit proceeding, Xiao presented his Jack Lapides Award certification. Although the certification clearly states "Jack Lapides Essay Contest ... ... Grand Prize Winner", Xiao continued to claim that it is one of the highest honors in the urological field, that "only the most world-renown scholars had won this award." Despite Fang Zhouzi's rebuttal and without further investigation, the Wuhan Court sided with Professor Xiao.

For the other award, Xiao presented a different certificate, indicating he was the winner of "Pfizer Scholars in Urology Award" in 2000. This is certainly different from the AUA Achievement Award he seemed to have claimed in his resume. The "Pfizer Scholars in Urology Award" is an award sponsored by the Pfizer Inc. and given to many young researchers each year. It is not uncommon for this award being given to outstanding residents. It is hardly prestigious worthy of "highest honor". What is more, it has since been discontinued.

In the Wuhan Court, Fang Zhouzi argued that this "Pfizer Scholars in Urology Award" is irrelevant since Professor Xiao had claimed in his resume as the winner of the AUA Achievement Award, which he certainly did not.

On this issue, the judge in the case pronounced: just because Fang Zhouzi failed to find Xiao Chuanguo's name in the past winners of the AUA Achievement Award is not enough evidence that Xiao did not win the award. Therefore, the Court recognizes that Professor Xiao has won the AUA Achievement Award.

Just like that, Fang Zhouzi was pronounced guilty for libel.

Wither "International Journal"

When Professor Xiao Chuanguo was a candidate for an Academician post in Chinese Academy of Science in 2005, his resume boosted that he had published 26 research papers. These papers were all written in English, he claimed, apparently to enhance their credibility. After an extensive search in publication databases, Fang Zhouzi concluded that, at that time, Professor Xiao had only published 4 papers in "international journals". The rest of them, Fang pointed out, were only abstracts submitted to conferences, whose inclusion as bona fide papers in the resume is one of Professor Xiao's unethical practices.

The term "international journals" is widely used in China, to distinguish publications in domestic ones, which are not widely read and generally considered inferior as credentials for achievements. It's not unusual for Chinese Academy of Science and universities to impose performance standards that included number of papers published in "international journals".

Among the various disputes around Professor Xiao's credentials, this one seems to be the easiest to decide. However, a judge in Wuhan presiding on Xiao's libel case against Fang Zhouzi has other ideas.

During the proceedings in the Jianghan District Court, Xiao Chuanguo produced a different list of his publications as evidence that he had published more than 4 papers as Fang Zhouzi claimed. Indeed, this list includes 15 papers, and apparently none of them were abstracts for conferences.

Upon close examination, however, these 15 papers are entirely different from the original 26 Xiao had listed on his resume. Indeed, there is no longer any conference abstract in these 15. But 9 of the 15 were actually written in Chinese and published in Chinese journals, in direct contraction of his "written in English" claim accompanying the original 26.

Nevertheless, the presiding judge of the case, Luu Ying, ignored this detail and ruled that since these Chinese journals are publicly available internationally, they are also "international journals". Therefore, Fang Zhouzi's claim that Xiao had only published 4 papers in "international journals" is a falsehood.

This peculiar ruling raised many eyebrows in the academic circle in China and became a running joke. Unfortunately for many, Chinese legal system does not allow the use of legal precedent. Otherwise there could be a flood of lawsuits by people who had lost their positions due to their lack of publications in "international journals".

In the meantime, the real issue, that Professor Xiao Chuanguo had used conference abstracts to inflate his original resume (which he had tacitly admitted by providing a different list in court), had fallen wayside and been ignored.

The Fraud Case of Prefessor Xiao Chuanguo

In September, 2005, the Chinese Academy of Science (CAS) announced a new slate of candidates for her prestigious Academician program. Almost on the same day, an alert New Thread reader reported that one of the candidates, Professor Xiao Chuanguo (肖传国), although nominated from the Huazhong Science and Technology University(华中科技大学) at Wuhan, China, actually holds a full-time faculty position at New York University (NYU). If so, he should not be eligible to become a CAS Academician.

Other New Thread readers soon joined in to dispute many of the critical accomplishments listed in Professor Xiao Chuanguo's resume. On September 21, 2005, Fang Zhouzi published an essay in Beijing Science and Technology and summarized the major disputes surrounding Professor Xiao Chuanguo's credentials:

1. Professor Xiao's position at NYU had been an Assistant Professor up until recently (2005), not Associate Professor as he had claimed. Even then, he was promoted as a Clinic Associate Professor, not a tenured Associate Professor.
2. Professor Xiao's resume claimed that he had published 26 papers written in English. However, there had been only 4 such publications. The others are abstracts submitted to conferences. There were only 9 citations to the 4 publications he had, hardly a laudable record.
3. Professor Xiao claimed that he had won a couple of highest awards from the American Urological Association (AUA) for his achievements. However, one of the awards was given for a conference abstract and the other unverifiable.
4. Most important of all, Professor Xiao claimed that his work resulted in a "Xiao's Reflective Arc" procedure that is internationally recognized. In fact, he claimed that it was one of the very few procedures that were named after the name of a Chinese national. However, an extensive search of that term and its similar variations did not turn out any results. The so-named procedure could not be so recognized or acclaimed.

Professor Xiao eventually lost his bid to be elected as a CAS Academician. It is not known how much impact Fang Zhouzi's essay had had in the matter. Nevertheless, Professor Xiao launched a series of lawsuits against Fang Zhouzi and the media that had carried Fang's work, resulting in some very interesting, and even peculiar rulings.