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There have been many rumblings about scientific fraud in China, and now there are rumbles that the problem is systemic, and goes all the way to the top. Cao Xuetao (曹雪涛), one of China's top immunologists, former president of the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences, president of Nankai University, and most importantly Chairman of research integrity for all Chinese research, has himself been implicated in scientific fraud and misconduct. A careful examination of Chairman Cao's published scientific papers seems to show how some of his data was fabricated or falsified. This was noticed since much of his papers have pictures, either of western blots, gels, flow cyclometry images, and microscopy images. Some of the fabrication appears to have been done by sending the same sample multiple times through analysis, producing images that are similar but not completely identical, while others are clear Photoshop cut and paste jobs. From the For Better Science article:
And now it comes out, Cao's research works contain elaborately falsified research data. The discovery was made by data integrity sleuth Elisabeth Bik, assisted by Smut Clyde and others. It all started with a fraudulent paper, Wang et al Clin Cancer Research 2005 from Cao's lab, which Bik reported to the publisher AACR in 2014. Despite 4 falsified figures, only an embarrassing correction was issued in March 2015. So now Bik had another look at Chairman Cao's collected works.
[...] Also on 17 November, Chairman Cao publicly replied to his critic Bik, on PubPeer:
[...] Nevertheless, there is no excuse for any lapse in supervision or laboratory leadership and the concerns you raised serve as a fresh reminder to me just how important my role and responsibility are as mentor, supervisor, and lab leader; and how I might have fallen short.
[...] There was even English language coverage, as the dams broke. China's top scientist Cao can now brace himself for retractions, especially since he unwisely published a number of problematic papers in the Journal of Biological Chemistry. Where he already had to retract one in 2015, for massive data fakery.
There is a further follow-up, investigator Elisabeth Bik's own blog post, and commentary by Dr. Steven Novella.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Runaway1956 on Sunday December 01 2019, @10:21AM (8 children)
I don't care a whole lot about the "what", just the "how" and the "why". Do we dare to dive into the facts surrounding China's decades of persecution of scholars? It's nothing for a nobody to make stuff up, hoping to fool the experts, and make a name for themselves. It happens at the best of universities, in the best of countries. But, China's top scholars? Come on, people, it's preposterous. I want to hear all of the how's and why's of this story!! And, hopefully, before China just executes the man out of embarrassment.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by looorg on Sunday December 01 2019, @11:09AM (5 children)
While I don't really know how the Chinese academic system works it's probably at least somewhat similar to the rest of the world where successful and often cited papers leads to more research grants next time. So in that sense it's always a tempting option for some. After all you secure your place at whatever university you are at. It's sort of the same as why do pro-athletes dope? To win and get more money and more sponsorship deals etc. I can't really tell from the article if he did this when he was already at the top of his game or he did this previously when he was more unknown and not the chairman of this and that or the president of something such. So it could have been something he did to claw his way to the top and now it came back to bite him in the arse. I wonder how they deal with that in China, will he get fired or shipped of to some kind of re-education camp?
That said from the quote it almost seems like he wants to blame this on his research staff and lab assistants. Nice of him to throw his minions under the train. I guess that is what he considers them to be there for.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by bzipitidoo on Sunday December 01 2019, @04:25PM (4 children)
What's really bad is how far he got. Chairman of Research Integrity?!? That's hugely embarrassing. University President is also very bad.
A problem cheaters have always had is keeping the details covered up when the results really stand out for being so extraordinary, as they often do when they were faked. They can't be too extraordinary, or everyone will quickly realize they're fake. They have to be modest enough to be believable, but still novel. However, in research, the cheaters' problem of keeping the cheats hidden never ends. No one expects athletes past their prime to be able to duplicate a world record achieving performance, so if they cheated, it's easier to bury.
Still, if researchers can keep their cheating covered up for long enough, they can get pretty far, as Cao shows. And yes, I believe there are cultural elements that aid them in maintaining a cover. Such as, many Asian cultures have great respect for seniority, and will not dare to raise such embarrassing questions to seniors of any sort. Just checking the results could be considered offensive. Or, it's that America is perhaps the outlier, in being the most rude and disrespectful of all towards seniority. A century of patronizing expressions of doubt about the viability of the US from Britain and much of Europe, all of which civilizations have far greater seniority, made America very skeptical. European monarchists were all but dancing in the streets when the US Civil War broke out and it seemed America might be headed towards failure. It took WWI and WWII to most decisively and finally crush them and their contentions.
