Rampant Fraud Threat to China's Brisk Ascent

By ANDREW JACOBS - The New York Times - October 6, 2010

BEIJING — No one disputes Zhang Wuben’s talents as a salesman. Through television shows, DVDs and a best-selling book, he convinced millions of people that raw eggplant and immense quantities of mung beans could cure lupus, diabetes, depression and cancer.

For $450, seriously ill patients could buy a 10-minute consultation and a prescription — except Mr. Zhang, one of the most popular practitioners of traditional Chinese medicine, was booked through 2012.

But when the price of mung beans skyrocketed this spring, Chinese journalists began digging deeper. They learned that contrary to his claims, Mr. Zhang, 47, was not from a long line of doctors (his father was a weaver). Nor did he earn a degree from Beijing Medical University (his only formal education, it turned out, was the brief correspondence course he took after losing his job at a textile mill).

The exposure of Mr. Zhang’s faked credentials provoked a fresh round of hand-wringing over what many scholars and Chinese complain are the dishonest practices that permeate society, including students who cheat on college entrance exams, scholars who promote fake or unoriginal research, and dairy companies that sell poisoned milk to infants.

The most recent string of revelations has been bracing. After a plane crash in August killed 42 people in northeast China, officials discovered that 100 pilots who worked for the airline’s parent company had falsified their flying histories. Then there was the padded résumé of Tang Jun, the millionaire former head of Microsoft China and something of a national hero, who falsely claimed to have received a doctorate from the California Institute of Technology.

Few countries are immune to high-profile frauds. Illegal doping in sports and malfeasance on Wall Street are running scandals in the United States. But in China, fakery in one area in particular — education and scientific research — is pervasive enough that many here worry it could make it harder for the country to climb the next rung on the economic ladder.

A Lack of Integrity

China devotes significant resources to building a world-class education system and pioneering research in competitive industries and sciences, and has had notable successes in network computing, clean energy, and military technology. But a lack of integrity among researchers is hindering China’s potential and harming collaboration between Chinese scholars and their international counterparts, scholars in China and abroad say.

“If we don’t change our ways, we will be excluded from the global academic community,” said Zhang Ming, a professor of international relations at Renmin University in Beijing. “We need to focus on seeking truth, not serving the agenda of some bureaucrat or satisfying the desire for personal profit.”

Pressure on scholars by administrators of state-run universities to earn journal citations — a measure of innovation — has produced a deluge of plagiarized or fabricated research. In December, a British journal that specializes in crystal formations announced that it was withdrawing more than 70 papers by Chinese authors whose research was of questionable originality or rigor.

In an editorial published earlier this year, The Lancet, the British medical journal, warned that faked or plagiarized research posed a threat to President Hu Jintao’s vow to make China a “research superpower” by 2020.

“Clearly, China’s government needs to take this episode as a cue to reinvigorate standards for teaching research ethics and for the conduct of the research itself,” the editorial said. Last month a collection of scientific journals published by Zhejiang University in Hangzhou reignited the firestorm by publicizing results from a 20-month experiment with software that detects plagiarism. The software, called CrossCheck, rejected nearly a third of all submissions on suspicion that the content was pirated from previously published research. In some cases, more than 80 percent of a paper’s content was deemed unoriginal.

The journals’ editor, Zhang Yuehong, emphasized that not all the flawed papers originated in China, although she declined to reveal the breakdown of submissions. “Some were from South Korea, India and Iran,” she said.

The journals, which specialize in medicine, physics, engineering and computer science, were the first in China to use the software. For the moment they are the only ones to do so, Ms. Zhang said.

Plagiarism and Fakery

Her findings are not surprising if one considers the results of a recent government study in which a third of the 6,000 scientists at six of the nation’s top institutions admitted they had engaged in plagiarism or the outright fabrication of research data. In another study of 32,000 scientists last summer by the China Association for Science and Technology, more than 55 percent said they knew someone guilty of academic fraud.

Fang Shimin, a muckraking writer who has become a well-known advocate for academic integrity, said the problem started with the state-run university system, where politically appointed bureaucrats have little expertise in the fields they oversee. Because competition for grants, housing perks and career advancement is so intense, officials base their decisions on the number of papers published.

“Even fake papers count because nobody actually reads them,” said Mr. Fang, who is more widely known by his pen name, Fang Zhouzi, and whose Web site, New Threads, has exposed more than 900 instances of fakery, some involving university presidents and nationally lionized researchers.

