Why fake research is rampant in China

Scientific fraud is each excessively communal successful China. Bad incentives are a large portion of the problem. Chinese universities typically reward researchers with promotions and backing based connected the quantity of papers they publish, not the quality. That has got results. In 2017, for the archetypal time, China published much technological papers than immoderate different country. It has kept the apical spot ever since. But portion immoderate of the probe has been cutting-edge, overmuch has been dodgy.

The standard of the occupation is hard to measure, arsenic fraudulent enactment often goes unnoticed. But it is utile to look astatine retractions, oregon erstwhile a technological diary withdraws a study, usually owed to suspicions of probe misconduct. Papers from China person the fourth-highest retraction complaint successful the world, according to Nature, a diary (see chart). In a database of immoderate 50,000 retracted studies compiled by Crossref, an American non-profit, and Retraction Watch, a blog, astir 46% are from China.

Many of the fishy papers are astir apt written, for a fee, by “paper mills". These outfits often plagiarise existent research, changing a fewer details. Some fakes are obvious, says Elisabeth Bik, a microbiologist who specialises successful rooting them out. She recovered a Chinese insubstantial connected prostate cancer, for instance, which claimed that much than fractional of the patients studied were women. Only men person prostate glands. Other fakes look much convincing and mightiness pollute a tract of research. So immoderate scientists simply garbage to adjacent reappraisal enactment from China, says Ms Bik.

The government, which hopes to crook China into a technological superpower, is trying to ace down connected fake research. In caller years it has fined hundreds of misbehaving scientists and barred them from nationalist funding. In January the Ministry of Education launched a caller campaign, demanding that universities analyse each retracted insubstantial written by their faculty. Many authors invited specified toughness. Authorities should usage harsh penalties to “purify" the pursuit of science, says a researcher astatine a infirmary successful Beijing.

But punishment unsocial volition not hole the problem, says Shu Fei of Hangzhou Dianzi University. He believes universities should halt rewarding researchers conscionable for publishing tons of papers. In 2020 the authorities released guidelines to this effect. Still, small has changed, says Mr Shu. Part of the problem, helium suspects, is that assemblage leaders are authorities officials (rather than academics). So they are bully astatine chasing numerical targets, but atrocious astatine fostering bully science, which is hard to quantify.

The illustration acceptable by Mr Huang’s postgraduate students is encouraging, astatine least. On societal media galore Chinese radical person applauded them for taking a stand, astatine the hazard of damaging their ain world careers. But determination is overmuch enactment inactive to beryllium done. In an online survey published past year, implicit a 4th of Chinese postgraduate aesculapian students considered it acceptable to fabricate immoderate information oregon results.

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Published: 24 Apr 2024, 06:45 PM IST