The National Natural Science Foundation of China has issued the second batch of academic misconduct announcements this year, and academician candidates have been penalized.

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Recently, the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) released the second batch of results on handling research misconduct for 2024. Unlike the first batch of academic misconduct reports this year, this report did not mention specific institutions. This report involved 12 universities and 14 individuals, including two review experts, one of whom has also entered the list of valid candidates for the 2023 Chinese Academy of Sciences Academician Selection.

This announcement exposes a series of violations of research integrity, including the increasingly important issues of review solicitation and paper mills in recent years, as well as data falsification, fabrication of research results, plagiarism, improper use of others' authorship without consent, and so on. The individuals involved have received retrieval of funds, criticism in the announcement, and penalties such as suspension from National Natural Science Foundation review for 3-5 years, disqualification from applying for funding, and participating in applications.

"01" translates to "January" in English.

In recent years, the handling of solicitation and networking in the evaluation of scientific research projects has become increasingly strict. In May 2023, the National Natural Science Foundation of China approved the "Prohibition List of Solicitation Behavior in the Evaluation of National Natural Science Foundation Projects," which set specific regulations on solicitation practices during evaluations. Also in the same year, the foundation carried out a special campaign to prevent the chronic issue of experts being approached for networking purposes during evaluations.

In 2024, the National Natural Science Foundation of China continues to introduce more new measures. On July 19, the Ministry of Science and Technology also issued a notice on handling the issues of entrusting the evaluation of projects related to the national key research and development plan, publicizing the situation of entrusting personnel, evaluation experts, and related support personnel.

In the first batch of reports on misconduct by the National Natural Science Foundation of China this year, there have been two cases related to solicitation. The first case involves Professor Ji Jie from Beijing University of Civil Engineering and Architecture, who organized an online meeting in 2022 to collect information on potential project review experts and then solicited multiple potential review experts by phone, text messages, WeChat, etc., for the key project he applied for in the following year. The second case involves Yang Lijun from North China Electric Power University, who solicited multiple potential review experts through emails and other means.

In the recent announcement of improper conduct by the fund committee, there is the first case of a review expert being disciplined for issues related to solicitation, and the full name of the expert was publicly disclosed. The disciplined expert holds significant influence in the academic community, with one of them being a valid candidate for the election as a new academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in 2023.

There are issues of seeking favors through connections (guanxi) involving three high school scholars from Shaanxi Province, namely Liu Jianni (Northwest University), Quan Cheng (Chang'an University), and Cheng Hai (Xi'an Jiaotong University, a valid candidate for the 2023 Chinese Academy of Sciences academicians selection). In 2021, during the peer review process of a key project, Liu Jianni used email and other methods to seek favors from multiple potential experts, and obtained and leaked the voting results of the review meeting in violation of the rules. She also attempted to obtain information about the review experts before the defense of the key project and sought favors from multiple experts. In addition, during the peer review process of a face-to-face project meeting in 2021, Liu Jianni disclosed her identity as a review expert, provided assistance to project applicants, and leaked review information.

Quan Cheng and Cheng Hai accepted Liu Jianni's request, revealing their identities as review experts, and agreed with Liu Jianni on the questions to be asked during the defense before the review meeting. After the review meeting, they disclosed the results to Liu Jianni. Quan Cheng also leaked information about other review experts he saw at the conference.

According to relevant regulations, Liu Jianni has been disqualified from applying for and participating in National Natural Science Fund projects for 3 years and from being a reviewer for 5 years. Quan Cheng and Cheng Hai have been disqualified from applying for and participating in National Natural Science Fund projects for 2 years and from being reviewers for 3 years. The three individuals are also subject to disciplinary actions including the recovery of allocated funds and public criticism.

In the past cases of improper behavior involving solicitation as mentioned in the notices from the funding committee, most of them involved applicants contacting potential experts through emails, phone calls, WeChat, etc., requesting special treatment or providing pre-drafted evaluation opinions to the review experts. There have been precedents of review experts being disqualified, but mainly due to violations such as unauthorized disclosure of information, plagiarism of applicants' proposals, exchange of opinions among review experts, and other similar situations. These cases were not directly related to solicitation issues.

In a case reported in 2020, it actually involved the issue of seeking favors. In the report at that time, it was mentioned that during the project application process at Yunnan University, Wu Sixin contacted a possible expert reviewer, Yang at Yunnan University, by phone. It can be seen that the report did not mention the full name and affiliation of the relevant review expert. In this case, only Wu Sixin was disciplined, and the review expert was not affected.

The experts in this review were subject to disciplinary action due to involvement in solicitation issues, which may be related to the revision of the "Investigation and Handling Measures for Research Misconduct in National Natural Science Fund Projects" in 2022. The revision specifically includes "inquiries, greetings, solicitations, bribes, and exchanges of interests" such as "inquiries," "greetings," and "solicitations" as research misconduct behaviors to be punished. However, in the case of Wu Sixin in 2020, the reference was made to the "Measures for Handling Misconduct in the Supervision Committee of the National Natural Science Foundation Funding Work" and did not involve provisions regarding solicitation.

The basis for the disqualification of Quan Cheng and Cheng Hai as reviewers this time is Article 50, items one and four of the "Handling Measures," which states that if a reviewer "violates confidentiality or avoidance regulations" or "performs unfair reviews due to accepting solicitations, etc.," their reviewer qualifications shall be revoked for a period of two to five years in accordance with regulations. They will receive a warning, internal criticism, or criticism and be ordered to correct their behavior. Those with severe circumstances may not be hired as reviewers again.

