
Fraud Scandals Sap China’s Dream of Becoming a Science Superpower - okket
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/13/world/asia/china-science-fraud-scandals.html
======
Jerry2
I lived in China for 8 months while I worked on a project in Shenzen.
Unfortunately, cheating is endemic in Chinese culture. They have many idioms
about cheating and the one I heard the most from Chinese speakers is "neng
pian jiu pian" which translates roughly to "if you can cheat and get away with
it, then cheat". I've seen business deals fall apart and contracts being
withdrawn because Chinese factories would scam people out of some quick money
instead of collecting a large sum at the end of the project.

Whatever changes they plan to enact to stop this cheating will take several
generations to eradicate.

South China Morning Post has an article on academic cheating:

[http://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-
opinion/article/1974986/...](http://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-
opinion/article/1974986/why-do-chinese-students-think-its-ok-cheat)

~~~
timthelion
I was pretty surprised when I moved to Prague to learn that students both
Czechs but especially students from the former USSR (the *stans and Russia)
expected to be able to work together on exams. Having gone to school in the US
and been graded on a curve I just couldn't understand these people actively
wispering and showing echother answers letting others read over their
shoulders. There were groups of people who would have one person study and sit
in the row bellow them in the auditorium and then there would be three rows of
students above all copying in a game of telephone from one to the other. I
remember a very serious incident in college in the US when our history
professor found two answers to be similarly worded. The two students were
kicked out of the class with a warning that if they were caught copying from
eachother again they would be kicked out of school. In Prague, the professors
obviously knew about the copying and didn't say a word. Indeed, some of them
helped us cheet by showing the answers during the test. They only wanted to be
able to document our results to prove to the acreditation comitee that we had
studied, and they cared not for our actual qualifications at the end of the
degree.

~~~
Radim
I can't speak for Russia and "*stans", but this is patently untrue for the
Czech Republic (where I come from).

Obviously it may depend on the particular institution -- with new, for-profit,
private universities (milking rich foreigners who've come to Prague for the
beer and fun) having much worse reputation than the public venerable ones like
the Charles University (est. 1348). Saying students are "expected" to
plagiarise is simply insulting.

~~~
timthelion
I went to Peďak at Charles University. What I wrote was absolutely true of my
experience.

------
cgb223
Kind of related:

One of my roommates in college was from China.

We had a lot of foreign exchange students from there, many of whom I found out
in labs had very poor writing skills.

I asked my roommate how so many Chinese students found their way to this
college and why the writing seemed so bad.

He explained to me there was literally a whole industry in China dedicated to
faking the scores and documents required to get Chinese kids into good schools
in the US.

This included all sorts of College apps, essays, and probably some of the
tests like the ACT.

He said wealthy families in China valued education as a status symbol and
would pay top dollar to get their kid into Harvard or so on to make them look
good, himself included

~~~
uji
I have observed the same. In my masters, Chinese friends were asked to join
meetups and classes for improving english speaking. When I asked how they
cleared Toefl([https://www.ets.org/toefl](https://www.ets.org/toefl)), which
is required along with GRE score for getting admissions into US university,
they mentioned its very easy to buy these scores. Somebody appears on their
behalf in the test.

~~~
ams6110
Judging by the cars some Chinese students drive, it appears it's very easy for
them to buy anything. McLarens, Maseratis, Ferraris, top-end models from BMW,
Mercedes, Porche and Audi are not uncommon around campus and it's always a
Chinese kid at the wheel.

------
rdtsc
Cheating and corruption is infectious and once it starts spreading it can turn
into an epidemic. The reasons is if everyone cheats those who evaluate the
results adjust their expectations. "Oh look, everyone can solve this problem
we thought was hard, Ok, let's make the problem even harder", kind of idea.
That puts pressure on those who don't cheat, because now they have to work
even harder to keep up with cheaters, or start cheating.

When bribing is involved, those who receive bribes start factoring regular
bribes as a line item in their monthly or yearly revenue. In other words, next
time they interact with someone and they don't get a bribe, they will go out
of their way to ensure they fail to get what they want until the customer
"gets the message". Someone refusing to pay the bribe is seen as taking the
bread away from their kids' table.

Eventually becomes part of the culture, the common sense, so to speak. You're
simply expected to cheat or to bribe in any kind of governmental, business,
educational or other institutional transaction. It starts from birth in the
hospital to the burial in the cemetery. It is not called a bribe anymore just
a "gift" or "help" or something like that. Someone who doesn't understand or
participate in this corruption is seen as goofy or stupid ("How can you expect
to get anything done, what planet did you come from, of course you have to
pay").

