Author: Li Xinling
From the network
At the end of 20 14, the National Natural Science Foundation of China informed the supervisory committee of 20 13 to 20 14 about the acceptance and handling of complaints and reports on scientific research misconduct, and informed the society of seven typical cases of touching academic "high-voltage lines". In 20 14, the Fund Committee accepted 206 complaints and reports, deliberated 33 cases and handled 34 people. In the past five years, a total of 227 cases of academic misconduct were discovered, of which 195 people and1/supporting units were dealt with accordingly, and 74 funded science fund projects were cancelled. (Official website, National Natural Science Foundation of China)
Natural Science Fund is a special fund set up to support basic research, focusing on supporting researchers in universities and scientific research institutions with good research conditions and strength, and provincial natural science funds are also set up in various provinces and cities accordingly. Its financial input increased from 80 million yuan in 1986 to more than 90 billion yuan in14.
Of the seven reported cases, three were fraudulent, involving tampering with the date of birth, altering academic resumes and related documents, repeatedly applying for different types of fund projects and deliberately practicing fraud. The other four cases involved plagiarism and plagiarism of other people's fund project applications, including "a university in Wang Jianfeng, Ningxia copied and tampered with the full text of other people's fund project applications" and "a university in Cao Yun, Guangxi spent 5,000 yuan to buy fund project applications from the Internet, and applied and plagiarized other people's academic ideas in a large space". ...
The author consulted the processing reports of NSFC in recent two years, and found many similar situations: 20 14 national natural science foundation application of a university in Henan province copied the application of other people's fund projects in 2009; The monograph "Material Bionics and Thinking Innovation" published by a university in Sichuan, from page 189 to page 19 1, plagiarized the "project basis" part of 201national natural science foundation project application. ...
It is worth noting that, according to the statistics of the National Natural Science Foundation of China, scientific research misconduct mainly occurs in the project application stage, and the misconduct of applicants in the application process accounts for about 80% of scientific research misconduct.
The problem is that the research plans listed in the application for scientific research projects should be original, involving academic ideas, theories and technical secrets. Although there is no so-called copyright in the application of various projects at present, the Fund Committee explicitly requires each reviewer to keep it confidential and not to spread it abroad. Then, so far, there have been many cases of plagiarism. Where is the leak? Is it a problem in the evaluation process?
Researchers in the field of basic research bluntly say that when writing papers and applications, they have to worry about all possible "outflows", especially when they have unique ideas and breakthroughs, writing applications will be timid, leading to the hollowing out of written project applications. Sometimes there have even been cases where papers have been killed and published by others.
More seriously, the disclosure and trading of applications have formed an industrial chain.
The report shows that on 20 10, the National Natural Science Foundation of China developed a project similarity checking system and put it into use. The system compares the similarity between the whole application and the project basis, research content, research scheme and innovation respectively. The result is amazing. For example, Ren Shengfeng, a university in Shandong, copied the application for funding projects from others. Compared with the project similarity checking system, its fund application in 20 12 is highly similar to other funded projects in 2008: the overall similarity rate is 95. 1%, the similarity rate of project foundation is 95.95%, the similarity rate of research content is 99.2%, the similarity rate of research scheme is 95.4%, and the similarity rate of innovation is 65.438+00.
The system has also checked that Peng Guoxing, a university in Hunan, and a university in Fujian are highly similar to the general projects applying for science funds. By comparison, the general similarity of natural science foundation projects declared by peng guoxing on 20 12 and declared on 20 12 is 97. 1%, the similarity of project foundation is 95.9%, the similarity of research content is 99.3%, the similarity of research scheme is 98.5%, and the similarity of innovation is/kloc-. After investigation, Peng Guoxing and Yu purchased the same application from an online "intermediary company"!
"Zero tolerance" for scientific misconduct is the consistent attitude of NSFC. For reported academic misconduct, according to the provisions of the National Natural Science Foundation of China, the fund committee will cancel the funded projects, recover the allocated funds, conduct informed criticism on the parties concerned, and disqualify them from applying for the projects of the National Natural Science Foundation for four to seven years. However, in the face of conclusive application "outflow" and naked transactions, relevant departments should also thoroughly investigate, such as why those plagiarists can get other people's applications? In addition, should the copyright of the application be protected in some form?