Premier Jiang Yi-huah (江宜樺) has demanded that the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Science and Technology conduct a through review of the nation’s academic evaluation systems to address flaws that have distorted academic research, Executive Yuan spokesperson Sun Lih-chuyn (孫立群) said yesterday.
Jiang delivered a statement at yesterday’s Cabinet meeting about the recent academic scandal involving former minister of education Chiang Wei-ling (蔣偉寧), Sun said.
Chiang resigned on Monday in relation to his reported connections to a local academic who had 60 research papers retracted from the Journal of Vibration and Control earlier this month after the journal accused him of subverting the peer-review process — reportedly by creating as many as 130 false identities — to get his research papers published in the journal.
Photo: Chen Chih-chu, Taipei Times
Although Chiang was listed as a coauthor in five of the retracted papers, the ex-minister has denied having current links to the disgraced academic. He displayed an e-mail from the journal he received on Tuesday to bolster his claims of innocence.
The Ministry of Science and Technology cleared Chiang’s name on Wednesday after investigation, saying that he was not involved in the fraud.
Jiang said he was sad to accept Chiang’s resignation, as he knew from the beginning that Chiang was innocent, Sun said.
“Premier Jiang said that he trusted minister Chiang to never breach academic ethics, and that he found Chiang’s resignation deeply regrettable,” Sun added.
Jiang said that the flaws in the nation’s academic evaluation systems — used by many universities and academic institutions to monitor faculty publication records in such international databases as the Science Citation Index and Social Science Citation Index — needed to be addressed, Sun said.
A major flaw as reflected in the recent scandal case was that, under the current system of evaluation, the quantity of papers that academics produce counts for more than the quality of the papers, the quality of teaching or the way they treat their students, Sun quoted Jiang as saying.
There have been cases of students’ academic achievements being used in their academic advisers’ or employers’ publications without credit, and cases of students being denied graduation because their advisers need their help with research, Jiang was quoted as saying.
Acting Minister of Education Chen Te-hua (陳德華) and Minister of Science and Technology Simon Chang (張善政) did not make any proposals at the meeting on how they would review the systems of evaluation, but the Executive Yuan would ensure that Cabinet officials follow through on Jiang’s instructions, Sun said.
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