~~~
daveguy
Regarding bribes. In the US I would be afraid to offer money to an officer,
because that is clearly illegal. I would expect offering a bribe to make
things worse for me.

Also in the US, I feel like if I don't offer "help" to subsidize the work that
a waiter does then I am essentially taking money away (they get paid sub
minimum wage).

I feel that "help" should only be offered _after the work is done, and well
done_.

Are bribes in other cultures almost considered more like tips are considered
in the US?

Western Europe seems to be a low tip, low bribe culture. What are the opinions
/ standards coming from there?

~~~
rdtsc
> In the US I would be afraid to offer money to an officer, because that is
> clearly illegal.

Yeah that's the nice thing for all the criticism people have for US it still
has a relatively well functioning justice system compared to those other
country. People simply have no idea what it is like to live with pervasive
corruption on all levels of society.

Handing money to a police officer was expected and sometimes even asked for
blatantly. It is still illegal just that nobody cares. It never called a bribe
but something like "Maybe we can come to an understanding..."

> I don't offer "help" to subsidize the work that a waiter does then I am
> essentially taking money away

That's a good way to understanding it. Except you'd pay "tips" ahead of time,
they'd be large, and would be for random things like kids getting good grades,
or doctor not messing the surgery up, and the judge to get off murder.

A particularly evil case, was a neighbor I had who knew the guy who worked in
a DNA testing lab. That guy had a huge house, cars and lived the good life.
Why? He offered falsifying DNA results for criminal and paternity tests as a
service.

Just thinking about the damage that one person did, and I am sure he wasn't
the only one.

> What are the opinions / standards coming from there?

I have mostly been in Eastern Europe. It's much, much worse. US might have
high level corruption - nepotism, lobbying, regulatory capture but it is still
doing pretty well compared to many other places.

------
runeks
Scientific progress (reluctantly) happens when the established is criticized,
allowing new ideas to form.

How can a nation which censors the internet in order to avoid critique, ever
expect to become world-class in something that’s essentially founded on well-
argued critique?

Imagine a Chinese scientist rising to fame, because of a revolutionary new
theory in some area, and then imagine a fellow countryman finding holes in
this theory — literally ripping it apart by showing why it can’t be true.
That’s scientific progress. How would China handle a case like this? Would
Chinese people even dare act this way, or would they be afraid of the
consequences? Does their culture even allow it?

China wants a lot of things that come out of personal freedom — e.g. a healthy
financial market, higher living standards, innovation — but it always ends up
building something fragile and corrupt because of its top-down approach,
robbing individuals from expressing themselves freely and building something
unsupervised.

To me, it’s no wonder if cheating is rampant in a society where the government
instates rules with the sole purpose of protecting itself. Cheating (i.e.
getting around these rules) is the only sensible action for human beings
living under such conditions.

~~~
noj78
I stopped reading after this line in your comment > How can a nation which
censors the internet in order to avoid critique, ever expect to become world-
class in something that’s essentially founded on well-argued critique

