National Taiwan University (NTU) president Yang Pan-chyr (楊泮池) yesterday apologized for the second time over an ongoing academic fraud scandal involving him and NTU professor Kuo Min-liang (郭明良).
Speaking at an internal school meeting, Yang said he was “deeply sorry” for casting doubt on the university, as well as the criticism the school has been subjected to and the negative impact the scandal has had on the biomedical sector.
He called on lecturers at the university not to feel frustrated by the incident, citing the contributions the university’s researches’ have made to academia and society, for which he asked the public to encourage the university.
In November and December last year, Kuo was found by online academic forum PubPeer’s users to have possibly forged research findings in 11 medical papers published by numerous international journals, in four of which Yang was credited as coauthor.
The papers are being investigated by a team of NTU faculty and Academia Sinica members, with probe results to be made public on Friday.
Yang said he has fully cooperated with the probe by providing information on the papers in question.
Saying that interdisciplinary studies are a global trend, Yang underlined the significance of a fully functioning system to ensure academic integrity, adding that the university has assembled a task force to prevent breaches of academic ethics and revise rules to be observed by academics when using laboratories.
NTU vice president Kuo Tei-wei (郭大維) said investigation results would be forwarded to an evaluation committee comprised of the Office of Academic Affairs dean, as well as 11 other deans and 22 committee members nominated by colleges.
The committee would operate independently to ensure that the investigation is conducted in a fair and open manner, he said.
Citing agreements reached during meetings of a semi-formal task force in November last year, NTU vice president Chang Ching-ray (張慶瑞) said the university has laid out plans to establish an office and a standard operating procedure to prevent and address suspected breaches of academic integrity.
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