最近网上热议李连达院士课题组造假一事。在这场声讨李连达院士课题组造假的全民大运动中，我发现其中很多的文章充满了对国内现行学术打假制度缺失或执行不力的指责。他们每每行文，必称如在美国遇到此类事情，会如何如何。我读了以后，总觉得此类评论，像作者们坐井观天梦呓般之臆语，很是苍白无力得有点可笑。最近我在哈佛医学院揭露了一起学术造假，因而不幸亲历了美国调查和处理学术造假的过程。现将情况简介如下。希望大家能通过此文，多少明白我国当今在科学技术方面，特别是科研造假技术方面，和美国等发达国家的真实差距所在。国内造假后进们，实应好好学习，努力提高科研造假技术。千万不要再像李连达课题组一样低水平造假，以致被洋大人们轻易揭露，使我国科技界脸面尽失。 （以下是英文版故事，我在Nature，The Scientist等杂志的网上评论上发过，但马上就被删除了。在PKD的交流网上也发过，虽然不少人对我的故事表示相信，但他们也无能为力（他们知识有限，自身重病缠身）。我多次联系他们，最后他们把我介绍到PKD Foundation（多囊肾基金会）。PKD基金会刚开始根本没理会，后来可能在病人的强烈要求下，由一个病人的妈妈（也是PKD基金会的雇员）代表他们主席发个了语焉不详的并有虚假内容的statement，掩盖PKD界内如此重大的弄虚作假，以平息病人的怒气。并又把此事推给了哈佛医学院。我将在随后的时间里介绍PKD基因会主席的statement, 并分析她为什么伪造有虚假内容的statement。中文版请见博文发生在哈佛大学的一起严重学术造假。两个版本分别写成，内容互相补充。） Dear PKD community, I am writing to you to ask for assistance in fighting with massive and egregious PKD research misconduct and to uncover truth in PKD (Polycystic Kidney Diseases) research. I think the PKD community/families might be one of the groups who would be greatly concerned with massive falsification and fabrication in PKD research and might provide moral support to a whistle blower of PKD research misconduct. I was a biomedical scientist who complained about massive and egregious research misconduct in PKD research in Harvard Medical School (HMS) and was thus retaliated against for my whistle blowing by the institute. Harvard Medical Schoolis still on a track to try to cover up the egregious research misconduct and retaliation case. I am a biologist originally from China. I was a research fellow in PKD laboratory in Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women's Hospital. As one of my major contributions, I identified and cloned multiple novel PKD gene homologues and created and characterized multiple novel PKD gene knockout models. In recent years, a major research breakthrough had been published in PKD field. That is, almost all PKD proteins were immunolocalized on primary cilia of kidney epithelial cells. In Human, mutation in either one of two PKD genes (PKD1 or PKD2) causes Autosomal Dominant Polycystic Kidney Disease (ADPKD). Both PKD1 and PKD2 proteins had been immunolocalized on primary cilia of the kidney epithelial cells. The first paper that claimed PKD2 immunolocalization on primary cilia was published in 2002 in Current Biology Journal. In 2003, a paper from Dr. Zhou's lab published in Nature Genetics. This paper confirmed both Pkd1 and Pkd2 proteins are localized on primary cilia and further develop the story by provided data showing ADPKD proteins function as mechanical sensor of fluid flow on primary cilia. The published data showed that, the deficiency of the function of PKD1 and/or PKD2 protein on the primary cilia would lead to the deficiency of mechanical sensation of primary cilia in kidney epithelia, eventually the epithelia of the kidney tubule start to grow and cysts is generated. As a research fellow working on PKD, I was asked by my principle investigator, Dr. Jing Zhou, to do PKD research on this direction of PKD research. In early 2006, after repetitive experiments, I started to see more and more evidences showing that immunolocalization of polycystin-1 and polycystin-2 on primary cilia on kidney cells might be false or fake. I first found the evidences showing that the polycystin-2 immunostaining on primary cilium of kidney epithelial cells might be caused by nonspecific binding of the primary antibodies and thus