Zhan Qimin (Picture Source: Beiyi News Network)

Reporter of this magazine/Li Xiang Du Wei

PUBPEER, an overseas academic counterfeit website, recently revealed that Zhan Qimin, executive vice president of Peking University, director of Peking University Medical Department, and academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, was suspected of fraud.Among the 25 papers questioned by Zhan Qimin, it can be roughly divided into three categories: experimental images repeat, violating animal experimental ethics, experimental results or common sense errors, as well as some of the primers are ineffective or missing.

On Pubpeer, the current Zhan Qimin team responded to four papers, and there were four other articles for errors.Among the 25 papers, there are 15 papers that are similar or duplicate.Regarding one of the dishes with images, Zhan Qimin's team replied that it was caused by different experiments that the same experimental diagram was placed.As for another dissection of images, the author's reply is actually not the same because the resolution is too low, and there is a paper. The author apologized that it caused errors in the image sorting.But more papers have not been answered.The person in charge of the Propaganda Department of the Party Committee of Peking University said to China News Weekly on the phone that we are now understanding the situation.China News Weekly asked Zhan Qimin himself to verify it, but he had not received a reply until the release.

Among the 25 papers, there are two articles accused of violating animal experimental ethics. They have not received the reply from the Zhan team. They were published during Zhan Qimin's deputy dean of the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences and vice president of Beijing Union Medical College.One of the articles was published in the clinical research magazine sponsored by the American Clinical Research Association in 2010.On the Pubpeer, there were 6 images of 6 experiments in the paper in the message, and asked if the author can clarify the tumor size obtained by this study?Are these animal moral guidelines that meet your institution?This paper Zhan Qimin is the author.

Another article published a scientific report under the Nature Publishing Group in 2015, Zhan Qimin communicated with him.

American academic counterfeiter Elizabeth is a questioner of this paper. She commented that the tumor of the experimental mice is too large. It is far from the author's 1 centimeter. Can the author clarify the size of the tumor obtained by this study?Are these codes of animal ethics?

According to the animal experiments that have caused animal welfare ethical disputes in the science and technology Herald of the Institute of Medical Experimental Animal Research, the Institute of Medical Experiment of the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences, it is a mouse tumor volume that is generally accepted by the industry in the industry to reflect the treatment of the treatment of drugs.The maximum diameter is 1.5 cm.

An article published by Zhan Qimin as a communication author was accused of violating common sense in the 2010 Chinese medical front magazine. The Zhan team explained to this and believes that it does not affect the conclusion.Wang Chenguang, a professor at the former Beijing Union Medical College and engaged in the development of immunotherapy drugs, commented in an interview with Deeptech that the question raised by the questioner cannot be confirmed to be fraud, but the response of the Zhan Qimin team revealed that the chaos of his laboratory research and management was disorderlyEssence

These 25 papers published the time spanning from 1998 to 2019. During the senior research assistant of the National Institute of National Cancer at the National Institute of Health, Zhan Qimin went to the executive vice president of Peking University.In magazines such as clinical cancer research, most of the impact factor of the journal is within 10.In addition to one of the questions, except for one of the well -known counterfeiters Bick, the remaining 24 articles are mainly made by two anonymous accounts.

Bi Ke said that the papers, including mice tumors, should be withdrawn, and on the basis of this, the author will never allow the author to conduct animal experiments again.In addition, for most other papers, the author needs to send correction information to the journal, and they need to be more cautious in the future.

Earlier, Cao Xuetao, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering and president of Nankai University, has also been questioned by Dr. Elisabeth Bik, a former assistant researcher at Stanford University on the Pubpeer website.In several academic counterfeiting incidents, a new generation of counterfeit websites represented by Pubpeer also came to the spotlight.

Is the academic counterfeit website itself hard?

PUBPEER, who questioned Zhan Qimin, Cao Xuetao, and others' thesis images and Retraction Watch, for Better Science, they are also internationally renowned academic counterfeit websites.Pubpeer was founded by Middot; Stur, Richard Middot; Smith and George Middot; Smith in 2012 was established anonymous in 2012.In order to raise funds, Brandon Middot; Stur and other three people abandoned anonymous in 2015 and reorganized Pubpeer into non -profit Pubpeer Foundation.From 2016 to 2017, Pubpeer accepted the former hedge fund manager and billionaire John Middot; Arnold and his wife Laura co -founded Laura and John Middot; Arnold Foundation funded.The foundation donates the parent company of the Retraction Watch website at the same time.

PUBPEER Foundation Chairman Brandon Middot; Stur said in the mail response to China News Weekly that the current board of directors of the PUBPEER Foundation includes the neurologist Boris Middot at the Institute of Biology, Paris Higher Normal University;Writer Ivan Middot; Oramki and himself.Ivan Middot; Oranzky is also the main writer of Retraction Watch.

