“Research Misconduct in China: towards an Institutional Analysis”, 2024-04-19 ():
[media, commentary; cf. Tombstone, normalization of deviance] Unethical research practices are prevalent in China, but little research has focused on the causes of these practices. Drawing on the criminology literature on organizational deviance, as well as the concept of cengceng jiama, which illustrates the increase of pressure in the process of policy implementation within a top-down bureaucratic hierarchy, this article develops an institutional analysis of research misconduct in Chinese universities.
It examines both universities and the policy environment of Chinese universities as contexts for research misconduct. Specifically, this article focuses on China’s Double First-Class University Initiative and its impact on elite universities that respond to the policy by generating new incentive structures to promote research quality and productivity as well as granting faculties and departments greater flexibility in terms of setting high promotion criteria concerning research productivity. This generates enormous institutional tensions and strains, encouraging and sometimes even compelling individual researchers who wish to survive to decouple their daily research activities from ethical research norms.
This article is written based on empirical data collected from 3 elite universities as well as a review of policy documents, universities’ internal documents, and news articles.
…Most universities in China, including all those listed in the Double First-Class Initiative, are government funded, with their presidents and party chiefs appointed directly by central and local governments. The Communist Party of China has established party units at various levels within universities, such as at the university level, the faculty level and the department level, and the administrative heads of the various levels (eg. presidents, deans, department heads) typically serve as deputy heads of the corresponding party unit. Through this political design, the Chinese government can ensure that universities strictly implement public policies, serve political demands, and become a part of the Chinese bureaucracy.
…Our focus on researchers from the discipline of natural sciences was due to the feasibility of obtaining interview data. We initially attempted to approach social science researchers at elite universities, but most of the potential interviewees we approached declined our interview invitations. This may be because their research topics were more relevant to Chinese policy and society, and they were very reluctant to accept invitations from researchers outside mainland China.
We eventually noticed that researchers in the discipline of natural sciences were comparatively more willing to accept our interview invitations, perhaps because their research topics were less sensitive and unrelated to policy and politics. We began by using our local connections to interview several researchers in faculties of natural sciences, who then introduced us to colleagues and friends whom we could also interview.
As leaders, we [department heads etc] are well aware of academic misconduct within the faculty. Apart from a few senior professors, most of the younger generation engage in various forms of misconduct with differing severity levels. They do so because they face difficulties meeting promotion criteria, and we do not want to complicate matters. As long as they publish their articles [in SCI-ranked journals], that is all the university and faculty need.
…In the 3 selected universities, research committees and research ethics subcommittees have been established at various levels to supervise research activities, investigate research misconduct and deliver sanctions to wrongdoers. The universities also require all faculties and departments to report any misconduct cases to the respective universities.
However, in practice, faculties and departments adopt the principle of ‘turning big problems into small ones and turning small problems into non-problems’ (dashi huaxiao, xiaoshi hualiao) when handling research misconduct. This is because faculties and departments lack the legitimacy to punish researchers engaging in unethical research activities. For example, an internal document revealed that a faculty member who had been penalized for breaching academic integrity attributed his research misconduct to immense pressure from the university and faculty to publish in top journals. The faculty member, ‘Yumenguan’, complained:
I admit that I indeed engaged in academic misconduct. However, if you (university and faculty leaders) had not implemented such inhumane policies and forced us so harshly [to publish as many articles as possible in SCI journals], I wouldn’t have resorted to unethical means.
The research ethics subcommittee members found the justification persuasive and eventually decided to give a lenient punishment (salary deduction and research funding deduction for that year) to Yumenguan.
One interviewee, who was a committee member handling this case, told us that faculty leaders admired Yumenguan’s academic achievements (publications in top journals), even though they recognised that such achievements were partially obtained through unethical activities. To avoid attention from the university and criticism from the general public, the entire investigation process was conducted with strict confidentiality, and the faculty did not report this case to the university.
We also found another case in which faculty leaders turned a blind eye to a faculty member’s research misconduct to compensate for the contributions the faculty member had made to a faculty-led national research project. This faculty member told us in an interview:
I spent about half a year completing all the research work required for the faculty-led national project. Then, I realised that I had only two years left to fulfil all tenure and promotion criteria. I attempted to apply for a tenure-clock extension, but it was rejected by the department and faculty. Consequently, I had to employ other methods to ensure that my research productivity met the promotion criteria. After being promoted to associate professor, I worried that my misconduct could be reported by others to the university. However, nothing has happened so far. I guess that the [faculty and department] leaders wanted to compensate for my contribution to the national project [by turning a blind eye to my unethical research activities]. (Interview A28, 2021, personal communication)
…Between May 2021 and April 2022, Zhang conducted anonymous virtual interviews with 30 faculty members and 5 students in the natural sciences at 3 of these elite universities. The interviewees included a president, deans and department heads. The researchers also analysed internal university documents.
Some researchers admitted to engaging in unethical research practices for fear of losing their jobs. In one interview, a faculty head said: “If anyone cannot meet the criteria [concerning publications], I suggest that they leave as soon as possible.”
Zhang and Wang describe researchers using services to write their papers for them [cf. LLMs, even anti-LLM LLMs], falsifying data, plagiarizing, exploiting students without offering authorship and bribing journal editors.
One interviewee admitted to paying for access to a data set. “I bought access to an official archive and altered the data to support my hypotheses.”
An associate dean emphasized the primacy of the publishing goal. “We should not be overly stringent in identifying and punishing research misconduct, as it hinders our scholars’ research efficiency.”
…Tang points out that the road to achieving integrity in research is long. “Cultivating research integrity takes time and requires orchestrated efforts from all stakeholders”, she says.
…Zheng Wenwen, who is responsible for research integrity at the Institute of Scientific and Technical Information of China, under the Ministry of Science and Technology, in Beijing, says that the sample size is too small to draw reliable conclusions.