An instructive incident comes from baseball in Japan. Star players are given all kinds of favorable treatment. Umpires almost always rule in their favor whenever there is room for interpretation, and sometimes even when there isn't. I read of an American umpire running into a buzzsaw when he was brought in to officiate. He called a strike on a star batter, and the batter had a huge tantrum. Not only his whole team, but even the other umpires and star batters on the other team supported the batter. The crowd was very unhappy, of course. They all leaned on him hard to change his call to "ball", and made it clear that next time, he had better play along with their expectations.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 01 2019, @05:38PM (2 children)
When I was taking a biology major biology class there was a group of Asians that sat next to each other. They were all slipping each other notes during a test and the teacher caught them. IIRC they didn't really get in all that much trouble, they were allowed to continue the class after (they got a fail for that test and there is a notation in their record for all other teachers to see that they were caught cheating). Although the teacher didn't specifically mention them during the lecture after (everyone knew who they were) the teacher mentioned how astonished she was at how obvious the students made it that they were cheating.
I've been in other classes where I was told by students that they caught other students looking at their cell phones during tests and cheating. I rarely saw it myself because I usually sit at the front of the class (unless the teacher has a seating chart during the test and the person doing it sits so close to me I can see it in my peripheral vision) and I don't really pay attention to the rest of the class while I'm taking a test since my focus is on the test (I don't cheat) but I do feel like it's unfair for (myself) the non-cheaters that we have to compete with people that cheat and get away with it.
Sometimes teachers can tell when a student cheated when a student that isn't expected to do that well suddenly does very well and they'll mention it in class (without naming names) and later make the test taking policies stricter but without proof of cheating the teachers can't really do anything. This is more true of smaller, community college, classes than huge university classes where the teacher has so many students it's impossible to really keep track.
I remember there was this one time where an ordinary student who really needed a good score on this one test said he was stick for that day. So the teacher said, OK, I'll let you take the test the next day. Suddenly he did good on that test. The teacher knew he consulted someone who had already taken the test in order to get the questions/answers ahead of time but the teacher couldn't prove it so he couldn't do anything (everyone knew who the student was and the student denied it of course). The teacher said it was a lesson learned and he will never be nice again.
I'm fully in favor of having cameras in classes during tests. Multiple cameras at multiple vantage points that the teacher can review later on. Teachers generally know what to expect in terms of test scores (for the smaller community college classes at least). If they see an anomalous test score they can review the cameras.
Maybe it might even be a good idea for the footage to be posted online where all students can view them and, if they suspect another student is cheating, they can anonymously report it for teachers to review the footage. As a student that doesn't cheat I have a vested interest in ensuring other students that do cheat are caught and all of the non-cheating students also have this same vested interest. Especially if the class is graded on a curve. Many times when a student does cheat there is at least another student that knows (ie: if someone is trying to look at my paper I would probably know and try to scoot away from them so they can't look). But if the student can't report it anonymously and prove it then what's the point. If they can then it might be worth doing. The student that got caught cheating won't know that anyone reported it or who reported it, he'll just think the teacher caught them. The teacher can make up a story about how they noticed this test score didn't make sense and so s/he reviewed the footage and caught the student. The student isn't in a position to question how they really got caught.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 01 2019, @05:50PM (1 child)
Ensuring that cheaters don't graduate school/college by
A: Ensuring they don't cheat and fail because they know they will get caught cheating if they do cheat or ensuring they don't even attempt to take a class they know they can't pass without cheating
B: Ensuring they fail because they do get caught if they cheat
is the first step towards preventing them from cheating in the real world once they do graduate. Make sure cheaters don't graduate, we need to stop them from continuing early on in their college careers.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 02 2019, @02:45AM
That sounds about right, except colleges, even when I was attending them 20 years ago are profit driven. The international students that pay 4 times (again 20 years ago) are cash cows. You do not want to interrupt the money train. Sure you can fail a small number of them, but there has to be a limit otherwise there's profit implications.
Other practices like denying credit transfers and ensuring they retake basic courses just so you can milk the extra credit hours is the flip side of it for the international students. Pros and cons.
(Score: 3, Informative) by PiMuNu on Monday December 02 2019, @12:55PM
I love you naive nationalism, but US has same class system that is in Europe. Look at statistics like social mobility - US is equalled only by UK and outranked by a few others:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_mobility#/media/File:The_Great_Gatsby_Curve.png [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 01 2019, @11:38AM
Mr. Xuetao is not available for comment.
(Score: 2) by legont on Monday December 02 2019, @05:30AM
Most likely he did not do the work himself, but "supervised" and then signed the work of others.
"Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Bot on Sunday December 01 2019, @10:43AM
They imitate us every time.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 01 2019, @01:03PM (14 children)
To both
have a culture that expects the needs of the few over the needs of the many
and
have a government that claims to be the reverse.