When plagiarism is exposed, colleagues and school leaders often close ranks around the accused. Mr. Fang said this was partly because preserving relationships trumped protecting the reputation of the institution. But the other reason, he said, is more sobering: Few academics are clean enough to point a finger at others. One result is that plagiarizers often go unpunished, which only encourages more of it, said Zeng Guoping, director of the Institute of Science Technology and Society at Tsinghua University in Beijing, which helped run the survey of 6,000 academics.

He cited the case of Chen Jin, a computer scientist who was once celebrated for having invented a sophisticated microprocessor but who, it turned out, had taken a chip made by Motorola, scratched out its name, and claimed it as his own. After Mr. Chen was showered with government largess and accolades, the exposure in 2006 was an embarrassment for the scientific establishment that backed him.

But even though Mr. Chen lost his university post, he was never prosecuted. “When people see the accused still driving their flashy cars, it sends the wrong message,” Mr. Zeng said.

The problem is not confined to the realm of science. In fact many educators say the culture of cheating takes root in high school, where the competition for slots in the country’s best colleges is unrelenting and high marks on standardized tests are the most important criterion for admission. Ghost-written essays and test questions can be bought. So, too, can a “hired gun” test taker who will assume the student’s identity for the grueling two-day college entrance exam.

Then there are the gadgets — wristwatches and pens embedded with tiny cameras — that transmit signals to collaborators on the outside who then relay back the correct answers. Even if such products are illegal, students spent $150 million last year on Internet essays and high-tech subterfuge, a fivefold increase over 2007, according to a Wuhan University study, which identified 800 Web sites offering such illicit services.

Academic deceit is not limited to high school students. In July, Centenary College, a New Jersey institution with satellite branches in China and Taiwan, shuttered its business schools in Shanghai, Beijing and Taipei after finding rampant cheating among students. Although school administrators declined to discuss the nature of the misconduct, it was serious enough to withhold degrees from each of the programs’ 400 students. Given a chance to receive their M.B.A.’s by taking another exam, all but two declined, school officials said.

Nonchalant Cheating

Ask any Chinese student about academic skullduggery and the response is startlingly nonchalant. Arthur Lu, an engineering student who last spring graduated from Tsinghua University, considered a plum of the country’s college system, said it was common for students to swap test answers or plagiarize essays from one another. “Perhaps it’s a cultural difference but there is nothing bad or embarrassing about it,” said Mr. Lu, who started this semester on a master’s degree at Stanford University. “It’s not that students can’t do the work. They just see it as a way of saving time.”

The Chinese government has vowed to address the problem. Editorials in the state-run press frequently condemn plagiarism and last month, Liu Yandong, a powerful Politburo member who oversees Chinese publications, vowed to close some of the 5,000 academic journals whose sole existence, many scholars say, is to provide an outlet for doctoral students and professors eager to inflate their publishing credentials.

Fang Shimin and another crusading journalist, Fang Xuanchang, have heard the vows and threats before. In 2004 and again in 2006, the Ministry of Education announced antifraud campaigns but the two bodies they established to tackle the problem have yet to mete out any punishments.

In recent years, both journalists have taken on Xiao Chuanguo, a urologist who invented a surgical procedure aimed at restoring bladder function in children with spina bifida, a congenital deformation of the spinal column that can lead to incontinence, and when untreated, kidney failure and death.

In a series of investigative articles and blog postings, the two men uncovered discrepancies in Dr. Xiao’s Web site, including claims that he had published 26 articles in English-language journals (they could only find four) and that he had won an achievement award from the American Urological Association (the award was for an essay he wrote).

But even more troubling, they said, were assertions that his surgery had an 85 percent success rate. Of more than 100 patients interviewed, they said none reported having been cured of incontinence, with nearly 40 percent saying their health had worsened after the procedure, which involved rerouting a leg nerve to the bladder. (In early trials, doctors in the United States who have done the surgery have found the results to be far more promising.)

Wherever the truth may have been, Dr. Xiao was incensed. He filed a string of libel suits against Fang Shimin and told anyone who would listen that revenge would be his.

This summer both men were brutally attacked on the street in Beijing — Fang Xuanchang by thugs with an iron bar and Fang Shimin by two men wielding pepper spray and a hammer.

When the police arrested Dr. Xiao on Sept. 21, he quickly confessed to hiring the men to carry out the attack, according to the police report. His reason, he said, was vengeance for the revelations he blames for blocking his appointment to the prestigious Chinese Academy of Sciences.

