Fraud Scandals Sap China's Dream of Becoming a Science Superpower

["Dave Farber" <farber () gmail com>]

Begin forwarded message:

> From: Dewayne Hendricks <dewayne () warpspeed com>
> Date: October 14, 2017 at 6:02:59 AM EDT
> To: Multiple recipients of Dewayne-Net <dewayne-net () warpspeed com>
> Subject: [Dewayne-Net] Fraud Scandals Sap China's Dream of Becoming a Science Superpower
> Reply-To: dewayne-net () warpspeed com
>
> Fraud Scandals Sap China’s Dream of Becoming a Science Superpower
> By AMY QIN
> Oct 13 2017
> <https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/13/world/asia/china-science-fraud-scandals.html>
>
> BEIJING — Having conquered world markets and challenged American political and military leadership, China has set its 
> sights on becoming a global powerhouse in a different field: scientific research. It now has more laboratory 
> scientists than any other country, outspends the entire European Union on research and development, and produces more 
> scientific articles than any other nation except the United States.
>
> But in its rush to dominance, China has stood out in another, less boastful way. Since 2012, the country has 
> retracted more scientific papers because of faked peer reviews than all other countries and territories put together, 
> according to Retraction Watch, a blog that tracks and seeks to publicize retractions of research papers.
>
> Now, a recent string of high-profile scandals over questionable or discredited research has driven home the point in 
> China that to become a scientific superpower, it must first overcome a festering problem of systemic fraud.
>
> “China wants to become a global leader in science,” said Zhang Lei, a professor of applied physics at Xi’an Jiaotong 
> University. “But how do you achieve that and still preserve the quality of science? We still haven’t figured out how 
> to do that yet.”
>
> In April, a scientific journal retracted 107 biology research papers, the vast majority of them written by Chinese 
> authors, after evidence emerged that they had faked glowing reviews of their articles. Then, this summer, a Chinese 
> gene scientist who had won celebrity status for breakthroughs once trumpeted as Nobel Prize-worthy was forced to 
> retract his research when other scientists failed to replicate his results.
>
> At the same time, a government investigation highlighted the existence of a thriving online black market that sells 
> everything from positive peer reviews to entire research articles.
>
> President Xi Jinping, whose leadership is expected to be reaffirmed at a Communist Party congress that begins next 
> week, has stated his goal of turning China into “a global scientific and technology power” by 2049. But the 
> revelations have been a setback to this effort.
>
> China has, of course, made enormous strides in science, research and technology. Worried that its economy is still 
> too dependent on low-end manufacturing, the government is investing hundreds of billions of dollars in developing 
> high-tech industries like semiconductors, solar panels, artificial intelligence, medical technologies and electric 
> cars.
>
> China has built extensive infrastructure across the country, with roads, railroads, ports and bridges that exhibit 
> enviable engineering prowess. And it has reshaped many other parts of the world by exporting its expertise, offering 
> it yet another way to drive its rapid economic growth.
>
> But it has also endured problems of piracy and poor quality that have plagued its economic rise, blemishing what has 
> been an otherwise dramatic entry into the ranks of the world’s leading scientific nations.
>
> China has made inroads partly because of its willingness to invest in new research at a time when such spending has 
> stagnated in countries like the United States and Japan. The government in Beijing has poured the equivalent of 
> billions of dollars into new projects in order to catch up with the West in producing original research, and also 
> reverse decades of scientific brain drain by luring home top Western-trained Chinese researchers.
>
> [snip]
>
> Dewayne-Net RSS Feed: http://dewaynenet.wordpress.com/feed/
> Twitter: https://twitter.com/wa8dzp



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