could be false. These results explained why many fellows experienced the difficulty in repeating the immunolocalization of polycystin-1 or -2 on the primary cilia of kidney cells. I reported the results in the laboratory several times since those irreproducible data severely hindered the progress of my research. I also made complaints that nonspecific binding of antibody caused artifact results several times to Dr. Jing Zhou. But Dr. Jing Zhou seemed not very concerned about my complaints. She cannot explain what I saw in the scientific experiments and ignored my complaint and pushed me to do research on the ciliary PKD story. According to my findings, I suspected that Drs. Li, Nauli and Zhou might be involved in fabrication or falsification by omitting these critical negative data or results. I felt it was not right to do that since falsification of scientific data about polycystic kidney diseases would directly and indirectly endanger the interests and safety of the PKD patients. During the daily interaction with my colleagues, I also found evidences that they were falsifying and fabricating scientific data.It was also scientifically obvious that, in some published papers, the cilia stories were flawed. For example, in one of the papers, the authors stated that in PKD knockout cells, the calcium wave response to fluid flow was abolished. However, according to my observation and findings, the truth is, calcium wave response was intact in either PKD1 or PKD2 knockout cells. In the papers, the authors obviously chose a portion of negative result to represent the PKD1/PKD2 knockout cells. This kind of research conduct, if done intentionally, was definitely scientific misconduct. In May and June, 2006, I started to report to Dr. Joseph Bonventre, the director of renal division that there might be egregious research misconduct occurred in the lab. Soon after that, I was threatened by Dr. Jing Zhou several times that I would lose my position if I still stick to my scientific opinion. Dr. Bonventre seemed reluctant to pursue the scientific misconduct and just tell Dr. Jing Zhou. He was one of the principle investigators in an NIH-funded grant lead by Dr. Jing Zhou. Afterwards, as I continued working on the projects, I found more evidences that previous publications in the field might contain false or even falsified or fabricated data. On March 27, 2007, I sent an email to Dr. Margaret L. Dale, the officer of research integrity of Harvard Medical School raising the issues of research misconducts and authorship argument in the laboratory. I also sent an email to Dr. Bonventre stating the same issues. On April 12, 2007, I met with Dr. Dale and Partners attorney Chris Clark to raise the issues of falsifications and/or fabrications in the laboratory and the related authorship issues. I didn't receive any following-up message until May 8, I sent an email to Dr. Dale to inquire the consequence of their investigation. On the same day, Dr. Dale replied to me saying that she was still contactingDr. Bonventre to set up a time to talk about this issue. On May 14, 2007, I received an email from Dr. Jing Zhou asking me leave my position. The email was also sent to Dr. Bonventre. I immediately responded to her email to say her email was not right and not appropriate. I felt I was under retaliatory action. I wrote emails to Dr. Dale to make the allegation