Despite his confession, Dr. Xiao’s employer, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, appeared unwilling to take any action against him. In the statement they released, administrators said they were shocked by news of his arrest but said they would await the outcome of judicial procedures before severing their ties to him.

Li Bibo and Zhang Jing contributed research.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: October 7, 2010

An earlier version of this article incorrectly named a member of the Politburo. She is Liu Yandong, not Liu Dongdong. An earlier version of this article also gave an incorrect name for a school where Xiao Chuanguo's appointment was blocked. Dr Xiao was blocked from an appointment to the Chinese Academy of Sciences, not the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.

$200 Textbook vs. Free. You Do the Math

The New York Times - July 31, 2010

- By Ashlee Vance

INFURIATING Scott G. McNealy has never been easier. Just bring up math textbooks.

Mr. McNealy, the fiery co-founder and former chief executive of Sun Microsystems, shuns basic math textbooks as bloated monstrosities: their price keeps rising while the core information inside of them stays the same.

“Ten plus 10 has been 20 for a long time,” Mr. McNealy says.

Early this year, Oracle, the database software maker, acquired Sun for $7.4 billion, leaving Mr. McNealy without a job. He has since decided to aim his energy and some money at Curriki, an online hub for free textbooks and other course material that he spearheaded six years ago.

“We are spending $8 billion to $15 billion per year on textbooks” in the United States, Mr. McNealy says. “It seems to me we could put that all online for free.”

The nonprofit Curriki fits into an ever-expanding list of organizations that seek to bring the blunt force of Internet economics to bear on the education market. Even the traditional textbook publishers agree that the days of tweaking a few pages in a book just to sell a new edition are coming to an end.

“Today, we are engaged in a very different dialogue with our customers,” says Wendy Colby, a senior vice president of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. “Our customers are asking us to look at different ways to experiment and to look at different value-based pricing models.”

Mr. McNealy had his own encounter with value-based pricing models while running Sun. The company had thrived as a result of its specialized, pricey technology. And then, in what seemed liked a flash, Sun’s business came undone as a wave of cheaper computers and free, open-source software proved good enough to handle many tasks once done by Sun computers.

At first, Sun fought the open-source set, and then it joined the party by making the source code to its most valuable software available to anyone.

Too little, too late. Sun’s sales continued to decline, making it vulnerable to a takeover.

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt and other top textbook publishers now face their, forgive me, moment in the sun.

Over the last few years, groups nationwide have adopted the open-source mantra of the software world and started financing open-source books. Experts — often retired teachers or groups of teachers — write these books and allow anyone to distribute them in digital, printed or audio formats. Schools can rearrange the contents of the books to suit their needs and requirements.

But progress with these open-source texts has been slow.

California and Texas dominate the market for textbooks used in kindergarten through high school, and publishers do all they can to meet these states’ requirements and lock in their millions of students for years.

Both states have only recently established procedures that will let open-source textbooks begin making their way through the arduous approval process. Last year, Texas passed a law promoting the use of open, digital texts and is reviewing material that might be used in schools.

In California, a state board is studying whether open texts meet state requirements. The CK-12 Foundation, a nonprofit financed by another Sun co-founder, Vinod Khosla, has created several texts that have met the board’s criteria.

“In three and a half years, we have developed nine of the core textbooks for high school,” says Neeru Khosla, Mr. Khosla’s wife and the head of CK-12. “If you don’t try this, nothing will change.”

Aneesh Chopra, the federal chief technology officer, promoted an open physics textbook from CK-12 in his previous role as the secretary of technology for Virginia, which included more up-to-date materials than the state’s printed textbooks.

“We still had quotes that said the main component of a television was a cathode ray tube,” Mr. Chopra says. “We had to address the contemporary nature of physics topics.”

Eric Frank, the co-founder of Flat World Knowledge, argues that there is a huge financial opportunity in outflanking the traditional textbook makers. His company homes in on colleges and gives away a free online version of some textbooks. Students can then pay $30 for a black-and-white version to be printed on demand or $60 for a color version, or they can buy an audio copy.

About 55 percent of students buy a book, Mr. Frank said, adding that the leading calculus book from a traditional publisher costs more than $200.

Publishers have started de-emphasizing the textbook in favor of selling a package of supporting materials like teaching aids and training. And companies like Houghton Mifflin have created internal start-ups to embrace technology and capture for themselves some of the emerging online business.

They are responding in much the same way traditional software makers did when open-source arrived, by trying to bundle subscription services around a core product that has been undercut.

