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.

Chemistry World: Academic Controversy Leads to Bloodshet

Chemistry World China, a British scientific journal, reports:

Academic controversy leads to bloodshed

By Hepeng Jia and Tao He/Beijing, China

The imprisonment of a professor of urology after attacks on critics at has led to louder calls to shake up China’s academic community.

On 8 November, Beijing’s Intermediary Court sentenced Xiao Chuanguo of Wuhan-based Huazhong University of Science and Technology (HUST) to five and half months’ imprisonment for hiring thugs to assault an outspoken science fraud buster - Fang Shimin, who goes by

well-known pen name Fang Zhouzi - and Fang Xuanchang, science editor of Caijing Magazine.

The two victims are highly dissatisfied with the slight penalty, while Xiao’s lawyer argues he should not be found guilty and imprisoned because the attack was not serious enough. Accompanying the debate is an increasing concern surrounding academic ethics in China.

　　

‘It is a dangerous time for academic ethics,[in China]’ says Huang Boyun, president of Changsha, China-based Central South University, at the annual meeting of China Association for Science and Technology (Cast) in early November.

　　

Bloody attack

　　

The assault against Fang Xuanchang took place in June, when Fang’s skull was cracked by three men brandishing steel sticks. He lost nearly two litres of blood. Two months later, Fang Shimin was attacked with hammer and chili water, but luckily escaped with only minor injuries.

　　

On 21 September, Beijing police announced that the attackers had been detained and the individual suspected of hiring them was identified as Xiao.

A festering wound

　　

In September 2005, Fang published an article criticising Xiao's candidacy for membership of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS). In it he explained that CAS members must work full-time in China, but that Xiao worked both at HUST and New York University Medical Center, in the US.

　　

Fang, who obtained his PhD in biochemistry from Michigan State University in the US before becoming well-known in China after starting a website to expose scientific misconduct, also claimed that Xiao had exaggerated his academic achievements by including presentations listed in conference proceedings among his international publications.

　　

Xiao is mainly famous for his bold operation to rebuild sections of patients’ nervous systems to return the ability to control urination to those who were paralysed or suffered some other

neurological complaint that affected this ability. But Fang questioned the achievement, saying there was little evidence supporting the use of the procedure.

　　

Fang Xuanchang then led investigations into Xiao’s case published in China News Weekly in 2007 and Science News Magazine in 2009, where he had been science editor and executive chief editor respectively.

In 2006, a court in Wuhan, where HUST is located, ruled that Fang had libelled Xiao. In 2007, however, Beijing Intermediary Court ruled that Fang’s articles against Xiao constituted normal academic criticism, and the court should not be involved in the debate. CAS members voted against Xiao joining the organisation in 2005.

　　

Fang Shimin, meanwhile, continued to question Xiao’s claims, and a series of investigative news articles criticising Xiao’s medical procedure were published by Fang Xuanchang and other journalists in late 2009 and early 2010.

　　

According to police, Xiao began to plan the assault in early 2010 and he spent Yuan100,000 (US$15,000) to hire the attackers. But in court Xiao said that he only wanted to teach the two small lessons, rather than cause bloody injuries or even murders as claimed by the two.

　　

Academic discipline

　　

This escalation from academic controversy to physical attack in China has caused increased calls among both the public and academics for better discipline in science communities.

　　

‘I hope this case can become a good chance for the fight against academic misconduct,’ Bruce Alberts, editor-in-chief of the journal Science, said during his visit to China in mid October.

　　

According to Alberts, the key to improve academic ethics is to establish a system to investigate claimed misconduct in a timely manner and punish wrongdoers.

　　

Chinese science Minister Wan Gang promised at a symposium in Shanghai in mid November that his ministry will take a zero tolerance approach to academic plagiarism and fabrication.

　　

In 2006, the Ministry of Science and Technology set up an academic disciplining office. This facility has been replicated in government departments like Education Ministry, National Natural Science Foundation and CAS.

　　

However, Fang says it is unlikely to have an effect overnight. ‘The key is not to claim zero tolerance over and over again, but to give real punishment. There are more and more cases of misconduct being exposed, but only a few of them get real punishment.’

　　

On Fang’s website, famous for exposing and criticising academic misconduct and pseudoscience, allegations of more than 1000 cases of academic misconduct have been made in the past 10 years, but only a tiny proportion of them – often first reported by media – were officially investigated.

　　

In Xiao’s case, a Ministry of Health spokesperson said in early November that his medical procedure, despite having been carried out on more than 4000 patients, has not been approved for commercial operation.

　　

‘But the ban did not appear before this, despite the media and I repeatedly reporting the poor outcomes of the operation and hyped claims to the ministry,’ Fang Shimin told Chemistry World.

　　

Science cop

　　

While the government has not done enough to vet academics as appealed by Fang and others, Fang himself has been hailed by the public as a hero since being attacked.

　　

But some, mainly academics, question Fang’s efforts against academic misconduct, saying he could not judge academic fields outside his specialism or criticising his firm denial of traditional Chinese medicine.

　　

‘The efforts against academic misconduct by Fang and others have hidden the true problem of Chinese science, which is lack of real innovative research. The attention should be focused on the scientific and education systems that brew innovations, says a scientist at Tsinghua University, who would not be named.

　　

But Fang says that he would prefer the authorities – such as ministries of science, health and education – instead of him and his website to take more systematic work to stamp out misconduct, “But they have done too little,” he says.

Fang Zhouzi Selected by Nature Medicine Yearbook

Nature Medicine's The Yearbook, which "list key people who made headlines this year, either by standing up for what they saw as right or by stopping what they felt was wrong," included an entry for Fang Zhouzi this year:

Fang Shimin: Least likely to back down Chinese blogger

Shimin has investigated and exposed numerous counts of scientific misconduct. But even writing under a pen name ('Fang Zhouzi') did not protect him from a physical attack, in which he says he was chased down by assailants wielding a hammer. Shimin suffered only minor injuries, but the incident brought attention to the perils faced by journalists reporting on fraud in China.

HUST Disciplines Dr. Xiao Chuanguo

In the aftermath of Dr. Xiao Chuanguo's conviction for attacks, the Huazhong University of Science and Technology decided to impose severe disciplinary actions on Dr. Xiao Chuanguo, who is an employee at the school and its affiliated Xiehe Hospital. The school announced today that they had decided on November 6 to strip all administrative and teaching positions Xiao Chuanguo held in the school and hospital.

But the school stopped short of expelling him altogether. Dr. Xiao Chuanguo also received an administrative censure and a one-year probation. It is unclear how the probation would carry out.