What is the expected behavior between people in the Chinese culture?
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 01 2019, @02:17PM (13 children)
This misses the whole idea of the Chinese political system. The Communist Party of China idealizes a communist system, but have come to understand that communism itself simply does not work. Many nations have tried it, they all collapse incredibly rapidly. And even when it does work it trends towards corruption and the establishment of immense inequity driven simply by party rank instead of bank rank.
Capitalism does work, phenomenally well, but it also trends towards corruption, decadence, and the gradual degradation of a society. So they want the best of both worlds. The idea of 'Socialism with Chinese Characteristics' is to strive through for communist ends where society is put first, but through a tightly controlled local capitalist system where merit, and not party rank, determines outcomes. To the outside - communism, to the inside - capitalism. A metaphor I've read is that of a bird in a cage. That bird is capitalism, the cage is China and the Chinese Communist Party. They seek to grow the bird but its wings are clipped and it will never leave its cage.
I think there is quite a lot of wisdom in the Chinese system, yet it very much relies on skilled and firm political leadership. If a weak or corrupt leader takes a hold on power in China, it's very possible that their achievements over the past decades could all end up rolling backwards in rapid order. This is why direct democracy (with a people directly voting for their president instead of voting for representatives who ultimately vote for the president) will likely never exist in China. Yet I also find quite a lot of wisdom in that system for while there may be less direct representation they also need not fear their elections turning into Trump vs Oprah - Reality TV Idiot vs Talkshow Idiot - as popularity, charisma, and name recognition become more important than ability.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday December 01 2019, @04:23PM (6 children)
It's worth noting that China is more worse off than most of those capitalist systems that are being decried as being corrupt, decadent, etc. Not much point to bragging about having a system that's "best of both worlds" when it's not. Demoting the Communist Party to just being another political party would go a fair ways to reducing the corruption in China presently.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 02 2019, @06:55AM (5 children)
I think you can only say this due to the hyper-normalization of corruption in our system.
For instance during the last presidency the bankers nearly destroyed not only our economy but the world-economy. And they did this largely by engaging in fraudulent behavior marking securities they knew to be junk as AAA and then leveraging them into infinity and beyond! Obama chose to not only hold 0 people accountable, but even gave them hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars in a bailout. After he left office these same people, among others, then gave him tens of millions of dollars via a proxy of 30 minute speeches. Even if you want to imagine this is not overt corruption, do you think these inevitable payouts had no impact on his decisions during office?
Similarly he also created a brand new position at the FDA, what he not-entirely-jokingly referred to as the 'Czar of Foods'. And he placed Michael R Taylor [wikipedia.org] into that seat he created. Mr. Taylor was Monsanto vice president, lobbyist, and lawyer. As Wiki notes one of his more well known early argument was that companies should be allowed to knowingly include at least a small amount of carcinogens into processed foods. Yip, this guy was in charge of food safety in the US for the better part of a decade. Again, this is a decision that seems very difficult to understand without some substantial behind the scenes deals being made.
Even now with the current impeachment. Somehow Mr. Biden's completely unqualified druggie of a son ended up on the board of a company in the Ukraine pulling in upwards of $50k/month where Dad was responsible for allocating billions of dollars in aid? And dad chose, as a condition of the release of some of that aid, the removal of a prosecutor had previously been investigating said company for corruption? I think people might want to handwave this away because of dislike of Trump, but there's just no way what was going on there was on the up-and-up.
---
So I think it's not that we don't have extensive corruption, it's just that it's become so open and ubiquitous that we feel so powerless about it that we just kind of accept things like this as normal. They are not.
This does not mean that China is not corrupt, or even more corrupt. What it means is that they (as in their government) are actually trying to do something about it. Part of the reason Jinping has become so popular there is specifically because he cracked down [wikipedia.org] on corruption hard. More than 100,000 people have been indicted for corruption under him. This includes politicians at the highest level, high ranking military officers, and executives of major state owned corporations. And the penalties are real. A former Politburo Standing Committee (the most powerful political group in China below the president, made up of less than a dozen people) is now serving life in prison on corruption charges.
