Following allegations of research misconduct by National Taiwan University (NTU) president Yang Pan-chyr (楊泮池) and professor Kuo Min-liang (郭明良), more allegations over the university’s academic integrity have surfaced, this time involving the selling of coauthorship rights on research papers.
According to users on PubPeer, an international online forum for peer-review, where allegations over the Taiwanese academics first gained momentum, 11 papers written by Kuo and his research team might contain research misconduct, and Yang coauthored four of them.
NTU said it will investigate the allegations, and that the authors would be held liable if the papers are found to contain forged content, but it said nothing about coauthorship.
The biggest problem in Taiwan’s academia is the improper listing of coauthors, which presents a far more serious issue than forgery or plagiarism. A close look at the 11 papers shows that the coauthors include not only thesis advisers and their students, who are responsible for carrying out the experiments, but also many administrative officials who control academic resources.
These officials might have been responsible for a small part of the research, but they might just as well have contributed nothing at all and were listed mainly because the advisers and the students thought their reputation or influence would be useful for their research project.
In Taiwan, an “academic colony” to the US, two major criteria for reviewing research proposals and issuing awards for already published papers used by the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Science and Technology are the order in which coauthors are listed and the number of papers published in journals listed in the Science Citation Index and Social Sciences Citation Index databases.
Rarely do they look at the actual content of the paper. The more papers one has authored or coauthored, the more established and connected one is deemed to be in academia.
Many academics-turned-officials have exploited this system and been promoted to department deans, school deans, university presidents or even ministers or vice president. They know full well the root cause of the nation’s widespread academic misconduct, but have been unwilling to implement changes because they want to secure their power and interests.
According to the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors’ guidelines, one cannot be listed as an author or coauthor of a paper unless they have made substantial contributions to the research project, participated in the writing of important parts of the paper and been involved in the approval of the final version and agreed to be held accountable for the accuracy and integrity of all parts of the work.
Following the most recent scandal, Yang said that the university will improve its ethics education for its graduate students, and Academia Sinica President James Liao (廖俊智) sent a letter to the institution’s personnel, asking them to help safeguard the nation’s “academic conscience” and condemn research fabrication, falsification and plagiarism.
Nothing was said about the coauthorship issue. They are clearly trying to pin the blame on graduate students.
In the worst-case scenario, blame might spill over to their advisers, but never to the officials who have benefited most from the papers. No matter how flawed the research papers are, the coauthors seem always to be able to get away and continue to enjoy a good reputation and wealth.
With so many of the officials still in power, can the nation be able to improve its academic integrity? We will have to wait and see.
Hwang Kwang-kuo is a psychology professor at National Taiwan University.
Translated by Tu Yu-an
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