From the changes in the way of processing and reporting, it can be seen that the National Natural Science Foundation of China is paying increasing attention to the issue of solicitation and improving relevant regulations regarding solicitation issues.

Could you provide more context or information so I can assist you with the translation from Chinese to English?

The recent hotly debated issues such as paper retraction, image fabrication, paper mills, and some popular academic events are also reflected in this announcement.

The student reporting incident that sparked widespread attention earlier this year has received a response in this latest announcement. On January 16, 2024, 11 master's and doctoral students from Professor Huang Feiruo's research group in the Department of Animal Nutrition at Huazhong Agricultural University released a written and visual report containing 125 pages, accusing Huang Feiruo by name of multiple academic misconduct issues.

On February 6th, the school authorities reported that Huang Feiruo, as the corresponding author, had falsified and tampered with experimental data and images in 10 published papers, inappropriately signed two papers, and used papers with academic misconduct in the application and completion report of a research project. The editor-in-chief's textbook also replicated content from other textbooks. The school has decided to revoke all positions and qualifications of Huang Feiruo.

The Discipline Inspection Committee of the National Natural Science Foundation investigated the papers of Huang Feiruo and his collaborator, Wang Tongxin, and found issues in 10 papers. Among them, 1 paper had image misuse, 1 paper had text duplication, 1 paper had fabricated data, and the remaining 7 papers had data tampering problems. Consequently, Huang Feiruo's application for the National Natural Science Fund project was revoked, and his eligibility for future applications was suspended for 5 years, while Wang Tongxin's application eligibility was suspended for 3 years.

In the first batch of misconduct reports issued by the National Natural Science Foundation of China this year, one-third of the cases were related to the medical field. In this report, there were also several cases in the medical field, focusing on issues such as image duplication and falsification.

Yan Qiu from a university in Liaoning Province (the First Affiliated Hospital of Dalian Medical University) had problems with inconsistent use of images in 6 published papers. In fact, as early as 2019, someone pointed out on the academic exchange platform PubPeer that some of Yan Qiu's papers had issues with duplicated images. Later, it was also noted that some images were duplicated from articles published by others in 2017.

Hu Jingbo (Ningbo University), a scholar from a university in Zhejiang Province, has been accused of falsification and tampering in his research papers. Although he does not work in a hospital, the two problematic papers are related to the fields of medicine and biotechnology, with collaborators including researchers from medical universities. Both of these papers have been retracted, with one published in the Journal of Nanobiotechnology being withdrawn due to suspected image reuse. The editor-in-chief identified four instances of repeated images, but the authors did not respond to requests to share the original data.

Two papers by Zhang Fengyan and Wang Shuai (from the First Affiliated Hospital of Zhengzhou University) at a university in Henan province have been pointed out for issues related to data purchasing and confusing use of images. In fact, the problem may be more serious. One of Zhang Fengyan's papers on PubPeer is suspected to come from a paper factory, and is believed to be part of the same category as over 400 fraudulent papers discovered by well-known whistleblower Elisabeth Bik in early 2020. These papers all share the same source for their images. A common feature is that the protein imprint bands have very regular intervals and a smooth appearance with dumbbell or tadpole shapes.

The investigation by academic fraud crusaders revealed that behind this scandal is a paper mill that primarily serves medical students in Shandong and Henan provinces, as well as clinical doctors in hospitals. These papers were published between 2016 and 2020.

The Intellectual once reported on research using artificial intelligence algorithms to identify paper mills involved in past cases of academic fraud. The number of papers produced by paper mills has been increasing over the years, starting from just a few papers annually to over a hundred papers per year in 2014, and surpassing a thousand papers per year after 2018. Among SCI papers, hospitals are major areas where paper mills publish papers, accounting for 67.5%. Furthermore, in SCI papers published by hospitals globally, almost all papers from paper mills come from hospitals in China.

Image fraud, especially through methods like image duplication, is highly associated with paper mills. Xu Qizhi from the Department of Science Communication at the University of Science and Technology of China found that academic image misconduct in China has been widespread since 2013 and is still at a peak. The growth of retracted papers due to image misconduct is closely related to the emergence of paper mills on a large scale.

Xu Qizhi told "Intellectual", many papers that were withdrawn due to image duplication copied the same images, even though the authors had no connection with each other, implying that there is likely organized fraud behind it.

In other words, the typical cases in the medical field reported by the funding committee this time may only be the tip of the iceberg of image falsification in paper mills. It remains to be seen whether the funding committee can conduct a more thorough investigation and address the issue of fraud.

Reference: (Scroll up and down to browse)

[1] Zhang Tianqi. (2024, September 3). Three outstanding youth were reported and punished for "greeting", why does the solicitation of reviewers continue to be banned repeatedly? Intellectuals.

National Natural Science Foundation of China. (2024). Notification of the handling results of misconduct cases in 2024 (second batch).

National Natural Science Foundation of China. (2020). Decisions on handling of cases of misconduct investigated in 2020 (Second Batch).

[4] Science and Technology Daily (2023, January 31). Interpretation of the "Investigation and Handling Measures for Research Misconduct in National Natural Science Foundation Projects" is here!

[5] PubPeer. (2024). Ginsenoside Rg3 inhibits epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT) and invasion of lung cancer by down-regulating FUT4.

The information provided is in English and doesn't require translation. Let me know if you need any help with this text.

[7]The Wire Science Staff. (2023). The Plague of Paper Mill Research Fraud in China.

[8] Di Lihui. (2022, February 28). Why can't the Chinese medical community cure the "disease" of academic fraud? Intellectuals.

Zhang Tianqi. (2024, September 5). The Behind-the-Scenes of the Storm of Withdrawal and Self-Examination in China. Intellectuals