that I was retaliated against by Dr. Jing Zhou because of my reporting of research misconduct of her laboratory. On June 21, 2007, Dr. Bonventre, Dr. Dale and I met in Dr. Bonventre's office. I was told by Dr. Bonventre that I had to leave on a designated date. I said I still felt that forcing me leave on a designated date was retaliatory action to my reporting of research misconducts in the laboratory. To obtain more time to protect my visa status and to accomplish more research, I had to agree to sign the letter. I then had to write to Dr. Dale to ask for immediate protection from the retaliatory action taken against me after I complained about the research misconduct. Dr. Dale replied to me that it was not retaliation because my complaint on April 12, 2007 was not formal allegation. I was shocked by her words. I suffered severe emotional distress in those days. But I still stuck to my scientific opinion that PKD cilia connection was false. I continue making research misconduct complaints to numerous officials in the institute. On Oct 17th, Dr. Jing Zhou came to me and asked me to go to her office. She threatened me by saying that everything going upper level would come back to her. I had to leave her office in order not to hear more threats from her. As arranged, on Oct 26, Dr. Handin, the vice chair of department of Medicine of BWH, Dr Zhou, and I met in his office. Dr. Handin first said that he thought there was no research misconduct and there was no retaliation against me and I had to leave in Feb, 2008. During the meeting, He kept persuading me to drop my allegations by saying that Can you put this in your CV even if you can prove there is research misconduct? and threatened me by saying How will you pay bills after March 1st, 2008, etc. He also said to me with scornful tone, You told so many people, nobody thought there was falsification or fabrication. Are you crazy? I thought the meeting was not fair to me and refused to withdraw the allegations. On Nov 14, 2007, I reported the research misconduct and the retaliation against me to office of research integrity (ORI) at Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS), USA. However, ORI, knowing that I was complaining to be retaliated against by Harvard Medical School/Brigham and Women's Hospital, just request HMS/BWH to conduct self investigation. On Jan 5, 2008, the vice president of BWH sent me a mail. In the mail, she said that they would start to investigate the research misconduct and retaliation issues. Before investigation, Dr. Bierer, vice president of BWH, asserted the research misconduct and the retaliation were two separate things thus should be investigated separately. I raised the concerns about the fairness of the inside panels and the procedure of the investigations. She also threatened me that I would have to leave my position before any investigation started. On Feb 11, 2008, due to the tremendous pressure from the officials from BWH/HMS, I suffered from severe illness, so I sent Dr. Bierer an email to tell her that I was ill. After knowing my illness, Dr. Bierer pressed me again by sending me an email to say that my administrative leave date would be moved up. Since then, I had to see doctors for several times to prevent my illness worsening. I received the inside panel's investigation report on June 27, 2008. The report contained some false