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By GILLIAN WONG, Associated Press Writer Gillian Wong, Associated Press Writer
Sun Apr 11, 12:49 am ET
LIUZHOU, China When professors in China need to author research papers to get
promoted, many turn to people like Lu Keqian.
Working on his laptop in a cramped spare bedroom, the former schoolteacher
ghostwrites for professors, students, government offices anyone willing to
pay his fee, typically about 300 yuan ($45).
"My opinion is that writing papers for someone else is not wrong," he said.
"There will always be a time when one needs help from others. Even our great
leaders Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping needed help writing."
Ghostwriting, plagiarizing or faking results is so rampant in Chinese academia
that some experts worry it could hinder China's efforts to become a leader in
science.
The communist government views science as critical to China's modernization,
and the latest calls for government spending on science and technology to grow
by 8 percent to 163 billion yuan ($24 billion) this year.
State-run media recently exulted over reports that China publishes more papers
in international journals than any except the U.S. But not all the research
stands up to scrutiny. In December, a British journal retracted 70 papers from
a Chinese university, all by the same two lead scientists, saying the work had
been fabricated.
"Academic fraud, misconduct and ethical violations are very common in China,"
said professor Rao Yi, dean of the life sciences school at Peking University in
the capital. "It is a big problem."
Critics blame weak penalties and a system that bases faculty promotions and
bonuses on number, rather than quality, of papers published.
Dan Ben-Canaan is familiar with plagiarism.
The Israeli professor has been teaching for nine years at Heilongjiang
University in the northeastern city of Harbin. A colleague approached him in
2008 for a paper he wrote about the kidnapping and murder of a Jewish musician
in Harbin in 1933 during the Japanese occupation.
"He had the audacity to present it as his own paper at a conference that I
organized," Ben-Canaan said. "Without any shame!"
In a separate case, he gave material he had written to a researcher at the
prestigious Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. He said he was shocked to
receive a book by the academic that was mostly a copy and translation of the
material Ben-Canaan had provided without any attribution.
The pressure to publish has created a ghostwriting boom. Nearly 1 billion yuan
(more than $145 million) was spent on academic papers in China last year, up
fivefold from 2007, a study by Wuhan University professor Shen Yang showed.
One company providing such a service is Lu's, in Liuzhou, a southern industrial
city. His Lu Ke Academic Center boasts a network of 20 to 30 graduate students
and professors whose specialties range from computer technology to military
affairs.
Lu, a 58-year-old Communist Party member, is approached by clients through
Internet chat programs. Most are college professors seeking promotions and
students seeking help on theses. Once, 10 students from the same college class
put in a collective request for him to write their papers, he said.
"Doing everything on your own, independently, should be possible in theory, but
in reality it is quite difficult and one will always need some help," Lu said.
"This is how I see it. I don't know if it is right."
Even in the business of selling research papers, there are cheats. Among the
papers bought and sold in 2007, more than 70 percent were plagiarized, the
Wuhan study found.
Early last year, Internet users found that the deputy principal of Anhui
Agricultural University had committed plagiarism in as many as 20 papers. The
university removed him from his post but allowed him to continue teaching.
In June, the principal of a traditional Chinese medicine university in the city
of Guangzhou was accused of plagiarizing at least 40 percent of his doctoral
thesis from another paper.
And in March, the state-run China Youth Daily reported a 1997 medical paper had
been plagiarized repeatedly over the past decade. At least 25 people from 16
organizations copied from the work, and more doctors are expected to be named
as the investigation by two students using plagiarism-detecting software
continues, the report said.
Fang Shimin, an independent investigator of fraud, said he and his volunteers
expose about a hundred cases every year, publicizing them on a Web site titled
"New Threads."
"The most common ones are plagiarism and exaggerating academic achievement,"
Fang said.
The papers retracted by the British journal came from researchers at
Jinggangshan University in southeastern China. The editors are checking other
papers from the same institution, and say more retractions are expected. Calls
and e-mails sent to Zhong Hua and Liu Tao, the two researchers named as lead
authors of the papers, were unanswered. Other researchers contacted at the
university too did not respond.
The journal, Acta Crystallographica Section E, publishes discoveries of new
crystal structures, much of it from legitimate Chinese research.
"Chinese authors have submitted thousands of high quality structures to Acta E,
which represent an important contribution to science," wrote Peter Strickland,
managing editor of Journals of the International Union of Crystallography,
which owns Acta E, in an e-mail. He said it was the first time fraudulent
papers had been found in any of the journals.
Richard P. Suttmeier, an expert in Chinese science policy at the University of
Oregon, said the problems can be traced to China's efforts to modernize its
science system in the 1980s and early 1990s when research accountability and
evaluation were still weak.
In trying to find ready measures of achievement, China emulated Western
practices and began to focus on high-quality publications, but with mixed
results, he said.
The problems could hurt the country's ambition of becoming a global leader in
research, Suttmeier said.
"I suspect there will be less appetite for non-Chinese scientists to
collaborate with Chinese colleagues who are operating in a culture of
misconduct," he said.
Last month the Education Ministry released guidelines for forming a 35-member
watchdog committee. Also, in a faxed reply to questions, it said it has asked
universities to get tough.
Rao, the Peking University dean, remains skeptical.
Government ministries are happy to fund research but not to police it, he said.
"The authorities don't want to be the bad guy."
___
Associated Press researcher Xi Yue contributed to this report.