Plagiarism in China

A German researcher about plagiarism in China, Lena Henningsen from the University of Heidelberg, passes on this great article about plagiarism and cheating in China: "No stopping China's cheaters", by Stephen Wong, Asia Times, Aug 22, 2009.

Some of the high points:

• Organized cheating on college exams is rampant.
• A novel experiment in detection of cheating on exams found that young pupils made much better proctors, catching two and a half times more cheaters than the adults did. The average age of the pupils was 12 years old.
• Wong notes that "A commentary of the national Guangming Daily newspaper stated that adults don't lack the eyes to see problems. They lack the courage to expose them."
  
• There is an examination law being proposed, but the question of enforcement lurks unsolved.
• Southwest Jiaotong University vice president Huang Qing has had his dissertation revoked. He has protested that it was "only 7%" and doesn't understand what the fuss is all about.
• Tsinghua University has developed software that supposedly detects plagiarism. But it doesn't detect much, there is counter software available that helps people "fix" their stolen papers.

I think the comment from Guangming Daily is spot on for the Western world as well. We see problematic behavior (read: scientific misconduct of all shades and strengths), but we lack the courage to call people out on their misconduct.

Thanks for the link, Lena!