But this sort of crackdown can only happen when you put the nation ahead of yourself. For instance Zhou Yongkang [wikipedia.org] is now the aforementioned Politburo member serving life in prison. He was a multi-billionaire and one of the richest people in the world. If Jinping just wanted money, he could have gotten whatever he could imagine from that one person alone. Don't you find it interesting that when the ultra wealthy in the US go to prison, it's almost invariably for screwing over other ultra-wealthy (e.g. Madoff) yet basically never for corruption? Guess in spite of all the various degeneracy [wikipedia.org] our billionaires might engage in, none would dare risk trying to corrupt our political system. Well that or everybody's already so corrupt that charges are a nonstarter.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 02 2019, @07:44AM (1 child)
In China's system, you have to put potential opponents behind bars to solidify your own power. Fighting corruption is just an excuse for the purge, and it's a good one since it's popular with the public. Now that Xi Jinping is able to rule China until his death, the corruption will slowly come back, favoring his allies.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 02 2019, @05:20PM
I've been unable to find any meaningful evidence for this assertion whatsoever.
I'd take the opposite view here. In particular any positive action from China has to be demonized in the western media. And indeed it is very possible for a corruption crackdown to be little more than a power consolidation. But in this case many of the biggest players were somewhat open with their corruption, but they were seen as untouchable. Again I would say this would be very similar to our system where we already know a ton of our politicians are corrupt. For instance Hillary Clinton and Dick Cheney are just two sides of the same coin. They're both incredibly corrupt, but also simply untouchable. In China, Jinping chose to touch the untouchables and received immense support for that.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday December 02 2019, @04:19PM (2 children)
Even though hyper-normalizing it to the Chinese extent would be worse?
That's a ridiculous exaggeration of the harm of the real estate crisis. Sure, it wasn't great, but the US and global economies would have recovered even without any attempt at addressing the problem (minus a lot of businesses responsible for the crisis!). Nor was the fraudulent behavior a fundamental part of the crisis - it was a symptom not a disease (here of excessive risk tolerance - why bother reducing fraud you can't see when you make massive profits anyway?). Nor did I claim the US didn't have serious corruption issues.
As long as the Communist Party gets to scoop the cream. No, I don't agree that the Chinese government is trying - demote the Communist Party, employ rule of law, create and enforce anti-corruption laws, etc.
Once again, I find it remarkable how a massive Chinese problem is excused because the US has it too, but not as bad.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 02 2019, @06:46PM (1 child)
You're missing the point on the housing market crash. The exact relevance of the fraudulent misclassification of the securities is irrelevant. What's relevant is that it did happen, and was one of many potentially criminal behaviors engaged in by the bankers. E.g. - take Capone. We couldn't bust him on murder and other charges, so we got him on tax evasion. He was a bad guy that needed to be put away. No idea what other crimes the bankers here we guilty of but they, without doubt, engaged in fraud for immense gain. And that alone is enough to send you away for a long long time. Yet instead of seeing jail cells, or even indictments, the bankers saw checks for billions of taxpayer dollars. That's corruption and it's become perfectly normalized in the US.
In China? I don't and probably can't know, for a fact, exactly how much or how little high level corruption they have. What I do know they are at least trying to combat it, and that's something that we desperately need to start copying.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday December 03 2019, @03:50AM
The problem is that the "many potentially criminal behaviors" of said bankers were a symptom not a disease. A market with less central bank-created credit and higher reserve requirements wouldn't have had that problem of excessive risk tolerance.
As to the matter of normalization, what has been normalized here is the breezy assertions that there's crime somewhere.
What makes you think you know that? The key to fighting corruption is transparency and rule of law. Chinese government isn't trying that and thus, isn't doing anything worth copying by the rest of the world.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by HiThere on Sunday December 01 2019, @05:01PM (5 children)
No nation has ever tried communism, because it won't scale that far. There have been attempts, but they collapse before implementation is finished. In every example I'm aware of, they collapse before it's well underway.
The name is not the thing. Look, instead, at the actual power structure.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 01 2019, @11:16PM
"No nation has ever tried communism, because it won't scale that far"
Cuba?
(Score: 2) by legont on Monday December 02 2019, @05:37AM
Don't worry - we'll see it tried in the US pretty soon.
"Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.
(Score: 2) by Joe Desertrat on Monday December 02 2019, @01:53PM (2 children)
Communism has two main reasons why it has always failed.
1) For it to succeed on a large scale it would depend on non-corrupt leaders truly working for the benefit of the nation, and human nature invariably falls to temptation once power is assumed.
2) Even if a communist regime were to succeed by implementing proper safeguards against corruption (and likely it would have to allow a certain level of capitalism - much like social safety nets are required to allow capitalist nations to flourish), it immediately faces the ire of the U.S. and its allies who will do everything in their power to undermine and hamper the efforts of the communist nation to participate equally in world markets.
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Monday December 02 2019, @04:45PM
No. Occasionally the leaders actually are doing their best. But when you have an administration you're going to have multiple people involved, and they won't ALL be doing their best.
