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Chinese Scientist Admits To Stealing Chip Research

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the do-you-want-to-make-money-sure-we-all-do dept.

An anonymous reader writes "A prominent Chinese scientist, one of the founders of the chip manufacturing industry in the country, has admitted to stealing his research." From the article: "Chen Jin, a dean of Shanghai's prestigious Jiaotong University and the leader of a government-funded high-tech research project, was dismissed from his university posts this week and stripped of other government titles and perks. The government also said that Chen had been permanently banned from taking part in any government-funded science projects. In a statement Friday, Jiaotong University--one of the nation's elite schools--said, 'Chen Jin has breached the trust of being a scientist and educator. His behavior is despicable.'"

4 of 236 comments (clear)

  1. Hmm... by Xshare · · Score: 3, Interesting

    What are the chances that this guy just did something against the Chinese Government's wishes, and so they faked this whole scandal. I mean, TFA makes it seem like the Government is in this a lot more than the blurb makes it seem so.

    Meh, maybe I'm just too paranoid. Anyone know more about this? Is that a possibility?

    1. Re:Hmm... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Plagiarism and fake research have become rampant in China, and are eroding people's trust in academia, Ren Yuing, a member of the Councillors' Office of the State Council, told the recent meeting of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, the top advisory body.

      He cited a recent survey of 180 PhD degree holders, of whom 60 per cent paid to be published in academic journals; and about the same percentage copied others' work.

      Based on my own experience working with a visiting scientist, this seems to be a problem in Korea as well. I did alot of work with this scientist that yielded some interesting results at the beginning. This scientist went on to do other research while I wanted to continue probing our initial experiments. Eventually, I stopped working with this scientist because of their methodology (tossing out data that didn't agree with the hypothesis, abusing statistics to make conclusions, misrepresenting the methodology period) and desire to make a huge breakthrough in the field.

      This is one datapoint though, so I am generalizing alot. What makes me suspect that there is a problem in Korea is that I came to find out that, somehow, this scientist had published these results in well-known Korean scientific journals. This disturbed me and my colleagues because we didn't want our names anywhere on those papers as they represented the worst in research. Not to mention the fact that they were just an abuse of the trust people have in scientists. We've since severed relations with this scientist, but we shudder at what was going on. It simply was not good science and should never have been published. We suspected bribes or connections.

      I've not had similar experiences working with Taiwanese or Japanese researchers though. While I've always been aware of problems in China (and these news reports simply reaffirm it), the research papers produced by Taiwanese and Japanese researchers have generally been quite good. I'll also point out that my old advisor did research with a Korean researcher who was apparently very good, though I never worked with him directly and I've worked with some talented Chinese scientists, so this shouldn't be used as a pretext to devalue the contributions of all Chinese or Korean scientists. It should be seen as a need to start examining what's wrong in those countries with respect to science.

      And yes, I am posting anonymously out of professional concerns.

  2. Re:IP "borrowing". by Haeleth · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Not a big surprise for a country that doesn't respect intellectual property.

    The People's Republic of China respects intellectual property more than many nations, though admittedly it is not as paranoid about it as the USA. The PRC is a member of WIPO, and has strict IP laws. Nor is there any discrimination against foreign IP: Chinese courts regularly rule in favour of US companies whose copyrights and patents are being infringed on by Chinese companies.

    You may be thinking of Taiwan.

  3. Admission by Mark_MF-WN · · Score: 3, Interesting
    An interesting off-topic little factoid: the government of British Columbia, the province in which I am occasionally proud to live, is considering passing a law that would make it easier for businesses, prominent individuals, and the government to apologize. It's kind of cool if you think about it -- consider how many matters can be resolved quickly and painlessly if one party just says "I fucked up, sorry dude." A bit of goodwill goes an amazingly long way.

    The problem of course is the potential legal/financial liability that goes with that, which is what this new law would eliminate. I read that there's a lot of interest in such a law in many parts of the US as well. Could we be entering a time when governments start to be a bit more honest about their screw ups?