Ministry cracks down on misconduct in funding applications

In an unusual move, China’s Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST) this month published details of several cases of academic misconduct in applications for national research project funding.

Researchers implicated in the cases received punishments that included being banned from government-funded research projects for up to seven years and having their names added to a national academic misconduct database.

An academic in China’s southern Guangdong Province, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the publishing of the details of misconduct, while unusual, did not necessarily herald new transparency by the authorities on academic fraud and plagiarism, which many academics have been calling for.

“It is more an exercise to ‘name and shame’ miscreant researchers as a warning to others, and also to flag up that the authorities are closely vetting research funding applications as S&T [science and technology] funding allocations rise,” stated the academic.

MOST and other government agencies have faced criticism in the past for failing to adequately monitor and investigate misconduct despite the tightening of misconduct rules and penalties in recent years, particularly in the ethical use of artificial intelligence in research.

Five cases of misconduct were described in detail by the ministry in a notice published on 19 July, which also noted that the relevant institutions had failed in their responsibility of strictly reviewing project applications.

MOST said heads of these units had been summoned and given a time limit to improve procedures.

Publicised cases

In one case publicised by MOST in June 2023, Zhao Ran from China Agricultural University applied for the 2023 National Key R&D Programme – a major research programme launched in 2021 to support industries – as the project leader.

Upon investigation his application was found to have plagiarised the contents of other approved projects in its main indicators, research content, research methods and main innovations.

MOST said it terminated the project review process and the project has not been funded.

In June 2023, Zhang Xiaochen of Yongjiang Laboratory, a non-profit research lab established in 2021 by Ningbo City and Zhejiang Province to carry out materials research, applied for the 2023 National Key R&D Program as the project leader.

After an investigation his application was found to have plagiarised other approved projects. Zhang was also barred from publicly-funded S&T projects for three years, and his name added to the misconduct database.

YongJiang Laboratory, which set up its own joint investigation team of internal and external experts, noted in official media that Zhang “lacked a rigorous attitude” in writing the project proposal, directly applied past proposal templates, and copied and pasted a large number of original paragraphs, violating the principle of scientific research integrity.

“Scientific research integrity is not only the lifeline of scientific research, but also the bottom line that every researcher should adhere to. Any form of academic misconduct is a blasphemy against scientific research integrity and a deviation from the cause of science,” said Cui Ping, director of Yongjiang Laboratory.

“The laboratory resolutely does not plead for, cover up, or condone academic dishonesty, and faces the problem directly,” Cui added.

The same month, an application from Chen Haotai from the Lanzhou Veterinary Research Institute of the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences for the 2023 National Key R&D Program as project leader was found to have plagiarised other project applications.

All three individuals were barred from undertaking or participating in any publicly funded S&T activities for three years and their names were recorded in the database of serious scientific research integrity breaches.

Lobbying of reviewers

In another case exposed by MOST, Sun Beicheng, former vice-president of Nanjing Gulou Hospital, called and messaged reviewers to lobby them to approve his application for state funds for his research programme.

The four reviewers did not report this or request recusal. One of them, Zhao Yuanjin of China’s Southeast University, “assisted” Sun in his request and later tipped Sun off that he was being investigated by the ministry, according to MOST.

The misconduct “severely disrupted” the application review process and “caused trouble for researchers who are dedicated to their work”, the ministry said, adding it was “detrimental to the image of the scientific community”.

Sun has been barred from participating in any publicly funded S&T activities for seven years, while Zhao Yuanjin was barred for five years. The other reviewers in the case were barred for three years. All their names were recorded in the misconduct database.

With competition for research funding rising year on year, particularly among younger scientists, researchers note it is becoming harder to stand out, and some may try to use ‘connections’ or lobbying methods to get their proposals to the top of the pile, a researcher in Shenzhen told University World News.

Even established and well-funded professors have attempted to short-circuit the approvals process.

Earlier this year two award winning scientists from top national universities who were exposed for trying to influence decisions on government-funded research were among 21 researchers from 15 universities who were investigated and punished for misconduct relating to funding applications to the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC), one of the country’s largest research funding bodies.

The NSFC revealed in April that Ji Jie, a professor and doctoral supervisor at Beijing University of Civil Engineering and Architecture, contacted potential funding reviewers in 2022 and 2023 via phone calls and text messages.

According to the university’s website, Ji is the dean of the school of civil and transport engineering. In the past decade, she has undertaken more than 60 national, provincial and ministerial-level research projects and published more than 100 papers.

Yang Lijun, a professor at the School of Energy, Power and Mechanical Engineering at North China Electric Power University (NCEPU) in Hebei Province, had “a year-long and repeated practice of soliciting favours from a number of potential reviewers”, according to the NSFC.

Both scientists were banned from applying for NSFC-funded projects for three years. Ji was also barred for five years from acting as a reviewer for NSFC projects.

According to an NSFC report in July 2022, more than 70% of reviewers surveyed in 2021 said they had been approached by funding applicants during project reviews.

Last year, the Communist Party’s Central Commission for Discipline Inspection and the NSFC began a joint crackdown on the practice of using personal connections for the purpose of soliciting.

Rare public denunciations

Despite these revelations, public denunciations are rare and relatively recent, academics said.

MOST unveiled a document in September 2020 to address S&T misconduct, and publicly denounced researchers involved in nine cases of hiring ghostwriters and fabricating project spending.

However, another academic in Guangdong Province noted that after a large number of retractions of research papers submitted by Chinese researchers to a number of foreign academic journals in 2023, the ministry has stepped up its vigilance and also asked universities to be more active in checking for misconduct in order to catch cases before they get to the stage of publication and retractions, which reflect negatively on Chinese academic credibility and reputation.

According to science journal Nature, some 14,000 papers were retracted from English language journals in 2023 alone, three-quarters of them involving a Chinese co-author.

The Henan Provincial Department of Education late last year instructed universities in the province to investigate reasons for retractions, going back through the whole process — not just to detect suspected peer review manipulation, fake experiments, ghostwriting or plagiarism, but to investigate how the research idea came about and was approved for funding.

This month a decision by the Communist Party’s Central Committee Third Plenum to promote high-quality S&T as a driver of economic growth, included “deepening reforms to the S&T evaluation system, strengthening the governance of S&T ethics, and strictly rectifying academic misconduct”.