You guys are delusional and brain washed about the impact of the internet in
producing constructive progress. Look at Japan or South Korea - they have the
best internet in the world and have turned their society into a bunch of
mindless zombies overoptimizing everything for the sake of overoptimization
and producing no science whatsoever.

~~~
microcolonel
South Korea's science happens in the private sector, and it is exceptional.
Samsung could build you an automated antipersonnel gun turret in 2003, now
they're competing directly with Intel on semiconductor process. As for Japan,
I'd chock it up to demographics, and a general sense that things are already
pretty great.

China, on the other hand, has a problem of culture in their way.

------
ehsankia
I mean, doesn't the west have the exact same issues? p-Hacking, lack of repeat
studies, focusing on experiments that will make the biggest headlines, etc.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=42QuXLucH3Q](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=42QuXLucH3Q)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Rnq1NpHdmw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Rnq1NpHdmw)

~~~
robotresearcher
The issues are the same, but the frequency of them is very important. Academic
fraud is like crime: it's always going to happen, but a little is very
different to a lot.

~~~
boomboomsubban
The frequency is very important. Where is any evidence that the Chinese have a
higher rate?

~~~
robotresearcher
From the fine article that we are discussing:

“Since 2012, the country has retracted more scientific papers because of faked
peer reviews than all other countries and territories put together, according
to Retraction Watch”

Along with the entire rest of the article filled with quotes and stats.

~~~
boomboomsubban
Number of faked papers isn't a frequency.

~~~
robotresearcher
Do you believe that China published more papers than everyone else put
together in the same period?

I helped run a large international conference recently, with 900 published
papers. Of these 66 (7.3%) were from China, and 280 (31%) from the US. Germany
had 104 (12%). The numbers will vary by field, of course, but I've no reason
to believe that this meeting was an outlier.

~~~
boomboomsubban
>Do you believe that China published more papers than everyone else put
together in the same period?

I don't hold a belief, I haven't seen data that you seemed to be using to make
conclusions. Or you're making somewhat large assumptions based on a few pieces
of information. A little is different than a lot, both could have a little or
a lot though.

> I've no reason to believe that this meeting was an outlier

Here's one, it was presumably run across the Pacific ocean from China.

~~~
robotresearcher
You’re trying too hard. There is no reason to believe that China is publishing
papers faster than the rest of the world put together, unless you have data to
that effect.

China is big, but not bigger than everyone else put together. Less than one
person in six is Chinese.

And your presumption happens to be accurate, but 1 in 3 editions of the
conference happen in Asia including China and China is still out-published by
the USA by 4 to 1 or so even when the event is held in China. Chinese
outnumber Americans five to one. Americans outpublish Chinese people many
times over. As an aside, Swiss people outpublish Americans 8 to 1.

So, while skepticism is noble, when a country of 1/6 the people in the world
has a retraction rate higher than everyone else put together, you need
extraordinary data to decide that they are not in a mess. And “I don’t have
data” is no such argument.

~~~
boomboomsubban
So in a discussion about research fraud, you're chastising me for wanting data
you call important, putting complete trust in the data of a blog that you
haven't seen, and posted random data you claim to have helped collect without
giving me any reason to believe it's accurate.

Looking for retraction watch's numbers gave me a study that shows the US
having the most retractions.[1] So again, if rates are what is important, you
need data showing the rates.

[http://www.pnas.org/content/109/42/17028.full](http://www.pnas.org/content/109/42/17028.full)

------
brudgers
To the degree science is a matter of writing academic papers, there is
probably some truth to the assertion. To the degree experiment and the
application of scientific discoveries matter more...well, Shenzhen.

~~~
louithethrid
There are two kind of science. One consists of incremental improvement
research. Copying a master and then adding of additional perfection is the
default method here. This one usually holds little risk and is prefered by
companys and western governments alike.

Then there are the great leaps, usually possible due to breakthroughs or other
wild recombination of existing ideas. These are feared- for as they offer
bright rewards at the end of the road- they contain unknown problems, as in
sub-problems that need often a combination of further break-throughs and/or
incremental research. Fusion research is a great example here.

Some great leaps also turn into great very expensive wild goose chases.

Such risks make no buisness sense, but a central government can overcome the
captialistic shortsigthedness - and attempt this research anyway and actually
be better at it.

