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Research Ethics: Zero Tolerance
from Nature News
Yang Wei has an easy smile and a carefree, even distracted, air--but he takes such a solemn approach to life that his wife sometimes tells him to relax. "I take everything seriously," he says.
The former materials scientist certainly took it seriously when, two years after he became president of Zhejiang University (ZJU) in Hangzhou, China, he faced a case of scientific misconduct that became a turning point for his presidency. In early October 2008, the editor of the International Journal of Cardiology discovered that figures in a manuscript by He Haibo, a scientist researching traditional Chinese medicine who had been hired by the ZJU only months before, were suspiciously similar to those in an article that He had published elsewhere. Confronted, He quickly owned up, submitting a 12-page confession to Yang on 26 October.
But the case, which eventually led to the retraction of eight papers, spiralled into an international media catastrophe for the ZJU, one of China's oldest and largest universities, as well as one of the most successful in publishing science. Articles attacked the laxity of a system that gave leadership roles to the likes of Li Lianda, dean of the department of pharmaceutical sciences and He's supervisor, who was largely absent from the lab and unfamiliar with the work, but was last author on some of He's papers. "There was plagiarism, fabrication and falsification. It was a showcase of every kind of problem," says Yang.
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