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‘China’s Dr Fauci’, Zhang Wenhong, cleared of thesis plagiarism accusations
- Shanghai’s Fudan University says an investigation found no evidence of academic misconduct
- Supporters say Zhang’s critics owe him an apology
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One of China’s top universities has cleared a respected infectious disease expert known as “China’s Dr Fauci” of accusations of plagiarism.
In a brief statement on Monday, Shanghai’s Fudan University said it found no evidence of academic misconduct in the doctoral thesis of Zhang Wenhong, who became a household name in China for his advice on the coronavirus pandemic.
The university said it did not find any malpractice, only some minor irregularities in the review section of the thesis, which did not affect the quality of the research or amount to academic misconduct.
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Zhang, from Huashan Hospital in Shanghai, became mired in a controversy last month after he posted on Weibo, China’s Twitter-like social media platform, that the pandemic would not end quickly and the world might need to learn to “coexist” with the coronavirus.
In early August, former health minister Gao Qiang wrote in state media that China should not follow the United States and Britain in relaxing epidemic control measures because the approach had resulted in “serious consequences for the global efforts to contain the pandemic”.
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“We must not make the same mistakes,” Gao wrote in an article published on the website of the China Health Economics Association, a government-affiliated think tank.
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