Ms. Colby of Houghton Mifflin puts the state of affairs politely: “I think the open-source movement is opening a whole new conversation, and that is what is exciting to us.”

Mr. McNealy wants to make sure there is a free, innovative option available for schools as this shift occurs.

Curriki has made only modest strides, but Mr. McNealy has pledged to inject new life. He wants to borrow from Sun’s software development systems to create an organized framework for collecting educational information.

In addition, he wants the organization to help build systems that can evaluate educational material and monitor student performance. “I want to assess everything,” he says.

MR. McNEALY, however, has found that raising money for Curriki is tougher than he imagined, even though so many people want to lower the cost of education.

“We are growing nicely,” he says, “but there is a whole bunch of stuff on simmer.”

The Strange New Friend of the Iranian Demonstrators

January 08, 2010 - By Hassan Daioleslam

As the Iranian uprising enters its seventh month and spurs the ruling regime's disintegration, the Iranian community in the U.S. is witnessing a peculiar sideshow. Some of the "Iran experts" who had relentlessly preached friendship and coexistence with the Iranian regime, in a bizarre overnight reinvention of themselves, are now riding the green wave and presenting themselves as the advocates of the regime's victims, the Iranian people. Chief among them is Tria Parsi, president of the National Iranian American Council (NIAC).

For the past twelve years, Trita Parsi has unremittingly lobbied the U.S. Congress to lift pressure off the Iranian regime. A short while ago, he advised the U.S. government to share the Middle East with the ruling mullahs. Now, supported by some influential circles in the U.S. and benefiting from his new PR agency, Parsi strives to present himself as a voice for the Iranian people and the green movement. Amazingly, just a few months ago, Parsi predicted the premature death of the Iranian uprising. In an article titled "The End of the Beginning," he wrote:

Iran's popular uprising, which began after the June 12 election, may be heading for a premature ending. In many ways, the Ahmadinejad government has succeeded in transforming what was a mass movement into dispersed pockets of unrest. Whatever is now left of this mass movement is now leaderless, unorganized -- and under the risk of being hijacked by groups outside Iran in pursuit of their own political agendas.

Credibility

Parsi's new facade is primarily rooted in self-interested calculations. He is seriously discredited among Iranians, who know him as a lobbyist for the Iranian regime. Mohsen Makhmalbaf, who has served informally as a Western-based spokesman for Iranian opposition leader Mir Hossen Moussavi, recently told the Washington Times: "I think Trita Parsi does not belong to the Green Movement. I feel his lobbying has secretly been more for the Islamic Republic."

Parsi's sudden concern for the Iranian democratic movement is partly designed to cover up his twelve years' lobbying in favor of the Iranian regime. Furthermore, he is faced with an upcoming court appearance in Washington in which his lobbying will be thoroughly scrutinized. A year ago, in an effort to silence me and intimidate his critics, Parsi brought a defamation lawsuit against me. I was among many Iranians and Americans who believed that he lobbied in favor of the Iranian regime.

During the discovery process, some of Parsi's communications were released and proved to be highly compromising to him. According to Washington Times, "Law enforcement experts who reviewed some of the documents, say e-mails between Mr. Parsi and Iran's ambassador to the United Nations at the time, Javad Zarif -- and an internal review of the Lobbying Disclosure Act -- offer evidence that the group has operated as an undeclared lobby and may be guilty of violating tax laws, the Foreign Agents Registration Act and lobbying disclosure laws."

The content of these documents was serious enough that Senator John Kyl officially wrote to the U.S. Attorney General and pressed for an inquiry into Parsi's lobby. The reaction in the Iranian community has been outrage toward Parsi's activities in favor of the Iranian regime.

Parsi and human rights violations in Iran

Parsi's newfound passion for human rights in Iran is in sharp contrast to his deplorable record. He started his political career in 1997, when he founded a lobby organization called "Iranians for International Cooperation," or IIC. In 2002, he founded his current lobby organization, NIAC. From 1997 to 2007, there was not a single statement by Parsi or his organizations condemning the human rights violations in Iran. In fact when human rights activists in 2000 protested the appearance of and a speech by the Iranian ambassador, Parsi lashed out at the protesters for not being civilized!

In an interesting document posted on their website, NIAC listed their entire statements about human rights violations in Iran. It is titled "NIAC Articles on Human Rights in Iran." Not a single statement before May 2007, when Parsi's lobby in favor of the Iranian regime was exposed and he was publicly denounced by the Iranian community. It is therefore logical to conclude that his 2007 sympathy for the human rights in Iran was designed to repair his disgraceful image.