Stel introduced that Pubpeer was not the review and review of colleagues before copying academic journals, but responded to issues such as conflicts, commercialism, and error bias in the current review system before the publication.They hope to use Pubpeer to supplement the former's missing.

According to the rules of the website, users can choose real names or anonymous comments.The review will only appear on the website after review, and the review process of anonymous reviews and ashlist account reviews can reach up to one week.The website will not review the scientific and authenticity of the comment, but it refuses to make obvious errors, unclear expressions, misleading or potentially malicious comments.At the same time, the website stipulates that comments based on rumors, improper allegations, and guessing the motivation of the authors and researchers.The website also opens the reporting function of non -compliance reviews, claiming to retain the right to delete or edit non -compliance reviews.An operator will adjust the comment when necessary to ensure that it meets the rules.

Through the above rules, it can be found that factualness is the standard of the platform for reviews.However, because the website itself does not conduct scientific and authentic review, the factual comment that meets the requirements of Pubpeer may still be wrong or even mislead.

In this regard, Stel explained that Pubpeer's scientific review was completely unrealistic.Scientific review needs to access many original data, and Pubpeer has no resources to solve the problem of quality control that the global publishing industry cannot solve.If the user thinks that there is a error or a deviation of the comment, you can directly comment on the post and point out the problem.

In the rules of Pubpeer, the words such as reducing legal risks have been reduced many times.In fact, as early as 2014, Pubpeer was sued by Fazlul Sarkar, the University of Mississippi University.The reason was that the school lifted the employment of SARKAR after seeing the comments on the website.The American Citizen Freedom Alliance, standing on the Pubpeer side, defended it with the first amendment of the US Constitution. The demands of Sarkar's announcement of the identity of anonymous commentators were eventually rejected by the court.

To avoid legal disputes, PUBPER uses a close -up method to present comments.The website said that in most cases, even if the author provides a convincing answer or explanation, Pubpeer will not modify or delete the comments threads, and publicly provide a complete discussion historical record.They believe that other readers may also have problems with similar doubts, so it is beneficial to publicize the complete process of comments and follow -up.The core point of these rules is that Pubpeer itself does not conduct subjective judgments.

Nevertheless, an anonymous reviews and system design that allows anonymous reviews and lack of scientific and authentic review still provides some people with the possibility of frank and slandering scientific researchers.

Since May of this year, some people have posted anonymous on the Pubpeer website, questioning the 24 papers signed by Dong Chen, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the dean of the Chinese Academy of Medical College of Tsinghua University.In this regard, Dong Chen replied to China News Weekly that he and 10 former doctoral students and postdoctorals distributed around the world reviewed the 20 papers of himself as a communications author, and within a week, each questioned on the Pubpeer website was questioned.The questions answered in detail.Dong Chen emphasized that from their investigations and answers, it can be clearly stated that these papers are not fraud and there is no academic dislocation.

In a response to the doubtful papers, Dong Chen said that we are welcome to improve scientific quality and rigorous constructive criticism.However, these questions show that the principles that are generally accepted in the field, themes, and the general acceptance of the industry are lacking, so most of the criticisms have no scientific value.As a loyal supporter of the Pubpeer forum, we do not want the scientific exchange platform of Pubpeer to be used by some anonymous questioners to diversify the energy of scientists to carry out daily scientific research activities, which will run counter to the original intention of the platform.

In this regard, Lin Chenghua, deputy director of the China Academy of Science and Education Strategy of Zhejiang University, believes that a third -party academic counterfeit platform similar to Pubpeer should establish an anonymous review review mechanism.The platform needs to set up relevant standards and procedures to review scientific and authenticity of anonymous reviews to avoid misunderstanding or even false accusation of academic doubts.After the procedure of the institutional level is improved, the platform should also establish a make -up mechanism for those scientific researchers who have been misunderstood or maliciously injured by false comments to restore the reputation of the question.Only with the increasingly complete construction mechanism of the third -party platform itself can it maintain its academic credibility and lasting vitality.

Compared to the way Pubpeer operates by the foundation, German independent scientific reporter Leonid Middot; Schneider's For Better Science hosted by Schneider is more personal.On June 15, the website released reports of suspected dissertation in the field of mathematics in China.Aonid Middot; Schneider said that the website refused to insult, attack or no evidence of allegations, and encouraged real -name comments while receiving anonymous comments.All comments and review work is performed by himself.

Experimental images in the field of biomedical are the focus of counterfeiting

Stel told China News Weekly that most of the problems pointed out on Pubpeer involved images in the author's paper.Middot; Dr. Bike, who has worked at the Department of Microbiology and Immunology at Stanford University School of Medicine, is currently investigating the abnormal problems of various papers and the academic incompleteness of various papers.According to Bike's doubts, 121 papers from many hospitals in China are suspected of fraud.

