FOR CHINESE SCIENTISTS falsifying research and resumes, Fang Zhouzi is a dreaded name. The molecular biologist and freelance writer runs a popular website, New Threads, highlighting academic corruption on the mainland.
Fang, whose real name is Fang Shimin, was credited last year with the expulsion of several graduate students and the dismissal of three prominent academics - Liu Hui, assistant dean of medicine at Tsinghua University; Yang Jie, dean of the school of life sciences and technology at Tongji University, Shanghai; and Hefei Industry University professor Yang Jing'an - for plagiarising research.
Following the series of scandals, the Ministry of Science and Technology announced last week that a science ethics committee and a supervisory office would be set up to combat academic fraud and plagiarism. But the self-appointed scientific watchdog hasn't been heartened by the news.
'We definitely need a system [to expose wrongdoing]; an individual's power is limited,' Fang says at his Beijing home. 'But I seriously doubt that it [the official monitoring system] can work. Some [academic] fraud cases are linked to the Ministry of Science and Technology, so it's in their interest to protect those dishonest scientists. Academic corruption is a social and political problem.'
Fang claims he has uncovered up to 600 cases of scientific misconduct since 2000, but most were ignored by the universities and the government.