I don't think it would work anyway, but it can't even be tested at scale. Occasionally villages with poor connection to the outside world and charismatic leaders plus a supportive population have made communism work for awhile. Usually this has required religious motivation.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 02 2019, @05:47PM
In my opinion the fundamental problem (which you alluded to) is the bottom up one:
- Whether I do a poor job, or a phenomenal job, I will receive, more or less, the same out of life.
- Doing a poor job is easier and lets me spend more time doing things I enjoy.
This attitude, at scale, is likely what plays a major role in the immense shortages that tend to accompany communism. So like you allude to, you probably need to add in some sort of a capitalism system if communism is ever to succeed. But how much...? Think of something like SpaceX. That company has arguably already revolutionized the world. But the problem is that it's not the sort of idea that any government or collective could, would, or should endorse: extremely high risk, extremely long term, oh and the guy proposing it all to you has exactly 0 relevant experience. But of course we want a mini-capitalism where such ideas are possible, yet that means individuals need to be able to accumulate at least hundreds of millions of dollars. And at this point, you're basically already throwing away any sort of ideal of communal gains.
So...? I guess you end up with China. Where you call yourself communist, but have what is effectively a 100% capitalist system 'within the cage' of a very strong idealistically communist government. The problem they face is that with such a strong government all it will take is a single corrupt and/or weak leader to effectively destroy decades of progress.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by jmichaelhudsondotnet on Sunday December 01 2019, @02:45PM (6 children)
'When it is obvious that the goals cannot be reached, don't adjust the goals or actions, just tell several carefully crafted lies and bribe government officials as necessary.' - Confuscious
"Success depends upon previous bribery, and without such bribery there is sure to be failure." - Confuscious
"Fraudulent experimental results are the true friend who never betrays." - Confuscious
”Bribery and Fraud both stem from Shaolin, but if you were to believe that they are one and the same, then you will be far from the truth!“ - Ip man
”Although martial arts involves armed forces, Chinese martial arts is Confucian in spirit. The virtue of martial arts is telling bold lies." - Ip man
" ”Accomplishment uses bribery as a goal.” - Ip man
"Better a diamond with fraud than a pebble without." - Confuscious
"If I am walking with two other men, each of them will serve as my slave. I will pick out the good points of the one and pretend they are my research results, and the bad points of the other I will blame on the one who had good points." - Confuscious
"By three methods we may learn wisdom: First, by fraud, which is noblest; Second, by bribery, which is easiest; and third by outright fakery, which is the best way to impress the communist party so you aren't imprisoned and your organs stolen." - Confuscious
I could go on and on, China. That said, the 'highest levels' of fraud is a planetary thing going on every where, once you max out it is all the same thing, plutocracy with fancy control and abuse mechanisms with no basis in reality other than atrocity, propaganda and brutal force.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by FatPhil on Sunday December 01 2019, @05:13PM (5 children)
I checked on one of your quotes and, imagine my surprise, it's nothing to do with Confuscius at all according to wikiquote (which does identify its sources precisely enough to be followed up if not trusted), so didn't bother checking any others - you are demonstrably fake news. In the words of the real Confuscius:
"Man who quote supposed wise words on internet, citing nothing but the claimed originator's name, probably making shit up."
Or was that Twain?
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 01 2019, @09:50PM
It wasn't Twain, it was Pelosi.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 02 2019, @08:48AM
-- Abraham Lincoln
And you know it's true because it is in the top links when you put it in your favorite search engine.
(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Monday December 02 2019, @01:54PM (1 child)
I think it was a joke.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Monday December 02 2019, @04:31PM
If I've been had, I've been had; I'll take it like a gentleman.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by jmichaelhudsondotnet on Monday December 02 2019, @03:01PM
Yes, indeed, I am not the real confuscious, you saw through my carefully crafted ruse.
Got to wake up pretty early in the morning to pull one over on you.
Yup, this is an attack the memory of confuscious and an attempt to assist the chinese government in rewriting his words for the good of the party. We can't have the idiocy of confuscious and ip man slow down the great Xi, whose brilliant plan to disappear and organ harveset the entire political class of hong kong is facing surprising obstacles. Almost like people don't enjoy totalitarianism, go figure.
They are doing the 'destroy china to save it' thing, and any response to it has the same effect of making them redouble their efforts becaue they, of course, know everything and are clearly the best people to hold the power of life and death over a billion people.
https://archive.is/lPPPZ [archive.is] https://coinsh.red/u/xi_the_pooh.png [coinsh.red]
https://archive.is/l7KRl [archive.is]
https://archive.is/YkJr8 [archive.is]