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Keep academia clean

(China Daily)
Updated: 2009-03-17 07:48

Zhejiang University announced at the weekend it would fire an associate professor who plagiarized research papers published by several overseas magazines. Another associate professor has been dismissed from his post as head of a research group for his involvement in the scandal. The university has also announced that it will not renew the contract of a Chinese Academy of Sciences academic as president of its pharmacy school after his name also appeared in the dishonest papers.

The Ministry of Education convened a seminar on Sunday to discuss how to crack down on the unethical academic behavior rampant in recent years that has seriously tarnished the reputation of institutions of higher learning.

How an associate professor could be so audacious as to plagiarize research findings of his former tutor is beyond comprehension. What's more, he even used the same figures for different experiments and submitted the same papers to different overseas magazines for publication after making only minor changes.

But what made him do it?

Some blame the research result appraisal mechanism, which favors the quantity of research papers over quality.

The more papers a professor has published, the bigger chance he or she and his or her working unit has of getting State funding.

The number of papers published has become a yardstick for a professor's promotion at most universities.

In such circumstances, those who bury themselves in hard research are considered not smart while those who organize their students to produce dissertations by plagiarizing other's works receive promotions.

As everybody knows, breakthroughs in scientific research do not come without hard work. But hard efforts do not necessarily bring about any substantial result. That is the cruel truth about academic research.

That explains why those who cannot endure solitude are not advised to get involved in such work. Similarly, those who dedicate themselves to academic research should never assume that their work will bring them fame and fortune.

Those who truly dedicate themselves to their study without bothering about fame and material gain always make the greatest contributions to scientific progress. Sometimes, their contributions just enable major breakthroughs by their successors.

But nowadays, some academics pursue fame and money with dishonest means, only serving to undermine the fundamental principle of academic study: hard work. Their "success" may encourage more to follow suit and further deteriorate the environment for academic research.

The academic scandal at Zhejiang University should serve as a reminder that appraisal of academic research desperately needs an overhaul. The emphasis on the number of published papers must be replaced by a qualitative system.

Severe penalties should also be put in place to keep our academic fields free from those who cheat in order to gain fame and wealth.

(China Daily 03/17/2009 page8)