But if you can cheat (avoid risk) then cheat(avoid risk). Let others feed the
crocodiles first - so chinese companys research will be as risk shy as western
companys research.

~~~
brudgers
I wonder how Einstein fits into the great leap narrative of science. I mean,
Germany (or Switzerland) did not get the atomic bomb and no country whatsoever
had it in the four decades following the miracle year of 1905. Then after
1945, the Soviets and the Chinese had it pretty quickly.

~~~
shakethemonkey
The Soviet Union obtained the technology through espionage against the United
States and the UK. China's program was greatly accelerated with help from the
Soviet Union. China's current program is based on espionage against the United
States, dating back at least to the 1970s.

------
HillaryBriss
suppose that all of the world's scientific and engineering researchers
migrated into a single new country, Researchistan, with plenty of research
funding. imagine further that all of their results were published in public
journals.

finally, imagine that the rest of the world's people, though not researchers
themselves, had access to all of the research journals.

does that arrangement in and of itself determine which country or countries
will have the highest per-capita GDP?

~~~
JumpCrisscross
> _does that arrangement in and of itself determine which country or countries
> will have the highest per-capita GDP?_

Scientists and engineers, in my experience, cross-pollinate. As much as the
dream of distance-less communication abounds, this cross-pollination exhibits
geographic clustering. Defense research spending in Massachussetts and the Bay
Area spawned Route 128 and the Silicon Valley, respectively.

------
AlexCoventry
This article is nationalistic propaganda. It basically admits that every
country has the same problem [0], and the recent scandals can be explained in
terms of China's sheer scale, and growing pains.

In the US, they just don't call it a scandal, they call it the
"reproducibility crisis." But that crisis reflects a just barely more
sophisticated response to the same skewed incentives.

[0] [http://making-of-a-fly.me/files/pdf/lt_2011_02_24_31.pdf](http://making-
of-a-fly.me/files/pdf/lt_2011_02_24_31.pdf)

~~~
seanmcdirmid
Just because nothing is black or white, but some shade of grey, doesn't mean
all the shades of grey are equivalent.

Also, isn't this just a what aboutism anyways?

~~~
AlexCoventry
What aboutism is an attempt to draw a moral equivalence. The thrust of the
article is that China's ambition to become a "science superpower" whatever
that means is severely impeded by this fraud, which is not a moral question
and does not stand up to comparison of the misaligned incentives and bad
science in extant "science superpowers."

~~~
seanmcdirmid
China attempts to be a scientific super power for its own benefit, not to win
some moral pissing contest. If china is hurting itself in this endeavor via
fraud, then that has nothing to do with the USA.

This is just classic what aboutism.

~~~
AlexCoventry
My point is that the fraud is affecting the world-wide scientific community.
It's not a China-specific problem, as characterized by this article.

Retraction Watch gives a fairly good overview of the issue:
[http://retractionwatch.com/](http://retractionwatch.com/)

------
stretchwithme
Part of fixing the problems is to admit them.

~~~
sddfd
It would be even better to establish a global standard on peer review and
adhere to it.

A first step would be to move to a preprint model and require full disclosure
of data sets, turn in of source code, and pre-registration of clinical
studies. In turn reviewers must be required to publish their reviews and sign
them with their name.

This would help keeping the business honest on both sides of peer review.

~~~
gboudrias
Require? Who would be enforcing this standard? The law?

As of now, journals decide who gets to be published, and the scientific
community (or in an indirect sense, the public) decides which journals get
read.

So the scientific community has to come to a global consensus, or all
countries must come to a consensus and enforce it legally (whereas we can't
even agree that nukes are bad).

Once all that's done, we still need trust. Researchers can remove data
selectively, use altered versions of published code, etc.

To say nothing of countries who would pretend to adopt the law without
enforcing it, with or without malicious intent.

We need trust, and trust is built on a case-by-case basis, it requires
judgment. We as a community simply need to be more critical with new research.

~~~
JumpCrisscross
> _the scientific community has to come to a global consensus, or all
> countries must come to a consensus and enforce it legally_

The scientific community isn't homogenous. Some communities are better
organized than others. This is visible in their varying quality and journals'
openness ( _e.g._ arXiv).

