Tsinghua teacher fired for fraud

Plagiarism and fake research are again in the spotlight after Beijing's Tsinghua University dismissed one of its academics.

The sacked professor, Liu Hui, was assistant to the dean of the prestigious university's medical school until his qualifications were found to be fraudulent.

Academic critic Fang Zhouzi exposed the academic misconduct last November, saying an academic paper listed on Liu's curriculum vitae was actually written by another author, Liu Hong.

Liu Hui claimed he had mistakenly listed the other author's paper because their names share the same abbreviation of "Liu H.", and he did not carefully check the library's indexing system to find the correct article.

Tsinghua fired the 47-year-old professor on March 10 after conducting an internal investigation.

The university said on Monday that it hopes the harsh penalty sends a clear message that academic fraud will not be tolerated.

"The punishment (of firing Liu Hui) is severe enough and it is a proper result," said Fang, who runs a website exposing scientific plagiarism and pseudoscience research that appears scientific but does not follow scientific method.

"We can learn from the event that relevant institutions and government agencies are paying more attention to fighting against academic misconduct, but it is far from enough," Fang said.

Fang also criticized the delay in sacking the disgraced professor, saying checking an academic's qualifications should not have taken so long.

Since 2000, Fang, and others like him, have exposed around 300 cases of pseudoscience, plagiarism and other cases of deception.

"When corruption or misconduct is exposed, relevant departments and universities should respond immediately and entrust a group of independent scholars to investigate.

"The process of any investigation should be transparent and those being accused should have the right to appeal," Fang said.

Earlier this March, Fang joined some 100 other Chinese scholars to publish an open letter calling for the establishment of a national supervision mechanism to stamp out academic plagiarism.

Minister of Science and Technology Xu Guanhua said early this month that the country was drafting and improving regulations regarding scientific and technological evaluation and rewards to avoid academic scandals.

Source: China Daily