Not only did NIAC and Parsi not condemn the regime's brutality, but they also tried hard to distance themselves from anti-regime actions. In one of NIAC's internal documents obtained through the discovery process, we read:

A second challenge was a misquote by Agence Franc Presse, which accredited NIAC for organizing anti-Tehran demonstrations on the Mall in Washington DC on July 9. On learning about this mistake, NIAC immediately contacted AFP and convinced them to make a correction. AFP retracted the story, but it took them three days to do so, by which the story had been picked up by other news media. Although NIAC's has channels to inform certain parts of the Iranian government on the inaccuracy of the AFP report, the misquote can be used by other elements of the government to create obstacles. Furthermore, the parts of the government that NIAC has access to are steadily losing their influence in Iran.

This cordiality between NIAC and the regime continued under Ahmadinejad. Private communications between Javad Zarif (Ahmadinejad's ambassador) and Parsi suggest policy coordination and a high level of trust between them. Parsi regularly sent Zarif his articles, and Zarfi admired and praised Parsi's viewpoints and writings.

How could someone be so trusted and admired by Ahmadinejad's ambassador and at the same time genuinely defend the human rights of Iranians or defend the interests of the Iranian-Americans?

Repairing political discredit

Parsi's new pretense as a defender of Iranian democratic movement likely is also motivated by cunning political calculations. He and his peers have for many years argued that the Iranian regime is stable and that the U.S. government should adapt to this reality. The U.S. should, according to Parsi, seek coexistence with the mullahs and accept their hegemony in the region. In fact, the "coexistence" theory was entirely based on the solidity of the Iranian regime.

Two years ago, in November 2007, Parsi wrote an advisory report for the U.S. administration and tried to debunk seven common myths or misconceptions about Iran. The first myth was about the regime's stability:

Myth: Iran is ripe for regime change.

Trita Parsi: Not true. Although the ruling clergy in Iran are very unpopular, they are not going anywhere anytime soon.

Then, in 2008, the same report was reedited slightly, cosigned by twenty other "Iran experts," and sent as a "Joint Statement" to the Obama administration. Once again, the "experts" rejected the idea that the regime could be frail and unstable.

The Iranian uprising has swept away these wrong and illusory ideas and has brought a significant blow to the credibility of these self-proclaimed "Iran experts." Therefore, Parsi's sudden "support" for the Iranian uprising is designed to repair this huge credibility deficiency. By getting back his credibility, Parsi and his organization would be able to influence Obama's policy toward Iran.

Currently, the main issue on the table is the upcoming sanctions against Iran. Parsi, NIAC, and similar groups continue their decade-long agenda to lift the pressure off the Iranian regime and minimize the scope and impact of future sanctions. Once again, Parsi tries to wrap his anti-sanction lobby in a human face and argues that the Iranian democratic movement will suffer under this new wave of sanctions.

Parsi's effort to humanize his lobby is part of a calculated strategy that he has meticulously applied for the past several years. In a secret document written in 2002 and sent to a Washington lobbyist, Parsi explained the need to give a human face to their lobby:

Although the mission of the proposed lobby should be to improve relations between the US and Iran and open up opportunities for trade, the initial targets should be less controversial issues such as visas and racial profiling/discrimination ...

Despite its predominantly business oriented constituency, it is essential that the lobby creates a "human face" for its aims and goals. AIPAC successfully painted the opponents of the Iran Libya Sanctions Act as "greedy businessmen who had no scruples when it came to doing business with terrorist regimes." The oil companies failed to characterize their campaign with "human concern for the well-being of innocent Iranians stuck with a dictatorial regime" or "support for the poor mid-Western family father who lost his job due the sanctions." The human element is essential both when it comes to attracting support among Iranian-Americans and when it comes to winning the debate and the votes on the Hill.

For more than a decade, Trita Parsi has worked hard to remove sanctions against the Iranian regime. He has professed continuously that the Iranian regime (regardless of who is in power) is stable, and hence warrants a friendly policy from the West. He developed close relations with Ahmadinejad's ambassador in the U.N. and reported to him the pulse of the U.S.'s political circles. He collaborated and coordinated with companies inside Iran who stand to benefit significantly from the lifting of sanctions. He lied about the number of NIAC members to garner false credibility in Washington towards advancing his cause. And now, he has reinvented himself as a pro-human rights activist who advocates "smart sanctions" against Iran. Should we believe that this sudden transformation is sincere, or is it a cunning but desperate attempt to gain lost credibility?