The communities with strong nexuses with industry, _e.g._ oncology, would
stand to enforce reproducibility the best. A grand bargain whereby
pharmaceutical companies (and others who would commercially benefit from more-
reproducible research), or even just the NIH, include reasonable standards as
part of their grant requirements would move the needle forward. It would also
help us troubleshoot what works and what doesn't.

------
seanlinmt
Not trying to say a little bit of cheating is fine but that's total number of
retracted papers right? I can't seem to find a list that shows it as a
percentage out of published papers for comparison with other countries. Is
there one?

------
mc32
It's a problem, but given their pop, they can sustain more corruption and
fraud than anyone else. They can sustain 4x our fraud and be even, given their
production.

I think the NYT and others keep clawing at China simply because China has an
agenda which diverges from the globalist vision of the NYT. They care for
themselves and will do it by themselves by their own philosophy which happens
to be less introspective. This means that while it can bring great value to
Chinese, they may not feel like redistributing their largesse in any way with
the rest of the world.

~~~
librexpr
I don't think it works that way. Fraud in Chinese academia doesn't just mean
that westerners can't trust their academics: it also means that their fellow
countrymen can't trust each other's research.

If there's 4 times as much fraud in China, then good Chinese researchers have
to sift through 4 times as much bullshit, and are much less likely to trust
and expand upon any new research, which slows down progress.

If anything, I expect that the country the most hurt by Chinese research fraud
is China itself.

------
godzillabrennus
The solution to this is creating the right kind of framework for reproducible
research...

------
timthelion
I have yet to see a single wholly positive article in western media about
Chinese innovation. I feel that we on the west are plugging our ears and going
nanananana, rather than facing up to the fact that we have a really competent
new super power on our hands.

China is evil, they are exploiting 3rd world mineral reserves in the most
unjust and environmentally destructive manner possible. Their democracy is
even more of a joke than that of the US. But they aren't stupid or
incompetent, and how well the west trusts their scientific results means
nothing to nobody.

We should stop trying to convince ourselves that China is failing and start
trying to understand what it means to have a non-democratic sci-fi dystopia in
charge of the world and how we can escape that totalitarian fate.

~~~
Afforess
> _China is evil_

I can only imagine that the Chinese middle-class feel the same way towards the
USA.

> _Their democracy is even more of a joke than that of the US_

I never understood the idea that democracy was a superior form of government.
If, in the future, China (or some other nation) becomes the next world power,
with superior scientific innovation, larger industry, higher standards of
living, etc, will you still prefer Democracy to what they have?

It seems incredibly naive to assume the present state of the west is somehow
the final and ultimate condition we can hope to obtain. If this is as good as
it gets, I think I want to move to China.

~~~
jldugger
> I can only imagine that the Chinese middle-class feel the same way towards
> the USA.

Well, there's plenty of middle class in the US who think the Republican party
and Trump is evil, so that sounds plausible.

> I never understood the idea that democracy was a superior form of
> government.

Winston Churchill quotes might be cliche, but still warranted. Democracy is
superior in the sense that it provides a release valve for replacing
incompetent or malicious government less catastrophic than peasant uprisings
or Coup d'états.

Fortunately, it's still an open question whether repressive regimes can become
superior. Or whether repressive regimes will continue their repression as the
population thrives.

> I think I want to move to China.

Voting with your feet -- What a very democratic idea!

~~~
chibg10
> Voting with your feet -- What a very democratic idea! GP might want to
> consider that affluent Chinese (i.e. those with the means to) are trying
> leave China at record rates before he gets on a boat.

------
alistproducer2
My propaganda alarm is going off pretty loudly with this article.

------
longcheng
Please, nytimes, stop caring so much about China, because you don't. Let them
cheat, and let them rot. The truth is China doesn't need the west as much as
the west needs China. The west really wants to see China fail. But, Whatever
happening in China is actually working. Even something is not working
initially, Chinese are smart enough to figure them out themselves. Too bad the
west can not force opium into China anymore.