statements, ignored some important facts. It is an extremely unfair, unjust and biased report. The facts I discovered that the PKD proteins on primary cilia were false were of significant interests to PKD and field and patients. In recent years, National Institutes of Health had invested millions of money in the research along the direction of PKD and cilia connection. PKD foundation also invested tens of thousands of US dollar in this direction. Everyone (including patients and scientists) was expecting breakthrough on pathogenesis and therapy of PKD by pursuing this direction. Many thought this could be the right direction to cure the PKD, provided the PKD and cilia connection were true. However, if the allegation I made be confirmed, the event might be one of the most egregious, notorious and massive research misconducts that involving multiple previously very prestigious institutions. However, as the whistle blower in PKD field, I had been fighting with extreme difficulties. From what they had acted, it was easy to tell that they knew clearly there was egregious and mass research misconduct in the PKD field as I reported. But Harvard Medical School chose to cover up the mass research misconduct, ignoring all of the normal procedure in protecting the whistle blower's legal right. Harvard Medical School/Brigham and Women's Hospital also got involved in imposing severe retaliation and threats against a good-faith whistle blower. I reported the research misconduct to Harvard Medical School on April 2007. I had seen Harvard Medical School was slow in trying to investigate the research misconduct. On the contrary, Harvard Medical School was extremely speedy in retaliation against a whistle blower. Officials in Harvard Medical School/Brigham and Women's Hospital started to seek to terminate me in a matter of days after I made the misconduct complaints with the internal officer of research integrity, Dr. Dale on April 12, 2007. The investigation panel to research misconduct had their first meeting on June, 2008, 4 months later after the job of whistle blower was terminated by Dr. Bierer, the vice president of BWH. After my job was terminated, they started to investigate into the research misconduct allegation I raised, asking me providing related information which would be only available to me when I was at work. Obviously, the inside panel was intentionally set up to cover up this egregious and massive research misconduct and retaliation case. To help yourself understand the essence of this PKD research misconduct, you should also consult your doctors, or other scientists/professors in the biomedical field.
诗曰：造假不要紧，剽窃是祸根；岂止我一个，还有后来人。 此前曽在国外名校举报过学术造假，在网上説起过国外传统是对造假教授百般包庇，却基本上没人相信。在郭磊先生的《发生在哈佛医学院的一起严重学术造假》（ http://www.sciencenet.cn/m/user_content.aspx?id=221513 ）一文后本人留过言，也拜读了各位大侠的评论，觉得有几句话不得不説。 学术和科研本来是人类对知识和文明的追求，到了求职不易的今天，却已演变为谋生的手段，学术造假也就应运而生。大家耳熟能详的一项Nature调查显示，科研人员中有有三分之一承认有过某种程度的弄虚作假或剽窃。所以其实科研不当行为国内国外一般同，并非中国独创。 美国科研诚信办公室（ORI）对科研不当行为的定义是： Research misconduct means fabrication, falsification, or plagiarism in proposing, performing, or reviewing research, or in reporting research results. (a) Fabrication is making up data or results and recording or reporting them. (b) Falsification is manipulating research materials, equipment, or processes, or changing or omitting data or results such that the research is not accurately represented in the research record. (c) Plagiarism is the appropriation of another person's ideas, processes, results, or words without giving appropriate credit. (d) Research misconduct does not include honest error or differences of opinion. （ http://ori.dhhs.gov/misconduct/definition_misconduct.shtml ） 在捏造（fabrication）、篡改数据（falsification）和剽窃（plagiarism）这三项行为中，剽窃（包括重复发表而不加说明的自我剽窃）最愚蠢：白纸黑字，在众目睽睽之下，如何抵赖？