In an interview with China News Weekly, Bi Ke said that in the dissertation involved, the image of a single papers seemed to be fine.But by combing the images of all papers, she found that these papers use the same images: there are repeated images between different papers; some papers also have duplicate, such as the two images that represent different experiments.As a result, she believes that the paper may come from the thesis factory.

Earlier, Bike had questioned more than 400 papers from many three -tart hospitals in China, and there were image fraud and pointing to the paper factory.She told China News Weekly that most papers with images of repeated problems involved cancer biology, oncology, and molecular biology, and spectral duplication appeared more in the nano field.The papers in these fields usually include many images and spectra, so the problems in it are relatively easy to discover.The papers in other fields may have only forms, lines, or heat maps, so it is not easy to attract attention.

Bi Ke pointed out that in the papers she raised, many authors have contact with Chinese hospitals.also.A large number of papers from India and American researchers also have image fraud.

In Bick's view, she is more willing to think that she is a data detective, not an academic counterfeiter or supervisor.She hopes to inspire researchers who do not pay enough attention to academic integrity by publishing their own work on blogs and Twitter.

Pass review and interest group

Academic papers need to be reviewed by peers before the journal magazine is published. Therefore, peer reviews are also regarded as filters of papers.In this regard, Bi Ke said that the peer review of academic journals was based on the trusted assumptions of data in the default paper.The peer review did not have special training, and its purpose was not to discover fraud.The value of peer review is to propose professional arguments for the logic and experiments of the dissertation.

The discovery of improper behaviors or other academic integrity issues in the paper should be carried out before the journal acceptance of manuscripts and sent to peer review.Bi Ke suggested that many journals have screened plagiarism through investigation, and reviewing images and other academic integrity issues should also be added to this process.

Even after five years, Bick has not been investigated or withdrawn to the publisher and the author. Therefore, she intends to discuss these papers publicly on social media with Pubpeer in the next step.Bi Ke believes that before the journals improve their pre -publishing censorship, platforms such as PUBPEER are the best ways available at present.Scientific research institutions are also unwilling to condemn the star scholars who can bring large funds.

Bick takes the papers published by Philip Middot at the end of March this year; Gotrey's team on the treatment of new crown pneumonia for hydroxyl chloride.She pointed out that in order to improve the influence of the magazine, the publisher may leave a striking issue, rather than investigating errors or withdrawals.The other may be a famous scientist, and one of the author is a member of the journal editorial board, so other editors dare not handle the paper.Philip Middot; Getre team's research on the treatment of new crown pneumonia in hydroxyl chlorine is a big deal.However, the samples of their papers are too small, and there may be problems including ethical approval, mixed factors, and not rigorous PCR results.But this paper was reviewed and accepted within 24 hours of submission to the International Antibacterial Magazine.And one of the co -authors of this paper, Jean Marc Rolain is the editor -in -chief of the Magazine Magazine, and there is a huge interest in interest.

Elizabeth Middot; Bi Ke described this on the blog: this is equivalent to allowing students to score for their own thesis, and the result is A +.

The evaluation mechanism alone leads to fraud, fake and prosperity

Li Xia, a professor of the Institute of Science and Science and Culture of Shanghai Jiaotong University, believes that in addition to basic research on the writing as the main work, in other application research, the paper should only be by -products that record the research process, viewpoints, and problem solutions.However, in the past few decades, the number of papers has become the first indicator of China's scientific and technological evaluation standards.Especially in the medical field, a single evaluation system has caused obstacles to the employment of professional titles, job competition, and project declaration of the majority of medical staff.

Lin Chenghua, deputy director of the China Institute of Science and Education Strategy at Zhejiang University, pointed out that the current target of academic counterfeiting is the main papers published in the past.In the past ten years, China has been in a period of scientific research, and the number of papers published in a blowout period.In the past stage, the countryThe orientation of scientific research is also more required, which has caused many problems including academic fraud.

Li Xia feels that the existence of academic counterfeiters such as Elizabeth Middot; Bike and other academic counterfeiters has played a role in third -party supervision on scientific researchers and journals.But at the same time, anonymous comments on platforms such as Pubpeer may also become a tool for fabrication, false accusation and malicious injuries.

Li Xia emphasized that the identification of academic fraud needs to be appraised.At present, major colleges and universities in China have academic committees of colleges and schools, and can be arbitral in academic integrity of master and doctoral students and ordinary teachers.Processing college leaders.These people have a large number of academic and social resources, and have a significant influence on universities and the field, so even if they are questioned academic fraud, most of them have been left.In order to deal with the academic integrity of high -end academic talents, the state should surpass the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Science and Technology to set up a national highest academic arbitration committee.If the academic identity of the involved is too high, the introduction of the international top scholars can be considered and the authoritative determination is performed.If the state can have a clear signal for the counterfeiting behavior of high -end academic talents, it will have a huge deterrent effect on academic fraud.