[Japan] Yamasaki Shigeaki: “Misconduct by Scientists—Fabrication, Falsification, Plagiarism,” translated by Yang Jian Cheng Yuanyuan Yan Lingna, Tsinghua University Press, May 2005
This book is not bad, but compared with the one in the Eight Facets of the Wind series, *People Who Betrayed the Truth*, it is probably still far inferior.
As the authors of these two books have both made clear, exposing scientists’ misconduct is by no means motivated by some kind of “schadenfreude,” nor is it a form of entertainment, like a tabloid reporter exposing scandals. Rather, it is about facing up to problems and prompting thought.
Scientists are not gods; as human beings, they will always make mistakes and harbor greed and evil thoughts. But the significance of exposing scientists’ misconduct is not limited to conveying the meaning that “scientists are human too.” More fundamentally, we must ask whether there is something wrong with the system of the scientific community as a whole. Reality, increasingly brought to light, suggests: scientists’ misconduct is not accidental, but may well have institutional factors. Similar to the political world’s possible “unwritten rule” that “once you become an official, you are bound to become corrupt,” the scientific world may not be quite that bad, but many instances of misconduct are indeed—rather than being driven by the evil within one’s own heart, they are the result of pressure under the system.
As for the construction of a research system, my preliminary thoughts are: 1. we must resolutely oppose quantity-first thinking; 2. self-discipline by the scientific community alone is not enough; 3. although not enough, we should still make self-discipline by the scientific community the main basis, and peer review remains the most important thing, especially with no excessive introduction of political power; 4. public opinion is important, but it cannot rely on the mass media, and absolutely must not entrust “paparazzi” to meddle with scientists; 5. although we cannot rely on the mass media, we should strengthen “communication” within science itself;
Page 45
(At the U.S. “Office of Research Integrity”) Dr. Sheds’s suggestion is: “In order to ensure good scientific research, whether it is the Office of Research Integrity or the researchers themselves, coordination should be carried out from the same standpoint: if a critical attitude is adopted toward researchers, it often easily arouses their resistance and leads to failure. For example, in Japan, treating misconduct as a scandal and reporting and handling it in a critical manner is entirely the wrong strategy for solving problems.”
Page 63
Although completely identical papers are rare, expert judgment shows that among the 126 papers (ancient note: the original text says 26, but according to the chart below it should be 126) published in 1990 by the *British Journal of Industrial Medicine*, 12% were duplicate submissions.
Page 64
The most effective way to prevent duplicate submissions is to “establish an evaluation method in which paper quality, rather than the number of papers published, is the principal basis for judging academic performance.” That is, when researchers apply for positions or grants, the review committee should examine them from a qualitative perspective and require applicants to submit “about six photocopies of papers” rather than a “list of the number of papers.” If such an evaluation method were put into practice, it should reduce the occurrence of duplicate submissions. ////—Indeed so. Replacing qualitative standards with quantitative standards is a characteristic of the present age. This has to do with the pursuit of所谓的 “objectivity,” because if one measures by quality, subjective judgment inevitably has to be introduced, and in fact subjective judgment may even have to take the lead; this is something the scientistic way of thinking cannot accept. Of course, measuring by quality will inevitably increase the influence of power in evaluation, but denying subjectivity does not bring democracy; instead, it further leads to the widespread phenomenon of more scientists using power to have their names included on their students’ papers in order to increase the number of their own publications. Weighing the two against each other, however you look at it, it is still better to advocate “quality.”
Page 115
In *The New England Journal of Medicine* in 1993, a large-scale clinical trial report co-signed by 972 authors was published. If this report were averaged out across each author, one could calculate that each author wrote only about two sentences. ////—Extracting this passage is purely for entertainment~
20:02 on January 23, 2007
Translated from the Chinese original with AI assistance. The original text is authoritative.
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