造假行家则明白，正如发扬中医要从娃娃起，挽救京剧要从小学生起，而学术造假则必须从伪造原始数据起。既然造假，就不必客气，不造则已，要造就要造得圆满彻底。 有读者在郭教授博客的留言中説： 如果你有确凿的证据，证明哈佛的相关研究人员确有造假的嫌疑，就应该为了科学与之斗争。哪怕来自各方面的压力有多么的大 。 话虽不错，只是不现实。首先，举报剽窃相对容易，如果是举报捏造或篡改数据，接触原始实验记录是关键，却往往又是几乎不可能。其次，即使有了如山铁证，对付学生或下层科研人员自然是手到擒来，如果对方是知名教授，那么举报无疑是飞蛾扑火，地狱无门自来投。这事说来话长，待我以后慢慢开导大家。 应该说，ORI对科研不当行为的定义已经对造假者十分仁慈，网开三面，尤其是定义的第四条，科研不当行为不包括诚实的错误或观点的分歧，常常被造假者和造假者的上司用来掩盖造假丑闻。要证明别人刻意造假谈何容易！ 在国外较多见的是不重复实验，只要第一次试验有可用或较 理想的结果，即使不能肯定结果是否真实，能写就写，怕因第二次实验不能重复而坏了好事。曾经有人建议重复试验，却被老板一句话噎死：难道连你自己做的实验都不相信？ 按ORI条文，这当然不算不端行为。所以很多人有过这样的体验，如果严格依照一篇论文的步骤重复实验，即使那篇文章发表在一家一流杂志，得出同样实验结果的概率不高。通常的做法是把那篇论文丢到一边，虽然怀疑该论文的真实性，但不会去刨根问底，弄个水落石出。 就郭教授所叙述的证据，如果同一实验室无法重复已发表结果，一般来说，发表的论文显然有问题。在这种情况下，真正的科学家会找出原因主动改正论文中的错误，一般混饭的也就是装聋作哑。要人家承认是造假或是错误，那是强人所难。如果没有实验的原始记录证明的确是捏造或篡改了数据，那么只能怀疑，而不可以正式指控别人造假。按说向上司汇报这种怀疑是为实验室好，是否应该汇报则要看上司的为人，不可自取灭亡。 以下引用的这段话足已说明科研诚信办公室并不能解决实际问题，向他们告状只是病急乱投医： According to a July 2005 report by the Associated Press, allegations of misconduct by researchers in the United States reached record highs in 2004, with the department of Health and Human Services receiving 274 complaints -- the most the department has received in one year since the federal government first established a program to deal with scientific misconduct in 1989. However, because of staff and funding shortfalls, the federal Office of Research Integrity closed only 23 of those complaints, with just eight individuals found guilty. （ http://www.naturalnews.com/019353.html ） 应该明白，如果没有过硬的证据，有几人敢向ORI投诉而为自己惹大麻烦？ 有人留言建议郭教授找媒体，找编辑，或通过法律途径，应该说，这些在国外都不可行，为什么却不是三言两语可以说得明白，这些只有在亲身体验后才会如梦初醒。至于在博客上造势，那只是不得已而为之，让丑事见见光而已，对事件的解决毫无影响。因为虽然科学网上往来无白丁，留言大多出自教授学者，可是在事件中这些人不过是一群乌合之众。 有人相信同行评议，事实上如果事件已到了需要确定谁是谁非的地步，同行评议往往对举报人是个灾难。因为一是调查的范围只能是翻翻原始记录确定是否发生过捏造或篡改数据，而不是裁判学术观点的分歧，需要的是正直而不一定是小范围的专家；二是如今科学家名声不好，人品可疑，在是非场合不愿退避三舍，而是自告奋勇，勇往直前前来蹚浑水的，多是些利害相关的是非之人。 最欣赏的是郭教授自己的一则留言： 此文原有一个引言最近网上热议李连达院士课题组造假一事。在这场声讨李连达院士课题组造假的全民大运动中，我发现其中很多的文章充满了对国内现行学术打假制度缺失或执行不 力的指责，以及对浙大校长的批评。他们每每行文，必称如在美国遇到此类事情，会如何如何。我读了以后，总觉得此类评论，像作者们坐井观天梦呓般之臆语，很 是苍白无力得有点可笑。最近我在哈佛医学院揭露了一起学术造假，因而不幸亲历了美国调查和处理学术造假的过程。现将情况简介如下。希望大家能通过此文，多 少明白我国当今在科学技术方面，特别是科研造假技术方面，和美国等发达国家的真实差距所在。国内造假后进们，实应好好学习，努力提高科研造假技术。千万不 要再像李连达课题组一样低水平造假，以致被洋大人们轻易揭露，使我国科技界脸面尽失 。 努力提高科研造假技术，不使我国科技界脸面尽失，这真是神来之笔！于是借来做了本文的标题。
20世纪80年代以来一些造成国际不良影响的学术不端行为严重伤害了学术的尊严，如美国的巴尔的摩事件、德国的舍恩事件、韩国的黄禹锡事件、中国的汉芯事件等，引起各界广泛关注。 各国均发布有针对学术不端行为的规章，如德国由具有德国科学院性质的马普学会于1997年11月发布（2000年11月修订）有Rules of Procedure in Cases of Suspected Scientific Misconduct，附录中有Catalogue of Conduct to be regarded as Scientific Misconduct，美国由白宫科技政策办公室(OSTP)于2000年12月发布有Federal Policy on Research Misconduct，英国于2004年9月发布Universal ethical code for scientists，日本学术会议于2006年10月发布Scientific Misconduct and Its Prevention，中国教育部社会科学委员会第一次全体会议2004年6月22日讨论通过并发布了由七节二十五条构成的《高等学校哲学社会科学研究学术规范（试行）》，其中第八条指出伪注、伪造、篡改文献和数据等，均属学术不端行为，第九条明确规定不得以任何方式抄袭、剽窃或侵吞他人学术成果；2007年1月16日中国科协七届三次常委会议专门审议通过并发布了由四章二十八条构成的《科技工作者科学道德规范（试行）》，其中第三章专门对学术不端行为作了定性界定，第四章是专门针对学术不端行为的监督。尽管如此，学术不端行为仍不断发生，显然有其社会原因。 学术诚信是学术研究健康发展的基础，学术不端行为则是对学术诚信的摧残和损害，并直接导致学术腐败，如有社会环境保障，具有独立治理传统的学术界应能自觉治愈学术不端
标签: 学术不端
